Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Breathtaking natural beauty with green-blanketed rolling Margalla Hills, multi colored trees, chirping bird and fragrant atmosphere speaks about enthralling beauties of December, approached slowly in the city.

The weather is too dreamy in Islamabad, a beautiful city having numerous hot spots for recreation, research and eco-tourism due to abundance of wonderful flora and fauna.

It is an offense against nature to stay indoors and not go out for enjoying nature in lovely December, especially in middle of the month when a plenty of trees sheds their leaves. We have plenty of evergreen trees here in the city, which don’t shed their leaves in fall and winter. Most of trees’ leaves changed colors into yellow, red, brown and orange. Therefore, we can see a plenty of multi-colored as well as bare trees at the same time giving a gorgeous look to the city. It’s always great to see the leaves falling from trees, then emergence of fresh green leaves with colorful flowers welcoming spring.

So it is always enthralling for everyone to be in Islamabad during winter rains particularly for the heat-struck people from the lower part of the country.

Early winter rain is a blessing for residents of the twin cities as it help to clear the fog for a few days and also bring down dust particles and air-borne bacteria. But unfortunately so far the country did not receive winter rain, which also resulted in increased illnesses.

However, the citizens, especially youngsters, are enjoying the lovely weather with all its charm and are seen at every recreational place in cold nights.

With start of chilly weather, especially at night, people from many areas of twin cities have started enjoying winter food like chicken corn soup and other cuisines.

During the winter or in cold climates, eating more not only keeps you warm but also can keep you happy. “I love chicken corn soup, and always enjoy it with my friends, unlike restaurants, which serve chicken corn soup of good quality stallholders not only provide soup at affordable rates but also sell boiled eggs along with the soup thus helping the low income class people to also have a taste of this winter food specialty,” said Abdul Basit, a resident of the capital.

Sale of winter food items reach unprecedented level, as families turn and stew to keep out the cold. But at the same time it is observed that the dwellers and even sellers frequently throw trash everywhere even at places where you hardly ever need to walk for more than a minute or two with your hands laden with trash and there is truly no reason to throw your trash at those areas.

It is a hard fact that we always destroy everything, which is precious and rare for us. This is exactly what we have done with our many cities, where the green cover is gone, and natural beauty of these areas is being replaced by multi-storey buildings and plazas where instead of greenery usually heaps of garbage is laying around because of uncivilized attitude of people.

Published in Daily Times, December 9^th 2018.