The road runs by the side of the Indus. The river itself is deep grey due to the amount of silt in it; in fact, there is so much silt it gives the river a strange appearance/texture, and you almost feel you could walk across it. In places the river runs through thick deposits of river gravels. River gravels are a very common feature of Northern Pakistan and stand evidence to the amount of erosion that has taken place on the Himalayas as they are pushed upwards as a result of the collision of the Indian and Asian tectonic plates. Then we leave the gravels and the river cuts through a steep rocky gorge. At one stretch the problem of landslides became so bad (and believe me, that means it must have been seriously bad!) that a new bridge has been built to take the road across the Indus and onto a new stretch of road. You can still see where the old road is - as a slit on the other side of the river. As you can see from the adjacent photograph, the ‘road’ that you travel along is sometimes nothing more than a slit/ledge in the mountainside, with a long drop to the river below if you do make a mistake

 

As can be seen, the ‘road’ is heavily used by lorries – well, why wouldn’t it be, it’s a main road (!!!) after all! At this point it is worth saying a few things about Pakistani lorries

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In this part of Pakistan, all  goods are transported by lorry as there are no railways, and given the state of the roads, lorries have to be pretty tough and basic, and there is no point in sophistication (just like with the jeeps) so that they can be fixed if they break down. So, they have several axels, massive ‘cart spring’ suspensions and large simple diesel engines, which belch smoke at every opportunity.

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They also carry immense loads and so go very slowly; the journey from Gilgit which even a bus can do in seventeen hours, a truck will typically take 3-4 days to do. The driver is often on his own, and there are no rules governing the hours, so a driver will often drive for sixteen hours non-stop. Furthermore, these lorries do not just travel along metalled roads, they also have to travel along tracks, like the one up to Tarashing, that frankly are a challenge even for the jeeps.

 

Most Pakistani lorries are highly decorated, and none more so than those based in the Northern Areas, whose administrative centre is Gilgit. Patterns are largely traditional, and virtually every square inch of the lorry is covered. Many have spinners on the front, driven by airflow, decorated attachments to their wing mirrors, and metal discs dangling from the front and the back that keep up a jangling noise as the truck is driven along.

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Having done its stretch of new road, the KKH re-crosses the Indus at a point where there are some hot springs by the side of the road; the water is very hot indeed, but, unusually, there is no sulphurous smell.

 

Then we passed a small truck carrying chickens – RSPCA ‘eat your heart out’ – still, before being crated up to be taken to market they were ‘free range’. Having stopped, we later re-passed the chicken truck; it had stopped by a stream and the driver was throwing water over them to cool them down; all heart then!

 

At this point it is worth trying to define the difference between a ‘road’ and a ‘track’. By the word ‘track’ we really mean ‘jeep track’, as there were some tracks that not even our drivers would take the jeeps up. There is not really a clear dividing line, they sort-of grade into one another. Certainly, a road need not be metalled; indeed, in this area of Pakistan, more kilometres of road are non metalled (including some major roads such as substantial sections of the main road from Gilgit to Chitral) than are metalled. Tracks on the other hand can be very rough indeed, often little more than a boulder strewn route that you would think twice about trying to walk/scramble along, particularly if a gradient is involved. Basically, I reckon that a road becomes a track when you cannot (really) get a car or minibus along it, and when it is a seriously moot point whether you can get a lorry along it, though sometimes ‘needs must’, as with the track to Tarashing.

  

Nazim’s sister was getting married that weekend, and it was important that he went to the wedding, so at a road junction near Bunji we met up with Ehsan who was to be our guide for the rest of the trip. Ehsan is the youngest of the brothers (Ehsan, Nazim and Karim) who are based in Gilgit and who look after all the ground arrangements for KJTI. Ehsan has a degree in IT from the university in Gilgit, but wants to be involved more with tourism. We never actually met Karim who is married to a French girl and lives most of the year in Paris, but, even though he was the younger of the brothers, it was evident that Ehsan carried the ‘unspoken’ authority. The brothers are Ismaili Muslims, as are many of the peoples of the Northern Areas; Ismailis are somewhat less strict than Sunni and Shia Muslims (though they are doctrinally closer to the Shias) which made for a relaxed trip. Whilst Ehsan and Nazim were swapping their effects from jeep to car, a man on a bicycle appeared from nowhere (no mean feat as the road junction was nowhere near any visible habitation) and managed to sell some rocks and minerals to Margaret.

Having swapped guides, we turned off the KKH towards Astor which is a provincial centre. The road to Astor is metalled, but the surface gives up just before it reaches the town so that the ‘main street’ of Astor is a dirt track. This is all the more curious since the ‘main street’ is a steep approx. 1 in 6 slope – must be hell when it rains. Quite why the metalling does not go through the town is not clear, and despite asking, we never got a credible answer, but it is a relatively common feature of this part of Pakistan. Astor is at an altitude of 2300 meters and is perched above a river. Exit the town and the metalled road surface starts again, but gives up after a few kilometres and becomes a dirt-track road. This is a very fertile irrigated valley – irrigation is absolutely vital for agriculture in northern Pakistan - and here the main crops are wheat and potatoes. As we turned off onto the track (it’s definitely a ‘track’ despite the fact that you can get a lorry up it), we got our first views of Nanga Parbit, its snow-capped summit and its glaciers. Nanga Parbit at 8,125meters is one of the highest mountains in Pakistan, and one of the more difficult to climb – it was only conquered after Everest.

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Some kilometres of very rough track later we arrived at the village of Tarashing, which at 3000 meters is the highest permanent village in Pakistan, and is considered to be the base for climbing Nanga Parbit, though the actual base camp is a four hour walk further on. The village itself has about 300 houses, though in winter about half the villagers go down the valley to their ‘winter’ houses, but the houses are fairly widely spread out. The village (and thus our ‘hotel’!) has no electricity, but there is a treated water supply, though our hotel/guest house only seemed to have one communal tap. 

 

 

In addition to the one communal outside tap, the guest house only had one communal squat-type loo (though it was inside!), with a bucket of water to empty into it at the appropriate point. That and the lack of electricity rather cures you of the ‘need’ to ‘go’ in the middle of the night! So, the guest house was pretty basic, but it was clean and comfortable and had superb views towards Nanga Parbit. Since there was no electricity my wind-up torch came in very useful, but we were all in bed by about 20.30hrs. We slept in our sleeping bags as they seemed more serviceable than the provided sheets and blankets, and were really snug despite the fact that is was cold at night – well, it would be at 10,000ft!

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