Dear Sister: Our Favourite Travel Destinations & Transport Troubles

This one is just me and the Dear Sister panel, back with the much-loved honesty we only really share when nobody else is listening. We started this episode talking about change. The kind that starts with a haircut and somehow rearranges your whole inside world. I told the sisters how I finally cut my hair short again after months of convincing myself I could not handle that kind of shift anymore. And then I remembered: every time I change something physical, it is because my mind already needed the reset. Like I say in the conversation, “I feel like my personality is more when my hair is short.” It is a tiny, personal thing, but it matters. It is one of those small moments of taking control when everything else feels too heavy.

The places we daydream about

Naturally, from change we drifted into travel. The sisters and I have this habit: we talk about destinations we want to visit even when none of them are happening anytime soon. Egypt for me, because of a music video I saw years ago and that endless fascination with caves. I said, “There is another side to Egypt that the media doesn’t show, and I really want to go explore that.” Vardah talked about Turkey, the architecture, the Islamic history, the streets she had already walked a thousand times in her head because of the books and dramas. For her, it started long before the Turkish drama wave, but now she almost resists going because everyone is going. We laughed about that. Jaipur, remote forts, caves, places that are not yet overbooked. I am not a beach person, not really a mountain person either. I want my body to ache from the adventure: climbing, hiking, feeling it all. That kind of trip is my idea of a reset.

The city I grew into

Somewhere in between we compared Islamabad and Karachi. I have this theory: you are bound to the city where your growing-up years happened. I spent seven years in Karachi, but my real becoming happened in Islamabad. When you are driving through F-6 and F-7 and you catch the mountains with clouds resting on them, that feeling never gets old. It is the same fascination every single time. Islamabad is a place of sukoon, peace. Karachi is loud and alive. Both have their own kind of love. But when you are young, you crave the chaos; later you crave the quiet. I guess we all go where our energy needs to land.

What no one tells you about the commute

And then the conversation turned honest in a way I did not plan. Because you cannot talk about travel without talking about how hard it is just to move from one neighbourhood to another as a woman in Pakistan. I said, “I waited an hour for a ride just to reach the office, and in that hour I could have slept or worked or done something.” That waiting, the constant negotiation with drivers who cancel, the cost, the mental load. The metro does not reach my area, so I have to take a rickshaw or a cab to the station, pay more than the trip is worth, and then stand in a crowded train where I cannot even open my laptop because people stare. The system is not built for us to get things done. It is built to exhaust us before we even arrive.

We shared the scooter dilemma honestly. I said, “I don’t want to be sitting on a scooter waiting at a signal, because I know I don’t have the car’s metal protecting me.” I feel too exposed. So even the cheaper option does not feel safe. Vardah talked about the buses she used to take for university and how those two minutes standing outside her street, waiting, felt like a lifetime of discomfort. Every girl I know has that story. The constant scanning, the unsaid rules, the way families decide a girl cannot study further because the commute is not safe. That is not a small problem. That is a whole life being shrunk.

The imagination as survival

Near the end, I admitted something I only half realised before: my obsession with imaginary travel is partly because my daily commute is so hard. When I cannot move freely in my own city, I escape to Turkey or to the caves I have never seen. I imagine the streets, the air, the freedom of just walking without a hundred calculations running in my head. It is a soft rebellion. And it is also a reminder that we deserve better. The women listening, the ones who relate, they know exactly what I mean. They have their own imaginary trips holding them together.

We talk anyway

This episode was all over the place, and I love that about Dear Sister. We started with haircuts and ended with the entire transport system failing women. But that is the point. We talk about the small things that matter and somehow they lead straight to the big things that break our hearts. You are not alone in this. Your daydreams are valid. Your frustration when you cannot get to work safely is real. Share your own travel dreams with us, your own commute stories, and tell us what you want us to talk about next. We will be here, probably still figuring out our own rides, but at least we are together in the mess.