Driving to Murree in Snow: What You Need to Know

Murree in snow is genuinely lovely and it is also the single most congested hill road in Pakistan on a snowy weekend. Both things are true and anyone planning the trip should hold them together.

The drive is 65 kilometres from Islamabad and takes two hours in normal conditions. In heavy snow with weekend traffic it can take five, and on the worst days the road is closed to incoming vehicles entirely.

We will tell you if we think the day is a bad one. That is not us declining the work; it is the same advice we would give a relative.

Leave early. Cars start moving from Islamabad and Rawalpindi around eight and the queue builds through the morning. A seven o'clock departure is a different journey from a ten o'clock one.

Weekdays are dramatically better than weekends. If you have any flexibility at all, use it here — a Tuesday in January is a pleasant drive and a Sunday in January frequently is not.

Come down before dark. The descent is where problems happen, and doing it in the dark on ice with tired drivers is the avoidable risk.

In clear winter weather a sedan is fine. In actual snow, a four-by-four is worth the difference and we will recommend one — a Prado, Fortuner or Land Cruiser.

The issue is not usually getting up. It is stopping and steering on the way down, and it is being able to move at all when the road is packed with cars that have stopped.

Our winter Murree drivers do the road repeatedly through the season and know which alternatives work when the Expressway backs up.

It happens, usually briefly and usually to incoming traffic on the worst weekends. The authorities close it to prevent exactly the situation where hundreds of cars are stranded.

Bhurban and the lower reaches often remain accessible when upper Murree does not, and Patriata is a reasonable alternative destination.

If we cannot get you there safely we will say so before you leave rather than halfway up. That is the whole value of booking a driver who does the road rather than driving it yourself once a year.

Warm clothing well beyond what the temperature suggests. Murree in snow is cold in a way that a Lahore winter is not, and the walk along Mall Road is longer than people expect.

Proper shoes. The single most common way a Murree day goes wrong is somebody in smooth-soled shoes on packed ice on a slope.

Snacks and water for the car. On a bad day you may be stationary for a long time, and the roadside options are limited once you are in the queue.