It was a dark night night in the summer of 2015 when I traveled to Lower Dir in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. I had spent most of my life in Sialkot, and then in Kakul for my training at the Pakistan Military Academy. I had never really heard of Lower Dir, and when I was posted there, my first feelings were of curiosity and intrigue. Being an area of conflict, I knew it would be a very drab place to live in for the next year or so.
I reached there very late in the night, and was too tired at first to take in my surroundings. The next day, I woke up in an army enclosure with high walls and couldn’t really look around. A few days later, I was being sent for my first post duty. The mountains and valley are beautiful and pollution free. It knocked the wind out of me. The place had the kind of serene beauty that could mesmerize you, and I felt I could stare at it for hours.
The post I was assigned to was about 9,000 feet above sea level, and it was freezing cold even in the summers. Each day, the whole area would be submerged in clouds, and the air there was the freshest I had ever experienced.
Now, Lower Dir is a very backward place. It doesn’t have many restaurants or eateries. But what it does have are the best walnuts in Pakistan. This I found when I was trekking down a mountain and saw the walnut trees in bloom. I later found out that almost every resident here is in the business of exporting walnuts from Lower Dir to the rest of Pakistan, as well as the rest of the world. Another interesting thing I noticed was the price. Each walnut is sold here for one rupee. No fuss in pricing. It was fixed years ago, and hasn’t changed till this day, and will not change in the future either. These walnuts are fresh off the trees, and are soft enough to easily crack open with your teeth (really, no tooth pain from breaking them open).
While trekking the streets of the local bazaars, you will find countless shops that sell walnuts. It’s a way of life here in Lower Dir. The locals always fit walnuts into whatever dish they make, especially the famous Kabuli Pulao, and their Gajar Ka Halwa.
The walnuts here have a special aroma and taste, that I for one haven’t experienced in walnuts from any other part of the country. Needless to say, when I finally leave Lower Dir, I’m going to stash a lot of these and take them to wherever I go to next.
