Beautiful Coffee Shop That You Must Visit

This Plane Crashed In Skardu In 1950, Now It’s A Beautiful Coffee Shop That You Must Visit

On October 13th, 1950 a DC-3 aircraft (AAF) that belonged to Orient Airways – now Pakistan International Airways (PIA), crash-landed after three minutes of taking off in Skardu. All of the crew and passengers survived – including famous author James Albert Michener.

Inspired by the story, and intrigued by the plane crash, Brig Khan decided to create his own Shangrila in Pakistan.

A resident of Skardu, the late Brig. (Retd.) Mohammed Aslam Khan was greatly inspired by James Hilton’s fiction novel “Lost Horizon.” In the story, an airplane crashes near a river bed. The surviving passengers came across some Buddhist monks from a nearby temple to seek their help, and they took them to a beautiful lamasery which was filled with fruits. The blissful place was called Shangrila in the story, a Chinese word meaning “heaven on earth”.