Coffee Shop in a Crashed Plane | Lower Kachura Lake | Shangrila | Skardu

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, Pakistan. All of the crew and passengers survived – including famous author James Albert Michener 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”. He obtained some land close to a lake called Kachura and planted an orchid full of numerous types of fruit. He then bought the crashed plane from Orient airways for Rs. 150 and it took him three months along with hundreds of men, horses, and bullocks to move it to its present location. The plane now serves as a coffee and tea shop for the tourists.The coffee shop is open from the end of March until the end of October every year and closes during the harsh winters of Skardu. youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFo6mEA1iYozhJTEQZ4i5Q youtube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAlEyOeA6ng