If you are thinking of using the Kohat Tunnel for traveling between Peshawar and any of the southern or western areas of NWFP, you better keep some company during the trip – not because traveling alone will bore you to death but due to the locally enforced regulation that allows a minimum of two persons in a vehicle which runs across the Kohat Tunnel. Reason? Well, you are free to build conjectures but the ruling fear of terrorism is the exact answer.

Since the major military operation in Dara Adam Khel came to an end, five months ago, military personnel watch the traffic on the main road connecting Peshawar and the southern/western districts of Hangu, Kohat, and Tal etc. Any vehicle with only the driver, and no other traveler, is not allowed to proceed on the drive. Since most suicide bombers set out alone on the terrorist missions, it has been decided that solo driving may be the next big doom. Driving alone has, therefore, been banned for the Kohat Tunnel.

This regulation has given birth to some interesting observations made on your way along the road leading into the tunnel. At the check posts, if discovered driving alone, the security staff won’t allow you to go ahead. You’ll be asked to drive back, find another person to travel in your car, and then return, in order to be eligible for getting the green signal. A fun-to-ask question here: Do pets and dummies qualify as companions? Another thought may be, ‘How can we be sure that the possible terrorist will tell the passerby of his intentions before coaxing him into giving company across the tunnel?’

More interesting, though, is the activity generated among peripatetic groups after the ‘no solo driving’ rule. It happens that certain freelance travelers now offer their services to solo drivers. Some of them will escort you through the tunnel just to enjoy a free ride; some would do so on as as-needed basis (say, as if on some personal errand; and yet others may even ask for a modest sum, around 50 to 80 rupees per trip. You can’t refuse because you need to reach your destination across the tunnel. We also now know that transport services are hosting their own teams of freelance travelers that make your trip a success without any glitch.

Whether you get it as a concern or as pure fun, I do not doubt the would-be appearance of ads in the ‘classifieds’ section of papers and periodicals, asking for cost-effective, fun-to-accompany travelers who are not wearing any jackets and having no long beards. We seem to agree, finally and categorically, on the old adage of ‘Better Two Than One’.