Leaving Bhera Rest Area Towards Islamabad from Rahim Yar Khan and Crossing the Jhelum River on Motorway M2
Leaving Bhera Rest Area Towards Islamabad from Rahim Yar Khan and Crossing the Jhelum River on Motorway M2
Back on the road in the first grey light of the morning. The M2 carries us on towards Islamabad — and over the great Jhelum River, with the early fog still hanging over the water and the fields.
It was about half past five in the morning when we left the Bhera rest area and joined the M2 Motorway again. The night was behind us now — the level crossing, the freight train, the one o'clock fuel stop, the bus overtaken on the M4, the River Ravi crossed under the moon. A whole night of driving lay in the mirror, and ahead of us, in the first grey light of the day, lay the final stretch of the road journey: the motorway running on toward Islamabad, a great river to cross, and then, at last, the hills.
Watch the Morning Drive
Watch the drive from the Bhera rest area across the Jhelum River on Motorway M2 in the first grey light of the morning.
The morning drive from Bhera rest area towards Islamabad, crossing the Jhelum River on Motorway M2.
1. The Last Rest Before the Hills
Every long road journey has a rest area that becomes a turning point, and for us that place was Bhera. We had reached it in the dark, tired from hours of night driving, and we had stopped the way tired travellers always stop — gratefully, without discussion, and for longer than we had planned. The rest area at night is a small lit island in a sea of dark fields: parked trucks with their lights off, a few cars with sleeping passengers, the low hum of a generator somewhere, and the smell of tea drifting from a stall that never seems to close.
Bhera is not a famous place, and that is exactly its charm. It sits on the M2 between the plains and the hills, a place where the motorway pauses and the traveller catches his breath. Drivers know it as the last comfortable stop before the road begins to climb, and after a night that began at a lonely level crossing near Rahim Yar Khan, comfort was exactly what we needed. We stretched our legs, drank something hot, walked a little in the cool night air, and let the car rest with us. Nobody spoke much. On a night journey, the quiet stretches are the ones that restore you.
Leaving a rest area at dawn is a different feeling from leaving one at night. At night you pull out into darkness, and the road ahead is a question. At dawn you pull out into a world that is slowly answering itself: the sky paling in the east, the fields taking shape on both sides, the fog lying low over the land like a blanket that has not yet been lifted. The engine note changes as you join the fast lane, the headlights become less important with every kilometre, and the journey, which felt like it might never end in the small hours, suddenly feels as if it is almost over. That is the gift of the dawn on a long drive — it gives you your energy back, and it gives the road its beauty back too.
M2 MotorwayBhera Rest AreaRiver JhelumRahim Yar Khan to Islamabad
2. First Grey Light on the M2
The M2 in the first grey light is a road waking up. The motorway that had been ours alone through the night began to fill, gently, with other travellers: a truck carrying goods toward the capital, a car with a family heading home after a wedding, a bus whose passengers were still asleep against the windows. Nobody was in a hurry yet. The dawn motorway has a manners all of its own — steady speeds, generous gaps between vehicles, headlights still on out of habit rather than need, the whole road moving like a river that has just begun to flow.
There is a particular kind of light at half past five on an October morning in Punjab. It is not sunrise yet, not properly — the sun is still below the horizon, and the sky is the colour of ash and pearl, pale grey with a faint blush of pink low in the east. The fields on both sides are still dark shapes, but their edges are softening. Trees that were black silhouettes an hour ago now show their green. The fog hangs in the low places, in the dips and hollows beside the road, and where it catches the first light it turns silver. It is the most honest light of the day, because it hides nothing and flatters nothing — it simply shows you the land as it is, waking up.
Driving through it, you feel the night leaving you. Your eyes, which have been working hard in the dark for hours, relax. Your shoulders drop. The road ahead is no longer a tunnel of headlight beam but a wide view, opening a little further with every minute. The signs appear earlier now, and you can read them properly — a town name, a distance, a river ahead. And somewhere in the front of your mind, a quiet thought begins to form: we are nearly there. Not yet, but nearly. The capital is close, and the hills that guard it are waiting just beyond the next rise.
Leaving the Bhera rest area in the first grey light of the morning, the M2 running on toward Islamabad. AI-generated illustration for this article.
3. The River Appears
Every river on this road announces itself before you see it. First the fields fall away, and the land opens out on both sides. Then the guard rails run on longer, and the motorway begins a gentle rise, the way a road rises when it is about to cross something important. Then the air changes — cooler, damper, smelling faintly of water — and you know a river is near. On this stretch of the M2, the river is the Jhelum.
The Jhelum is one of the great rivers of Punjab, and it carries a history that is older than any road. It has watered these fields for centuries, fed the canals, carried the boats of traders, and marked the boundary between one land and the next. The motorway crosses it on a long, modern bridge, high above the water, and from the bridge you can see the river properly: wide, calm in the morning, its surface half-hidden under the fog that still hangs over it, its far bank lined with green fields that stretch away toward the horizon.
There is something about approaching a great river at dawn that slows you down inside, even when the car does not slow at all. The night's hurry — the fuel stop, the overtake, the miles eaten in the dark — falls away, and for a few moments the journey becomes about looking rather than moving. The fog over the water, the pale sky, the green fields beyond: it is a picture that no photograph quite captures, because a photograph cannot hold the cool air, or the sound of the tyres changing note on the bridge, or the feeling of being suspended above a river that has flowed here since long before there were motorways.
4. Crossing the Jhelum
And then we were on the bridge itself. The crossing takes only a minute or so at motorway speed, but it is a minute worth remembering. The road rises, the fields drop away below, and suddenly there is water on both sides — wide, silver-grey in the dawn light, the fog drifting across it in slow ribbons. The bridge lamps are still on, though they are hardly needed now, and they march ahead in a long line until the far bank. Beneath them, the road runs straight and true over the river, and for a few seconds you are neither on one bank nor the other, but above the water, between two worlds.
Bridges have always been the most hopeful parts of a road. A bridge says that a river which could have stopped you will not stop you — that someone built a way across, and that your journey can continue. The Jhelum bridge on the M2 is a quiet, modern thing, without ornament or ceremony, and that is fitting: it does its work without fuss, carrying thousands of travellers a day across a river that would otherwise divide the land. We crossed it in under a minute, as travellers do now, and the river kept flowing underneath, unconcerned and eternal, as it has flowed for generations before us and will flow for generations after.
On the far bank, the land rises again, gently. The fog thins. The fields give way, slowly, to rougher ground, and the first low shapes of the hills begin to show on the horizon — faint at first, like a smudge on the sky, then clearer with every kilometre. That is the moment the journey changes its character for the last time. The flat Punjab plains, which have carried us all night, are ending. The hills are beginning. Islamabad, guarded by its mountains, is close now, and the road knows it.
What the Jhelum crossing teaches a traveller
- Rivers mark the chapters: the Ravi in the night, the Jhelum at dawn — each crossing closes one part of the journey and opens the next.
- Fog is a morning gift, not a problem: it softens the land, cools the air, and makes an ordinary bridge feel like a crossing into another world.
- The last stretch is the sweetest: after a whole night on the road, the final kilometres toward the hills are the ones you remember longest.
- Look up from the road: a river crossing lasts seconds at motorway speed, but the view from the bridge is the reward for the whole night's driving.
The long motorway bridge over the River Jhelum at dawn, fog still hanging over the water. AI-generated illustration for this article.
5. Dawn Driving, Done Right
A morning like this one — rest area, grey light, river bridge — only works because the night before it was driven properly. Dawn is the most deceptive time on a long journey: the light returns, the road looks easy, and the tiredness you have been holding back all night suddenly catches up with you, because your body thinks the journey is over when it is not. The drivers who arrive safely are the ones who respect the dawn as much as they respected the dark.
The first rule is rest, and we had taken it. The stop at Bhera was not a luxury; it was the reason the dawn drive was safe. A short break, a stretch, something hot to drink, and fresh air do more for a dawn driver than any amount of willpower. The second rule is fog: in the low places beside the road, and over the river, the morning fog can thicken without warning, and a driver who was doing a comfortable speed in clear light must be ready to slow for it, with dipped headlights and a longer gap to the vehicle ahead. The third rule is patience: the hills are close, the capital is close, and the temptation is to hurry — but the last hour of a long journey deserves the same care as the first, because it is the hour when tiredness is at its worst and the road at its most beautiful.
These are not rules from a book. They are the habits of people who drive these roads through the night, week after week, and arrive safely every time. The M2 at half past five in the morning rewards the careful driver with the best the road has to offer: empty lanes, cool air, a river crossed in the fog, and the first sight of the hills ahead. Rush it, and you miss all of it — and you risk the things that matter most.
6. Islamabad Is Close Now
Past the Jhelum, the road ran on through the brightening morning, and the journey began to feel different. The rest area, the grey light, the river — each one was a small milestone, and together they meant the night was over and the day had begun. Ahead lay the rest of the road: the hills rising out of the morning mist, the zigzag climb between the mountains, and then the capital itself, with its towers, its wide avenues, and the great white mosque standing against the Margalla Hills.
That is the shape of this journey from Rahim Yar Khan to Islamabad. It is not one long drive; it is a chain of small moments, each one worth remembering. A level crossing in the dark. A freight train shaking the ground. A bus overtaken cleanly on the M4. A river crossed under the moon, and another crossed in the morning fog. None of them is the destination. All of them are the journey.
By the time the sun was properly up, we would be far past the Jhelum, climbing toward the hills with the capital waiting at the top. But for now, at half past five in the morning, with the river behind us and the motorway running on ahead, the dawn belonged to us — and the road to Islamabad had never felt closer.
All words original. Images AI-generated for this article.
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