When Imran Khan swept the elections in Pakistan in 2018, my mother—a long-time admirer and secret superfan of the cricketer turned politician—asked if I wanted to go on a once-in-a-lifetime tour of Pakistan’s majestic, mountainous northern region bordering India and China. Never mind that we would be two women travelling alone in a country where that sort of thing is unheard of. We’d been promised “Naya Pakistan” (New Pakistan) and we’d be bold pioneers cruising the waves of Pakistan’s coming renaissance. In September that year, we set out from Canada and embarked on a three-week road trip starting from my hometown of Lahore, going all the way up to the Hunza Valley in the province of Gilgit-Baltistan, and making our way to the ancient, sacred Buddhist city of Taxila before heading back to Lahore via the capital, Islamabad.

The people of our land, their customs, traditions, foods, stories and the pristine beauty of the north were out of some sort of Sufi poetry. I felt hopeful about my country. I felt that maybe the future was actually brighter than the previous two decades of instability, which had given rise to wealth inequality and inflamed religious extremism, causing dozens of deadly bombings and shootings across the nation. Maybe all that was finally behind us.

• Tags: Hina Husain, Issue 32, Pakistan