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There are two ways north out of Islamabad into Hazara, and people still argue about them. One is the Hazara Motorway, signed E-35 and numbered M-15. The other is the old road through Taxila, Hassan Abdal, Haripur and Havelian — the N-35, which almost everyone on this stretch still calls the GT road.
This guide answers the part people actually search for: how far it is, how long it really takes, where the motorway begins, and when the old road is still the better choice.
Treat every one of those numbers as a range rather than a promise. Measured distances shift depending on whether you start at Faizabad, Zero Point or G-11, and a time that is right on a quiet Tuesday morning is wrong on a Friday evening in summer.
This trips up a lot of first-time drivers. You do not get on the Hazara Motorway in Islamabad.
You leave Islamabad heading west on the Islamabad–Peshawar motorway, and you stay on it until the Burhan interchange near Hassan Abdal. That is where the Hazara Motorway branches off and turns north. From there it runs up through Haripur, Havelian, Abbottabad and Mansehra, and carries on towards Battagram and Thakot.
So the trip has two distinct halves: a fast, flat run west to Burhan, then the climb north into the hills. The whole Hazara Motorway corridor is about 180 km end to end, with the Burhan-to-Thakot carriageway itself a little under 120 km. The speed limit is 120 km/h and there are service areas along the way for fuel and a break.
If you are starting from Hassan Abdal itself, you are already standing at the junction. Abbottabad is the short northern half of that run — a drive rather than a journey — which is why Hassan Abdal and Burhan show up so often as joining points on shared rides.
The old route is the N-35 — part of the Karakoram Highway — running Islamabad to Taxila, Hassan Abdal, Haripur, Havelian and then Abbottabad. It is roughly 120 km and takes about two hours in normal conditions.
On paper the two roads are close to level. In practice the old one is slower, because it goes through places instead of past them: bazaars, junctions, trucks, school traffic, speed breakers. The motorway’s advantage was never distance. It is that nothing interrupts you.
That said, the old road is still the right choice when:
Toll rates change, so check the current rate at the plaza rather than trusting a figure from an old blog post — including this one.
Mansehra sits past Abbottabad on the same road, so everything above applies — you simply stay on it longer. From Islamabad it is about 145 km, roughly 25 km beyond Abbottabad, and you should allow around two and a half hours.
It is worth remembering how recent that is. Before the Havelian–Mansehra section opened, this was a far longer day out. The motorway did not shorten the distance much. It removed the towns.
For Oghi, you leave the main corridor at Mansehra and head west — a separate leg with its own timings, covered in Oghi rides: getting to Mansehra, Abbottabad and Islamabad.
From Rawalpindi you are joining the same two roads, just from a different angle. On the GT road the run to Abbottabad is about 119–120 km. For the motorway you first head out towards Burhan and pick up the Hazara Motorway there, exactly as you would from Islamabad.
For most people leaving from Saddar or the GPO side, the honest answer is that the two options land close together on time, and the deciding factor is the traffic getting out of the city rather than the road itself.
Once you know the shape of the road, the way carpools form on it makes sense.
Because everyone funnels through the same corridor, drivers on this route pick up along a predictable line on the Islamabad side — G-9 Markaz, Peshawar Mor, Blue Area, Faizabad, then the Wah Cantt and Taxila stops — before the road commits to Burhan. At the far end they drop at Fawara Chowk, Supply, Mandian, Bilal Town or Ayub Medical Complex. Nobody goes to a terminal, because the road does not have one.
It also explains why a seat on this corridor is cheap relative to the distance. The car is making the full run anyway, fuel and toll included. Sharing it splits a bill that already exists rather than creating a new one.
Sawarri lists shared rides along this corridor in both directions. Seats are posted by ordinary drivers, the fare per seat is shown before you contact anyone, and Sawarri takes no commission on top.
If nothing matches your date, post the trip you need on offer or request a ride and a driver making the run can pick it up. Before you travel with anyone, read Safety.