How Did We
Get Here?
I've hitchhiked nearly every corner of Pakistan and spent years in the country across multiple trips. The north — Gilgit-Baltistan, the KKH corridor and beyond — I've been through several times, unhurried. I know the route well past where this expedition's itinerary ends. Junoon isn't a name I chose for a brand. It's a word I've carried since my first time through the north.
I'm Pakistani-American. Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi. I move through Pakistan the way neither a Western tourist nor a local operator does — not translating from the outside, not missing what the outside sees. The languages matter. The cultural literacy matters more.
The broader record: 93 countries over nine years. Hiked the Darién Gap. Hitchhiked through Sudan during the revolution. A month in Afghanistan. Rode the Pan-American Highway from the American South to Ecuador. Commercial fishing in Alaska every summer since 2020. Non-standard conditions are where I operate best — and where I've learned most of what I know.
Junoon Journeys has been years in the making. Pakistan's north was always the obvious starting point: tourism just beginning to arrive, a route I know beyond any itinerary, terrain that hasn't been packaged. In early 2026, the timing finally aligned. September 19.
جنون
