Grit and Gold: Driving the Makran Coastal Highway 

A month after moving back to Karachi from London, in early 2017, when I was reacquainting myself with the city I had grown up in but had not known for years, my family decided to take a road trip. We would drive seven hours along the Makran Coastal Highway, all the way to Gwadar, for over 650 km along the Arabian Sea coastline. The highway is a sharp cut through often impossible terrain. It is narrow, often steep, and flanked by the crushed skeletons of trucks that have veered off its side. Hills that are all grit and gold loom petrified in their formations, as if someone drew their fingers through dunes of sand millennia ago, a whisk through cream, whipping up endless peaks of stone. Along the way, we detoured deep into Hingol National Park, hoping to spot a clan of ever-elusive Ibex and to visit Hinglaj Mata — a Hindu temple and pilgrimage site tucked into a cave within a small gorge. 

Driving through Balochistan is a lot like being locked into the heart of a desert: rock everywhere, the wind carrying dust as if it's a prerequisite for air. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, the sea appears, turquoise water reflecting the sun off its surface, shimmering like a crinkle of forgotten cellophane. We saw blue one second; white the next. An absolute mirage. The water was framed by soft dunes, then jagged cliffs. We drove up one, holding onto our seats, watching our bags and cameras and the tissue box on the dashboard leap up with each swerve. At the top, we peered over the edge and saw dozens of bright boats trawling for fish, prawns, lobster. Gulls arched prettily overhead. On our way onward, we passed a cluster of makeshift homes, women firing up a drum of heat, oiling a massive tawa, preparing the canvas for when the men dragged in the day's triumphs.

While making our way out of Hingol National Park, the man we had brought along for security — a pistol hanging over his shoulder on a belt lined with dozens of golden bullets — leaned forward from where he had perched in the back of the jeep and pointed out the window. “Dekho,” he said. “Baadal.” Look. Clouds. The wind had picked up and stirred the dust. As we drove on, we found that these whimsical sand tornadoes flared up frequently. But in that moment, I didn’t for a second question what I’d been told. Of course clouds were bursting out of the ground — somehow, they’d fallen from the sky, or perhaps the ones in the sky really came from the earth. For a split second, every certainty I’d ever had about the universe lost its footing. What a gorgeous freefall that was. When the dust cleared, I saw a herd of silky camels strutting by in the heat. I watched their lone keeper, a man without possessions, and thought — maybe that’s how it works, out here. The mind runs on magic, the heart on wonder.