Llew Wanders the World

Chitral was similar to Gilgit in that they were both the regional centres for large, remote areas of northern Pakistan. That was more or less where the similarities ended, however. Gilgit, occupying a spot on the well maintained Karakoram Highway, felt like a small but burgeoning city. Chitral, meanwhile was cut off from the rest of the country for several months a year by the closing of the Lowari and Shandur passes to vehicular traffic. During this time, the only access to the town was by air from Peshawar or on foot over one of the passes. This isolation probably had a lot to do with Chitral’s appearance as a big frontier outpost rather than a modern, developing Pakistani town.

Nick and I were dropped off at the front door of our chosen guesthouse. After a checking in and resting a bit, the manager suggested that we head down to the police station and register there, as all foreigners were required to do.

Our five minute walk took us past the Chitral fort and the town’s oldest mosque. Once at the police station we were invited into a dark, dusty room where three Pakistani men sat talking. As soon as they saw us at the doorway they stopped and welcomed us in. The process was painless, if slowed a bit by the number of officials that needed to look at or sign copies of our registration. As we sat waiting for the process to be completed, we learned that the Lowari Pass (at 3100m considerably lower than Shandur) was STILL not open, though likely would be in a few days time. As a result of this, there were still very few foreigners in Chitral (there had been four registered in April and Nick and I were numbers four and five in May) but they were starting to filter in.

With our presence in the town legitimized, we went out for a look at the rest of Chitral.
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I was happy to be back in Gilgit, and especially happy to be back at the Madina Guesthouse, whose staff and owner made the otherwise pleasant-but-boring town a great place to be.

My first order of business was to sort out where I’d be going next and how I’d be getting there. I initially expected that I’d almost certainly be heading straight to Lahore and the border so that I’d catch Donnie, a friend from Atlanta, before he departed India. A check of my e-mail revealed that he was already gone, and gave me the flexibility to consider some more time in Pakistan.

I’d really been hoping to cross the Shandur Pass between Gilgit and Chitral, a difficult but legendary journey. In addition, this trip was the only sensible way for me to get back to Peshawar and re-visit my wonderful friends there. Earlier in the trip I’d been foiled by snow on the Shandur, as well as on the Peshawar-Chitral road. Things still sounded pretty grim for this trip; jeeps were not running across the pass, and although the Chitral-Peshawar road was supposed to open any day, it wasn’t quite passable yet.

Nonetheless, I started making investigations to see if there was ANY way to make the journey. In addition to my own interest, I was also considering Nick, my friend from Karimabad and Passu who’d be arriving in Gilgit the next day. Nick had mentioned that he very much wanted to get over to Chitral as well.

I spent the afternoon wandering around town, asking advice from a number of different sources. Though the details varied a lot, there was a general consensus amongst all my advisors: Shandur WAS closed to jeep travel. Jeeps WERE running to the last towns before the pass. Walking over the pass WOULD be possible (though how long it would take and how difficult it would be was uncertain.)

I decided to wait for Nick’s arrival and see what he said. If he was interested in giving the walk a try, off we’d go. If not, it would be a quick flight down to Islamabad then away into India.
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Passu is the farthest north I got in Pakistan, sitting barely 100km from the Khunjerab Pass and the border with China. It’s a quiet little town, but has started to see some tourism activity in recent years due to the many wonderful day walks in its vicinity. I’d really wanted to do some solid trekking in Pakistan, but the fact that it was early in the season (most trekking routes open up in early June), as well as Pakistan’s worst winter in forty years meant that I was pretty limited. Since I was unable to cross the still-snowbound passes, I hoped that the pleasant, low altitude day trips from Passu would give me at least a taste of what I was missing out on.

After my ordeal with the landslide on the way there, I was very pleased to arrive at Passu. I was dropped off at the only hotel near the town itself (most others were a few kilometres away on the highway.) It was fortunate I’d met some people who’d stayed there already. Had I not, I would likely have assumed the place was closed.

As it was, I sat around waiting and eventually someone appeared. Now, when I say I waited for someone to appear, I don’t just mean someone from the hotel. I mean I waited for ANYONE to appear. Passu was a tiny little town, and was very, very quiet.

The young man who showed up ran into the village and alerted the hotel manager to my presence. The guy was a very quiet fellow, but he had a shy smile on his face almost permanently, and spoke excellent English.

After our chat I went out for a brief walk around town with the specific goal of finding a nice spot from which to phoitograph The Cathedral. The Cathedral was a series of incredbily jagged mountains across the valley from Passu. So rugged were they that they scarcely looked real. In fact they appeared to be more the sort of thing that you’d see in airbrushed paintings full of dragons, wizards and rainbows than part of any real landscape.

I had a short chat with him about my plans for walking, to which he listened and made a few suggestions. Shortly thereafter I went for a quick rest in my room, which turned into a several hour-long nap.
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The title of this entry is perhaps a bit misleading. It would probably be fairer to say that Baltistan, in Pakistan’s northeast corner is the TRUE heart of the Karakoram, since it contains four of the five 8000m peaks in the country, (and the fifth, Nanga Parbat is technically not part of the Karakoram range) as well as its longest glaciers. Hunza, however, has a decided advantage in the race for the title: the district is right on the Karakoram Highway, and receives plenty of visitors anxious to explore its renowned beauty. So perhaps I should have called this entry “Hunza: The Most Commonly Visited, Very Pretty and Full of 7000m Snow Capped Mountains, Part, But Still Not Quite the Exact HEART of The Karakoram.” But that wouldn’t have had the same ring to it, and would have been a bit verbose even for someone with a writing style as chaotically baroque as mine.

Shall we continue?

Lets:

I started the 23 or so km walk from Minapin to Karimabad at about 08:45. An entirely civilized time to be up and about.

The beginning of the trip was quite straightforward. Just follow the jeep road towards the net village. This was made a bit more difficult at one point by a small landslide. The section of the road blockage was only about 3m across, but the slope was made of far-from-solid rubble, and it was a loooong way down if I mis-stepped, or if the slope gave way. This bit of nervousness dealt with, I continued following the road, now with a young Pakistani boy at my side. He vanished near the start of the first village I came to. This was a bit of a shame, as it was the only time on the entire walk when the trail was difficult to discern. The jeep track disappeared as I wandered through the village, and it took a few minutes of wandering around near the very steep edge of the nala (gorge/canyon) nearby before I was able to spot the trail leading down into it, across the remains of an avalanche and then up the other side.

On the far side of the nala the jeep road returned, and while this made things a bit easier, it was more than offset by the monstrous climb up to the town of Feker on the next ridge. You can see the snaking, switchback-ing road as it climbs the ridge (as well as a pretty view of the town of Michir) HERE.
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The Karakoram Highway was constructed in a ten year period from 1969 to 1979. It links Pakistan with western China and is one of the true engineering marvels of the world. The KKH (as it is commonly known) covers some 1300km from Hazara, just north of Islamabad, to Kashgar in Xinjiang Province, China. The route passes through the Karakoram Mountains, some of the most rugged terrain on Earth, placing it right at the centre of the collision between the Indian and Asian tectonic plates and their accompanying mountain building, earthquakes and landslides. The Karakoram contain I planned to head 723km along its length from Rawlapindi to heart of Pakistan’s Northern Areas province.

As soon as I’d purchased my ticket for the long haul up into Pakistan’s Northern Areas, I was shown to the VIP seat (the single seat right up near the front of the bus.) Normally this would have had lots of leg room and been quite a comfy spot, but the water cooler and (occupied) stool that had been placed immediately in front of it made it decidedly less so.

Due to this situation, I hardly slept at all as the bus sped on up the road, and I was very happy to be able to get out and stretch my legs when we made a chai (tea) stop at around 23:00. While walking around the parking lot, I started talking with a fellow passenger from the bus. He was a Pakistan Army officer on his way up to a base high in the mountains near the Indian border. Our talk gt nto the shalwar kameez that I was wearing, and I happened to mention that it was perhaps the most comfortable clothing I’d ever worn, but that people might find it a bit odd if I wore it back home. “Yes,” he said with a smile, “they’d probably think you’d joined Al Qaeda.” I didn’t think people here were supposed to make jokes like that.
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The bus trip from Peshawar to Rawalpindi was generally unexciting. One brief point of interest was the appearance of Akbar’s fort, a 16th century construction that dominates the valley it sits overtop. Indeed, save for the fort, it was made pretty much entirely on the motorway through lightly rolling countryside, and just about as novel as a trip down the 401 back at home.

But there was no mistaking Rawalpindi for London, Ontario (or Toronto, for that matter.) The market area where we arrived was furiously busy. With the help of a friendly fellow from the bus (who spoke barely any English) and a shopkeeper (whose aid he enlisted) I got an autorickshaw to the part of town where I was headed. I was surprised to discvoer when we stopped for fuel that the vehicle ran on compressed natural gas, in a cylinder identical to those used in barbecues back in Canada.

Finding my guesthouse took a while of wandering around the busy streets of ‘Pindi (as Rawalpindi is commonly known), first since the streets were never named, and second because the place had moved, but eventually I got there.

I checked in (to the unsurpsrisingly empty dormitory, meaning that I got a larger room for a smaller price than if I’d taken a single) and went up on the roof to survey the city.

While there, I also tried on my Shalwar Kameez, and found it to be perhaps the most comfortable clothing I’d ever worn. My hosts in Peshawar had mentioned a few times that with my beard and tan, I could pass for a Pathan (a group of Pakistanis from the west of the country that generally have pale skin) and with the Shalwar Kameez on, the effect was complete.

Ready for a wander about town, I headed out to do some sightseeing.
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Pakistan has something of a bad reputation at the moment. It is an Islamic Republic, though at the time of my visit it was under military rule. In addition to these factors (which many westerners would find disturbing enough) is the fact that several foreigners have been kidnapped and ransomed or killed in the southern city of Karachi.

Despite all of this, my research had led me to the conclusion that it WOULD be safe to visit, so long as I knew where I was going. The Islamic fundamentalist terrorists were confined to the southern parts of the country, and while there were many areas of the north prone to banditry and outside government control, the extents of these were well known and avoiding them wouldn’t be a problem.

So, I was all set, and very excited to visit the culturally fascinating (in addition to the Islamic nature of the state, Pakistan has long been the meeting point of south and central Asia), topographically spectacular (12 of the worlds top 30 peaks, and 5 of the 14 8000m summits are in northern Pakistan) and extraordinarily welcoming (from what I’d heard) country.

I woke up and headed down the street towards the bus park. It promised to be a bit of a hike, but 1/2 way there, I heard a bus conductor shouting “Attari! Attari!” which happened to be my destination. I hauled myself aboard the bus (which, in typical Indian fashion never slowed down.)
Instead of the “thump on the side of the bus” method of navigation employed elsewhere in the country this conductor actually had a whistle to indicate things to the driver (though as with the thump on the side of the bus method, the a single whistle could indicate stop, go, turn, or any one of several other commands.

The ride to Attari, the final Indian town before the border, took about one hour. Upon arriving I had a quick breakfast and then grabbed a rickshaw (there were so many unoccupied that the drivers only requested 50% over the standard price, instead of the usual two or three hundred percent.) The air was just a bit warm, and the trees lining the road on the way to the border made it a very pleasant trip.

Upon arriving I had little trouble signing myself out at the Indian immigration office (though I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t gone back to Raniganj to pick up my departure card.) I walked towards the Pakistan border post, along with dozens of blue-clad porters who were also making the journey. The porters weren’t just there to help out lazy tourists, but also because the Indian and Pakistani border posts are 1000m apart, and vehciles that haven’t cleared customs aren’t allowed to drive between them. Due to this, most goods being trucked between the two countries are carried on human backs for that one kilometre.

Between the two borders is a bizarre sort of grandstand, with one half on each side. These seats are used by tourists (both sub-continental and foreign) who come to watch the nightly border closing ceremony. I was far too early for it then, and I plan to watch it on my return to India, so I’ll leave the further explanation of the ceremony and its popularity for that time.

My first official contact in Pakistan was with a policeman who copied down my document details and chatted with me very amiably, only seeming a bit disappointed when I explained I couldn’t stay for the full two months of my visa. After a few more similar interactions at the immigration and customs buildings, I was sent on my way, ready to explore an exciting new country.
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The train trip from Varanasi to Agra was actually fairly boring. For once there were many other tourists on the train (this trip was the only one of my five train journeys in India where I saw even ONE other foreigner on the train.) Given that we left Varanasi Station at 17:30, almost all of the 13hr trip was made in the dark. We had light for about one hour, during which we passed more of the flat, dry farmland I’d seen elsewhere in the country, though in this case, things were brightened by occaisional patches of marigolds being grown for use in religious garlands. The rest of the trip was spent fast asleep.

I’d heard really, really terrible stories about Agra from many different sources. From what I’d heard, every single person in Agra was out to steal from, cheat, or at least irritate visitors. The non-tourist portions of Agra were reputed to be dirty industrial areas. Several people told me that I should go to Agra, visit the Taj Mahal and then leave as soon as possible. As such, I hopped off the train at the Agra City station at 09:00, adjusted my ticket so I could leave that night, and then climbed back on for the trip to Agra Cantonment Station.

At Agra Cantonment, I dropped my big pack off at the left luggage office, then headed into town on foot.

Given the stories I’d heard about the place, I was so, so ready to use the puns “Agra-phobia” or “Agra-vating” somewhere in this entry, but as it turned out, my short time in Agra was actually pretty much Agra-eeable (which is even better, since the first two were stolen from other sources, but Agra-eeable was my own invention.)
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My first train trip in India began in pleasant fashion. I climbed aboard the Capital Express (all of the major trains in India [and there are hundreds of them] have names) at New Jalpaiguri Station and found my seat. I was in plain, non air conditioned “sleeper class,” second from the bottom, with 3rd, 2nd and 1st class AC sleeper all above me and plain wooden benches with no bed below. It was still plenty comfortable, with lots of room available in the sitting configuration and narrow, but passable bunks when arranged for sleeping.

The bunks were arranged into “pods” with each pod having two stacks of three bunks perpendicular to the train on one side, and two bunks parallel to the train on the other. My pod was shared with a friendly Indian family on their way home from a vacation in Darjeeling. I talked with them for a while, and ran back out onto the platform to grab a snack from one of the many vendors before we departed.
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Yes, the title is correct. I spent just over three hours in Bhutan. Even with the inclusion of the day’s journey through India that took me to the border, it still won’t be a long entry, but A. My ‘blog entries are generally way to long anyway; B. I really wanted to have “Bhutan” as one of the categories in my blog; and C. I think it’s just so cool that I actually got to go there that I had to give it its own entry.

The Kingdom of Bhutan is a tiny Buddhist monarchy sandwiched between two giants, China and India. Save for a few small sections around the edges, virtually all of the nation is mountainous, with several 7000m Himalayan peaks within its borders. Bhutan has something of a reputation for mystery, both because of its location and its official attitudes towards outsiders. Historically and, indeed, today, Bhutan has been a difficult place to visit. Even now that its borders are opened, strict controls are put on the number of tourists each year, and every one of them MUST be part of a government approved tour, all of which cost US$200/day or more. This insularity, as well as its beautiful mountain setting mean that its one of the most untouched, unspoilt corners of the himalayas, and indeed, the world.

All of this, of course, makes it an almost irresistable travel destination.
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