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QUETTA: Fahad Ishaq and his brother Qadeer are busy arranging chairs and tables as guests arrive from completely different components of Gwadar to take pleasure in a sip of tea and watch the sundown from their three-story boat cafe — the primary of its variety within the southwestern Pakistani port.
Cafe Padizar, which opened in Might, takes its identify from the seashore the place it’s docked, overlooking the excessive, rocky cliffs of the coast of Balochistan province and the Arabian Sea.
The boat, which belongs to Ishaq’s household, was left unused for years after its engines broke down.
In 2021, after graduating in enterprise administration, Ishaq determined to place his diploma to good use and started renovating the outdated vessel.
Collectively together with his brother, the 21-year-old invested Rs1.5 million ($7,200) to revive the boat again and, two years later, turned it right into a hangout spot — certainly one of only some within the impoverished, underdeveloped area.
“We determined to show the boat into a restaurant,” Ishaq informed Arab Information. “The interior components of the boat had been fully broken, and now there’s area for greater than 100 clients.”
The cafe serves tea, espresso and snacks, however the brothers plan to introduce extra meals objects to its menu and supply work to extra folks.
“Proper now, we have now employed six staff to serve clients,” Ishaq mentioned. “However we have now plans to develop the cafe.”
Enterprise ventures will not be at all times a sure success in Balochistan, a sparsely populated mountainous area bordering Afghanistan and Iran. Regardless of Gwadar being the middle of the China-Pakistan Financial Hall, it has been reaping few rewards from the multibillion-dollar infrastructure and vitality plan.
Cafe Padizar just isn’t the one enterprise Ishaq runs. His firm BOASIS Tourism makes a speciality of bringing guests from Karachi, Quetta and Islamabad to the sandy seashores of Balochistan.
“Tourism and touring have been my ardour since childhood,” he mentioned. “Cafe Padizar will assist in fostering tourism in Gwadar.”
The cafe, the primary of its variety in Gwadar, has up to now been profitable in attracting clients, one thing totally new in a metropolis the place the final cinema closed nearly 20 years in the past.
One buyer, Aurangzaib Abdul Rauf, mentioned that beforehand solely fishermen might benefit from the views now out there to anybody from the highest deck of the previous fishing boat.
“The cafe has been attracting vacationers from the closest cities,” he informed Arab Information. “Most of us come right here within the night to benefit from the sea lined by the mountains.”
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