Zigzag Motorway Between the Mountains: Climbing Higher and Higher Above Sea Level Towards Islamabad
Rahim Yar Khan → Islamabad · 19 October 2026 · 6:08 AM
Zigzag Motorway Between the Mountains: Climbing Higher and Higher Above Sea Level Towards Islamabad
The flat road of the night is behind us. Ahead, the motorway folds itself into curve after curve, climbing between the mountains towards the capital.
One minute. That is all that separated the two views. At 6:07 in the morning the mountains were all around us and the sky was opening above them, and the tiredness of a whole night on the road from Rahim Yar Khan had disappeared in a single moment. At 6:08, the road itself answered that view. It stopped running straight across the land, turned into the hills, and began to climb — folding itself into a zigzag of curve after curve, rising higher and higher above sea level with every bend, while the plains we had crossed all night fell away below us. After hours of flat, dark motorway, the journey had finally become a mountain journey, and this video — fifty-six seconds of the famous zigzag stretch, filmed from the moving vehicle — is the moment the road showed us what it had been saving for the morning.
Watch the climb: the M2 motorway winding between the green mountains of the Salt Range on the morning of 19 October 2026.
The zigzag stretch: the motorway folds back on itself in curve after curve, climbing between the green ridges of the Salt Range at dawn. AI-generated illustration for this article.
1. The Moment the Road Started Climbing
There is a particular feeling you get when a road starts to climb, and it is different from every other feeling on a long journey. On flat ground, distance is something you count — kilometres ticking past, towns sliding by, the fuel gauge falling slowly. On a climb, distance is something you feel in your body. The engine note changes. The vehicle leans a little harder into the road. Your ears may pop, just slightly, and the air coming through the window turns cooler and thinner. You are not just moving forward any more. You are moving up.
That is exactly what happened to us at 6:08 in the morning, on the M2 motorway, somewhere past Bhera and into the Salt Range. All night the road had been flat — the long, straight, fast motorway across the Punjab plains, where the only thing rising on either side was the occasional bridge or the lights of a town in the distance. Then the first mountains had appeared at 6:04, pale on the horizon. At 6:06 they had grown closer, layer upon layer of mist-wrapped ridges. At 6:07 they were all around us. And at 6:08, the road turned into them and began its zigzag climb.
Watch the video again and you can see the change happen in real time. The road ahead stops being a straight ribbon and starts bending — left, then right, then left again, each curve a little higher than the one before it. The ridges slide past on both sides, first one slope, then another, then another, and with every turn the view opens a little wider. The plains are still there if you look back, but they are falling away below, getting smaller and flatter with every minute, like a map being folded up behind you.
It is the kind of moment that makes everyone in the vehicle sit up at once. After a night of dozing and quiet, suddenly everyone is awake, pointing, talking over each other, calling out the next curve before it arrives. The driver slows without thinking about it — not from caution alone, though caution is part of it on a mountain climb, but because the road has become worth looking at. When a road climbs like this, it stops being a way of getting somewhere and becomes a place in itself.
“This is the famous zigzag stretch of the motorway, where the road climbs between the mountains in curve after curve. With every turn you feel yourself rising — higher and higher above sea level — while the plains fall away below.”
2. Why the Road Zigzags
To someone seeing it for the first time, a zigzag road can look like a mistake — as if the builders could not make up their minds which way to go. In truth, it is the opposite: the zigzag is the cleverest thing on the whole motorway, and it is the reason a road can climb a mountain at all.
A mountain is steep. A vehicle — especially a heavy one, a bus or a loaded truck — cannot climb a steep slope directly without losing speed, overheating its engine, or simply running out of grip. So road builders do what walkers have done on mountain paths for thousands of years: they fold the climb. Instead of going straight up, the road goes sideways across the slope, turns back on itself, goes sideways again, and turns back again. Each straight stretch between the turns is gentle enough for any vehicle to manage comfortably. Added together, those gentle stretches carry you to the top — not in a straight line, but in a long, graceful zigzag.
Every curve on this stretch is doing quiet, serious work. The long sweep to the left gives the road room to gain height without getting steep. The hairpin turn at the end of it turns the whole climb around and sends it back across the slope in the other direction. The next sweep gains a little more height, the next turn sends it back again, and so on, curve after curve, until the road has climbed hundreds of metres without ever asking a vehicle to do the impossible. It is engineering you can feel in your body: the gentle pull of each climb, the easy rhythm of each turn, the sense that the road is working with the mountain rather than fighting it.
The Salt Range climb
This particular zigzag belongs to the Salt Range, the long spine of hills that the motorway climbs on its way from the Punjab plains towards Islamabad. The Salt Range is not the tallest mountain country in Pakistan — the great snow peaks of the far north are a different world entirely — but it is the first real climbing the road from the south has to do, and it does it with style. The slopes here are green and rocky by turns, the valleys deep, the ridges long and layered, and the road winds through them like a thread through a needle.
For travellers, the Salt Range climb is the moment the journey changes its character completely. Before it, you have been on a motorway. After it, you have been on a mountain road. The difference is not just in the view, though the view is extraordinary. It is in the whole feeling of travel: the slower pace, the attention the road demands, the way every curve opens a new picture, the way the air changes as you rise. Kallar Kahar lies just ahead on this same climb — the famous mountain town of the Salt Range, known for its steep roads and its cool air — and crossing it will mean the hardest part of the mountain road is done. But this zigzag, right here, is where the climbing truly begins.
The climb, minute by minute
The gauge above is the journey in one line. The plains are behind us, the foothills are under us, the zigzag is where we are right now, and Islamabad — still kilometres away, still unseen — is waiting at the top of the climb.
3. Higher and Higher Above Sea Level
“Higher and higher above sea level” is a phrase that sounds simple until you stop and think about what it means. Sea level is the flat line the whole world measures height from, and for the entire night we had been driving close to it — across the plains of the Punjab, where the land barely rises at all and the road runs straight and level for hour after hour. Now, in the space of a few minutes on the zigzag, we were leaving that flat world behind.
You feel the height in small ways before you see it. The air turns cooler, and the morning breeze through the window has a freshness the night air did not have. The light changes too: the sun, still low, catches the tops of the ridges while the valleys below stay in soft shadow, so every layer of mountain stands out from the one behind it. And then there is the view itself, which keeps widening with every curve. At the bottom of the climb, the view is a road and two slopes. Halfway up, it is a valley and three ridges. Near the top, it is a whole landscape — ridges upon ridges, falling away in every direction, with the mist sitting in the low places like slow rivers of light.
There is also the feeling in your ears, the little pop that tells you the air pressure is changing because you are genuinely higher than you were a minute ago. It is a small thing, almost too small to mention, but it is the body’s own way of measuring the climb — a reminder that this is not just a pretty road, it is a road that is lifting you, metre by metre, out of the plains and towards the capital.
And the capital is the point of all of it. Islamabad sits at the foot of the Margalla Hills, higher than the plains we left behind, and the motorway has to climb to reach it. Every curve of this zigzag is a step towards that city — a city we had driven all night to reach, and which was now, for the first time, genuinely close. Not visible yet. No skyline, no tower, no signboard. But close in the way that matters on a journey: close enough to be felt in the climb, in the cooler air, in the widening view, in the road itself rising under the wheels.
High above the valley: the mountain road runs along the steep green slope with the mist-filled valley far below, the ridges climbing higher towards Islamabad. AI-generated illustration for this article.
4. The Plains Falling Away Below
Every climb has two views: the one ahead, and the one behind. The view ahead on the zigzag is the next curve, the next ridge, the road still climbing towards the capital. The view behind is something else entirely — it is the whole night, falling away below you.
Look back from the zigzag and the plains are still there, but they have changed. From up here, the flat country we crossed in the dark looks like a different world: a wide, soft expanse stretching to the horizon, hazy in the morning light, with the long line of the motorway threading through it like a ribbon someone has dropped on a table. The towns are small smudges of light and roof. The fields are a patchwork of green and gold. And somewhere down there, invisible now, is the road we drove all night — the level crossing outside Rahim Yar Khan, the one o’clock fuel station, the long bridges over the Ravi and the Jhelum, the Bhera rest area at dawn.
That is the quiet gift of a mountain climb: perspective. On flat ground, a journey is a line you follow, one kilometre after another, and it is hard to see how far you have come. From a height, the same journey becomes a picture, and you can see the whole of it at once — where you started, how far you have travelled, and how much of the road is now behind you. The plains falling away below are not just a view. They are proof. Proof that the night was real, that the distance was real, and that the tiredness was earned.
It is also, honestly, a little bit dizzying. The valleys beside this road are deep, and the drop from the carriageway to the valley floor is real. That is why the motorway here has its barriers and its wide, safe lanes, and why the driver’s attention belongs on the road, not on the view. The passengers can look. The driver drives. And the road, with its gentle curves and its careful engineering, takes care of both of them.
5. The Night Behind Us
No moment on a journey stands alone, and this zigzag climb is no exception. To understand why it mattered so much at eight minutes past six in the morning, you have to remember the road that brought us here.
It began at a lonely level crossing outside Rahim Yar Khan, where the gates were down, the road was empty, and the watchman’s house stood dark beside the silent tracks — a scene straight out of a horror film, waiting in the still night for a long freight train to rumble through. It continued at a quiet motorway fuel station at one in the morning, with fuel, fresh air and a short break under the bright canopy lights. Then back on the M4 in the dark, overtaking a bus and crossing the great River Ravi on its long bridge, the night drive in full flow.
By dawn we were leaving the Bhera rest area, crossing the River Jhelum on the M2 with the early fog still hanging over the water and the fields. At 6:04 the first mountains appeared on the horizon — the hills that welcome you to Islamabad. At 6:06 they had grown closer, layer upon layer of mist-wrapped ridges. At 6:07 they were all around us, and the sky was opening above them. And at 6:08, this: the road folding itself into a zigzag and climbing, higher and higher above sea level, towards the capital.
Each of those moments is part of the same story, and the story is richer for all of them. The night at the level crossing, the one o’clock fuel stop, the rivers crossed in the dark, the first mountains, the closer ridges, the mountains all around, and now the zigzag climb — the road has been building towards this moment all night, and the climb is the reward it has been saving.
6. If You Drive This Road at Dawn
For anyone planning the same road — Rahim Yar Khan to Islamabad, overnight, by motorway — this climb carries a few practical lessons that are worth writing down before the memory fades.
- Time your night so the dawn finds you on the climb. The zigzag is at its best in the first hour of light, when the mist is still in the valleys and the sun is still low enough to paint the ridge tops gold. Plan your fuel and rest stops the night before so that the morning finds you rising between the mountains, not still crossing flat country in the dark.
- Let the passenger take the photographs and the video. The views change with every curve at this hour, and the driver’s eyes belong on the road — especially on a climb, where every turn needs attention. The best footage from a moving vehicle is taken by the person who is free to watch the mountains, not the one watching the traffic.
- Expect mist, and welcome it. The morning mist on this road is not bad weather — it is the weather that makes the mountains beautiful. It softens the far ridges, lights the near ones, and turns an ordinary drive into a moving picture. The climb above the mist is the view you will remember longest.
- Keep your speed gentle on the curves. The zigzag is engineered to be easy, but it is still a mountain climb, with real drops beside the road. Slow down for the turns, hold your lane, and let the road do its work. The view will still be there at the next curve.
- Keep your fuel and your energy in hand. A climb asks more of a vehicle than flat driving does, and the road ahead climbs higher still, past Kallar Kahar and towards the Margalla Hills. A full tank, a rested driver and a short break at Bhera make the difference between enjoying the hills and merely enduring them.
- Watch for the moment the road starts to climb. It will come suddenly, as it came to us at 6:08 — not gradually, but all at once, when the straight road turns into the hills and the zigzag begins. When it comes, let yourself feel it. That first curve is the dawn paying you back for the night, and it is the best part of the whole journey.
Above all, remember what this climb is really saying: the journey is the destination’s first chapter, not its waiting room. The night at the level crossing, the one o’clock fuel stop, the rivers crossed in the dark, the first mountains at 6:04, the closer ridges at 6:06, the mountains all around at 6:07 and the zigzag at 6:08 — each of them is part of the story, and the story is richer for all of them. Islamabad was waiting at the end of the road, but the road itself had already given us the morning.
So here is the view, exactly as we felt it: a zigzag motorway between the mountains, climbing higher and higher above sea level, the plains falling away below, and the capital waiting at the top. The whole night of driving, worth it for this one climb. And the best of the road — the higher mountains, the deep valleys, Kallar Kahar, and Islamabad itself — still to come.
A traveller’s note: the zigzag is only the beginning of the climb. Ahead lie the higher mountains, the deep valleys below the road, the bridge between the peaks, and the famous town of Kallar Kahar — and then, at last, the Margalla Hills and Islamabad. Take the climb slowly. It is the part of the road you will remember longest.
All words original. Images: AI-generated illustrations for this article. © Explore With Sarim.
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