Just returned from a climb in the Himalayas, Nepal. First 6000m summit. Photos at http://yasirk.zenfolio.com/Dhampus will post the story here sometime soon. don’t ask when.

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I’m sharing the details of the trek, as well as a link to the facebook album. Do have a look, its got a detailed story and should be accessible! and of course any questions are welcome!

Day 1: Askole to Daniyal Camp
6-7 Hours
Askole to Kaiser Shogran was and easy 2 hours
KS to DC was really hard, inclines, rocks, glacier for 4-5 hours.
DC was on a glacier, very cold.
The team was very messed therefore we had to camp here otherwise would have gone to Namla.
There are hard declines where steps need to be made
Water was not available at all times
some boulder happing

Day 2: Daniyal Camp to Namla
2-3 Hours
could have been done at day 1
Boulder hopping, rock glacier, not very hard
Namla has an okay campsite

Day 3: Namla to Shafung
8-10 Hours
Decline, Rock Glacier, help needed from porters
Long stretch of glacier, easy walk. Decline, rock glacier, 2 inclines then camp.
Camp is very beautiful
The entire day it was raining and gloomy
Camp of Mango was skipped (Mango is a no go)

Day 4: Shafung to Biantha:
1.5-2 Hours
could be done one Day 3 if wanted
It was gloomy again, very easy hike, could be done in sandals. Green Campsite

Day 5: Biantha to Almost Marphogro (the camp site was not marfogoro)
4.5-5.5 Hours
Slipper decline to get on the glacer, then straight walk for 11 km.
Off glacier down to camp
Marpho is a good campsite, sun was out
Some crevices needed to be jumped
Actual Marpho was apparently 15 minutes ahead
If pushed Shafung to Karpho can be done in 1 day

Day 6: Marpho to Karpho
6 Hours
Over all not so hard.
the last 1 hours is through rock Glaciers and ver irritating.
Campsite is cramped, hard to move around. 2 teams can’t camp.
An alternate is to go straight and camp at the bottom of Snow lake will need to rope up. Crevices could be larger but there were not alot of crevices

Day 7: It rained and was gloomy so we rested at Karpho.

Day 8: Karpho to Hispar top
8-9 Hours
Leave early
20 minutes to do some boulder hopping and get on the glacier.
4-5 hours will be at base, while trekking rope teams , not very hard. snow shoes would be a plus.
the last 3-4 when the incline starts to the pass can be slightly hard, porters were not willing to camp at base. some crevices showed up.
snow became soft toward s the end and was an issue. (this was because we started the attempt very late, ideally the attempt should have been on a fresh morning when the snow was hard, starting around 4 or 5am)
The night was really cold, even with high altitude tents. sheet under the tent wasn’t there, lack of tarpals meant that porters slepti n mess tent.

Day 9: Hispar top to Khani Basi
6-7 Hours
We left quite late – boys decided to take picture adn do a trekker dance.
the initial 2-3 hours are not hard, some is slppery. should have left early as snow got soft
next 2 hours on the hispar glacier are also easy mostly straight walk
the last two hours after getting off the glacier, taking the ropes off till approaching the campsite was terrible. it was scree, cutting the moutain, slippery ice, and even crossing a stream.
Campsite was decent. if you can do another 3 hours, the next campsite can be approached.
Lonely planet does not name this camp site as Khani basi, and there was some confusion.

Day 10: Khani Basa to Jutmo
Bags to porets
initial 1-2 is easy
A rope should be handy, the guide should be carrying it, dont give it to porters
glacier needs to be crossed its not very happy, some help is needed
following that you need to cut across hills up and down, some boulder hopping
last 2-3 horus of the Jutmo glacier are hard and dangerous, we were lost on it for a while. Porters help will be needed to cross it
a hard incline followed by walking
you pass various campsite 15 mins apart
campsite was okay, windey, day was very hard
londely planet calls the campsite shikam garis

Day 11: Jutmo to Bitanmal
6.5-8 Hours
An easier day. the start is easy across the green
a few decents need porter help
A rope should be handy, the guide should be carrying it, dont give it to porters
keep cutting the mountain, times help is needed. Long straight walk towards the end. (There was one stream crossing that proved to be anal, the stream where the yaks were. Apparently it was easier to cross it an year earlier, but the raastas had now changed)
campsite is beautiful and green

Day 12: Bitanmal to Hispar Village
6-7 Hours
the initiatl 2 hours crossing the Bitanmal glacier are torture. It is extrememely hard, one of the hardest streches of the trek
after that it mostly evens out, not much inclines or decliens another 4-5 hours before reaching the village. The village can be seen but it takes time to come.

(Generally, it would be best to speak to someone who has taken the route quite recently to get a fair idea on the access of the campsites. A lot of research needs to be done in this regard, preferably talk to about 3-4 different people to chalk out the plan.)
Pictures Link: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150740186935381.720764.742240380&l=3bef3ecc6a&type=1

Contact: yahya.azeem@gmail.com

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This account is dedicated to the seven friends with whom I had the honour of crossing Skam La:

Rizwan Bajwa

Hasan Karrar

Yasir Khokhar

Raza Kazmi

Hammad Qazi

Hassan Zubair

Ali Imran

***

The following is still in progress and incomplete. I’ve typed out my journal entries for the most part unedited and what I recollect of the trip. You’ll note that there are a lot of incomplete sections and tags telling me to complete sections – I hope to fill this out more thoroughly someday. The account will be useful to anyone headed toward the Skam La.

***

Skam La 21st July Outside the Indus Motel

A Week Before Departure or “The Cast and Crew”

Mid-July, 2003

“Yeah pudding is a good idea… how much should we take?”

“Lots!”

“Yeah, but how much? We took a tonne to Werthum and didn’t make a single batch.”

“How about some ice-cream mix?”

“Ice-cream mix!? Don’t be daft: do you see yourself making ice-cream for us on Skam La? And anyhow we’ll need one of those machines…”

“Leave it to me”

You can’t tell this guy otherwise can you? I thought to myself. Yasir Khokhar is an incredibly stubborn man – to his credit actually: it helps to be stubborn if you go the mountains often. The first time I met Yasir was in Skardu, late July 2001. Him and Hasan Karrar had just come back from two weeks of hell in the Shimshal Pamirs. And they still had energy to go to Concordia after that – I was most impressed.

Anyhow, here we were: Yasir and myself. In Islamabad, a few days away from departure still trying to figure out what we should eat up in the mountains. There was the enormous debate over the issue of whether or not to take protein meal replacement powder – a great idea theoretically but a very hefty blow to our funds and also notorious for its poor taste. Then there was also the issue of what “real” food we would need to take. We’d bought all sorts of rubbish like pudding, ice-cream mix, instant noodles, chocolate spread and more. The food of substance would be lentils, potatoes and flour for the leg where we had porter support. After that we’d have a slightly lean period with instant noodles, canned meat and canned curry being staple.

Yasir also tends to be… well what he is: a computer science graduate. And to that end he had created some very sophisticated Excel spreadsheets. I too am a computer scientist and like any good computer scientist loved the notion of the organisation and sophistication that the spreadsheets brought to the planning and cost evaluation of our expedition. And like a good computer scientist Yasir had come up with a solution to the problem of logistics which eventually got thoroughly confusing and provided some entertaining estimates of expedition costs! We spent more time trying to figure out what was wrong with the spreadsheet than tweaking food and transport figures!

We ended up buying fifty-four packets of pudding mix and one solitary packet of ice-cream mix (which incidentally was a suspicious bright pink colour and was unused throughout the trip!).

I guess at this stage I might as well introduce some of the other characters on this journey. I mentioned Hasan Karrar a little earlier: someone who never claims leadership even though the facts on the ground dictate that he is. I met Hasan for the very first time at my university. It was my first year and I was introduced to him by a mutual acquaintance and at that time I didn’t realise that he was part of our faculty! But it was at the little adventure circuit at my university that I got to know more about him – first patron of the LUMS Adventure Society (LAS) and an inspiration to just about everyone at the university to get out into the open.

Then of course there’s Rizwan Bajwa – or just Bajwa as he’s referred to (I insist on calling him Rizwan, so that’s what I’ll stick to in this journal!). Eminently practical and street-smart to the core, Rizwan’s a real gem. He was my roommate during university and my most consistent trekking partner throughout our days at university. Our association as adventurers was deepened when the two of us became members of the three-man team that ran LAS. Putting together trekking expeditions for the students at LUMS was no easy business but we did, every quarter for two years. The expedition to the Skam La was an opportunity I had been looking forward to – go on a big expedition with Rizwan. We’d only been together on small treks thus far. I had heard much about Rizwan’s exploits on the expedition to Snow Lake in the year 2000 and was keen to see the man in action.

Hammad Habib Qazi is, again, an old trekking buddy. It was while talking to him after the mountain safety course at Malka Parbat Base Camp that we got seriously thinking about attempting Skam La again. Both of us went on the first attempt at Skam La in the Summer of 2002 and I enjoyed walking with Hammad – singing the Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen at the top of our lungs, sharing a bar of chocolate and walking 18 hours without food and water: Hammad is seriously tough!

Raza Kazmi, the latest edition to LAS, and one of the relatively less experienced members of our team. Every year in the month of May, LAS takes close to 100 students from the university up to various trips in the Karakorams. May 2003 was the last time that I would be in charge of this and was in the process of handing over the reigns to the next council. Raza was on top of my list of presidency of the LAS council and in the May 2003 trip he most certainly proved himself as the man in charge – always on top of things.

Hassan Zubair I’ve known through earlier trekking. We both went to the rescue and rope-work course at Malka Parbat Base Camp with Karavan Leaders and I know him to be strong in the cold and at higher altitudes. Ali Imran (or Agent) was perhaps the least known to me. I hadn’t been anywhere with him and prior to the expedition up to Skam La had tried to figure out what he was all about by asking around. And even after much asking around he remained a mystery! Quiet and to himself, I could see him as a stable more background player in the drama to come.

***

Stubbornly Defy the Lessons of History

Saturday, 19^th July 2003

[Day 0: Part 1]

Very groggily, I look at my mobile phone. The alarm has just gone off and I am tempted to go back to sleep. Having slept late I was in no mood to wake up, much less try and make the futile attempt at trying to catch a flight to Skardu. Trying to catch a flight to Skardu, I have discovered over the years and many attempts, is as useless as trying to set the time on a VCR or car stereo! Anyhow, I convince myself that another trip to the Karakorams is worth it (really!) and get out of bed. Why do you do this to yourself every year? I thought to myself: the night before departure is always a late one – finalising ones packing and making sure that everything one needs is there. Or you could instead do what Yasir and Hasan did: spend the night getting sloshed at a friend’s house and hatch crazy schemes about what to do next year! Yasir knew that this would happen so had informed me the night before that I need to make sure I call his place to wake Hasan and him up so that we could try and catch the flight out to Skardu (read: contemplate the long and painful bus ride we would inevitably have to take). A very disoriented Yasir answers the phone and I convince him that Hasan and him need to get ready – fast! “Skam La? What expedition?” – “YASIR!!”. Anyhow, I get ready, say bye to everyone at home put my backpack, tent and spare kit bag into the boot of my car and drive off toward Islamabad International Airport where I am to meet Yasir and Hasan. They aren’t there so I go to wait in front of the domestic departures entrance and bump into Javaid Anwer, who owns the Adventure Shop in Lahore. Javaid Anwer is an associate professor of manufacturing at the UET and bearing this in mind his small workshop churns out gear that aspiring adventurers from LUMS often buy. We make small talk and he reveals that he is headed up to Concordia. Soon Tayyab from Karavan Leaders also shows up. Both, it transpires, have made bookings in advance and will get onto the plane for Skardu. I already start feeling slightly anxious – I am certain Yasir didn’t get any bookings done.

Hasan and Yasir didn’t show up till much later grinning – both with boots slung over their shoulders and spare underwear and socks spewing out of their backpacks. We made our way into the baggage check in and saw a mess of people queued at the Skardu counters.

“I’m telling you we shouldn’t even have come here. It’s a waste of time. It’s a historical fact that you will not get a ticket for Skardu, especially on chance” Hasan said, with much confidence. Well that was expected – he is a student and, more importantly, a teacher of history, and we all knew historically that getting a flight to Skardu is next to impossible.

But human beings are very strange creatures. We will ignore historical fact in the hope that the impossible will, for whatever convoluted set of reasons, become possible. And that is precisely what the three of us did. And of course we stacked the odds against us by a) not booking seats from before and b) not getting our names onto the waiting list for seats on the plane. Yasir jumped into the mess of people and tried to get a seat. Then I tried. Hasan looked on knowingly.

I resigned myself to the painfully long bus ride up to Skardu. I had done it the previous year and it had lasted about twenty two hours. So I started to prepare myself mentally, entering a state of numbness that should last about twenty two hours! Yes, my eyes were already glazing over and peoples’ voices were merging into a dull roar. Everything was blurring and I had entered the perfect state for bus travel on the KKH. Then through the blur I heard Yasir say something to the extent of “Well I guess we’ll just have to go in my Santro”, followed by a “Yeah” from Hasan. Wow, I thought – apparently this inspired idea came to the two of them while at Maheen’s the night before.

We dashed out and put our stuff in my car and made out way over to Yasir’s flat, where all three of us sent out yet another set of “last emails”. Miraculously, our entire luggage fit into Yasir’s tiny Santro.

Anyhow we set off by 11:00 am or there about… and then stopped to get fuel at a local petrol station. Here we began taking footage of our expedition and also my lessons in how cars work were initiated.

***

“ …and that is why the US went to War with Iraq!”

Saturday – Sunday, 19^th – 20^th July 2003

[Day 0: Part 2; Day 1]

“So Moscow, you don’t know how to drive a car? Presumably you don’t know how one works either…”

“Errr…” I said offended by the question! I’m a guy – of course I know how a damn car works! Sort of… so what if I don’t have a license or, more significantly, any driving time under my belt? A fact that causes me much embarrassment – I still don’t know how to drive a car! Most of my university days I spent hitching rides and getting about on my bicycle. Hasan and Yasir were just pulling my leg but I think I took genuine offence!

As it turns out, cars have little gnomes in their engines and that is the key resource that the Americans are after in Iraq. Aha! And to think I believed it was oil that the Americans wanted!

Stopped for tea at a pleasant-ish place beyond Mansehra somewhere. The valley was lush green and the near to setting sun cast a beautiful light on the whole scene. A couple of children were quite fascinated by my sunglasses. Yasir said I looked like a cockroach in them – ass!

Drove on and somewhere in the early night we came to Dassu. Dassu is lower down altitude-wise and consequently is a lot warmer, and drivers on the KKH tend not to like staying there. But we ended up there and drove to cheap and very shady looking place. Our room had a window that over looked the Indus [?] which we didn’t see but we heard the constant roar. It was a strange night, with some guests or possibly the owners of the place talking to each other like they were fighting… but were actually talking… and not fighting. But it certainly sounded like fighting. Next morning Hasan reported that some policemen he had bumped into quite liked his hair, as the policeman hadn’t much himself. Strange.

[Sunday, 20^th July, 2003]

We leave Dassu, the next morning, glad to be on the road again. Hasan drives for the morning leg of the journey and manages to hit just about every pothole he sees.

Stopped for a quick cup of tea and a bit of lunch at a slightly hidden trucker place. According to Hasan and Yasir this is one of the KKH’s secrets – now you know!

Near the turn of for the Skardu Highway we spot a red jeep coming the other way. Closer, down near the bridge, Yasir recognises the jeep as belonging to Nisar and Wajahat, who were filming up in Deosai. Nisar had lent us the camera and film (of which we were in the process of wasting copious amounts of on this journey up!) to record our trek. Exchanged pleasantries with them, filmed them a bit and got moving again. Nisar looks like a bandit!

Rest of the way up:

The Santro seems on the brink of running out of fuel at any moment and doesn’t. We drive with the needle on empty for the last two hours to Skardu.

Pee break very near Skardu. Yasir and I set up video camera and record a pretend fight. In front of some really beautiful scenery of course. And I won, in the pretend fight, of course.

Finally get into Skardu late evening.

[Describe car journey up]

***

Skardu!

Monday 21^st July 2003

[Day 2]

We’d be leaving for Askole the following day and so needed to get all our gear and supplies sorted. I was assigned to get various odds and ends – jerry cans for kerosene oil, stoves, cooking pots and utensil etc. so I set out with Naima, Yogi, Usman and Fatima to start looking for these things.

To clarify who these new names are. Naima, Fatima, Nabil Kirmani (Yogi) and Usman Ahmed had just come back to Skardu from a trek across the Deosai plains. Rizwan had been the leader for this trip and was positively overflowing with the bear disaster that the trip was! Naima is my best friend and over the years she’s shown considerable bravery, especially in developing a passion for the outdoors. It never ceases to amaze me what this tiny little girl can achieve – always setting the bar high and achieving even more.

Nabil, or Yogi as he is more popularly known (as in “Yogi Bear!”), was part of the three-man team that comprised Rizwan, him and I, and together we ran LAS for 2 years. We’ve had our ups and downs over the years but Yogi has consistently shown himself to be a real fighter and a bear of a man. Rizwan and I have always been able to appreciate his abilities as a logistics man but I never gave his ability in the mountains much credit until we went for a training course to Malka Parbat Base Camp with Karavan Leaders in the winter of 2002 – he really shone there.

Yogi was leading a parallel expedition to Snow Lake via the more traditional Biafo-Hispar route. Burair, a newbie to the mountains, was to join him. Burair is a strong guy and would be exceedingly useful to Yogi’s expedition. Usman too would be going with Yogi but didn’t know this at the time! Credit to Usman who did end up going, not really knowing what he was getting into but with enough pluck to get on with it.

I think my sunglasses were a bit… “brave” – I caught a significant number of people being quite fascinated by them! People really did stare at us quite a bit but perhaps I am inflating the importance of my bright red sunglasses and people looking at us had more to do with the fact that possibly the only two women on the streets of Skardu at the time were with us.

Of course I made a pilgrimage to the hardware stores down past Yadgar Chowk. Usually full of all sorts of rubbish, there are sometimes items of value to be found. I recall seeing a coil of static rope that was 150 metres in length and I wondered at the time whether we’d need it. Later on while cutting steps on the Skam La, I longed for this very static line.

Lunch was, as usual, at the Pukhtun Khwa Hotel – a dingy little place with lots of “character” (read: grime) and bloody good chappal kebabs. We’ve always patronised the place for it’s excellent chappal kebabs: kebabs that have the potential to obliterate whatever lining your stomach may claim to have!

That evening was interesting. I had a rather clever idea with regard to reducing our potential waste up in the mountains, by taking off the excess plastic and cardboard wrappings around biscuit and porridge packets. Burair and I filled one carton load of excess wrappings by the time we were done.

I wanted to make sure I got a good night’s rest before the day ahead. This ties in with the earlier example of how history repeats itself and how humans tend to be a bit stubborn. Sleeping the night before a trek is not meant to be – it is another unalterable rule of our trekking expeditions in the Karakorams. I tried though! By around 2 am I was in a strange daze, having struggled to sleep against the wrath of the bed bugs. The upper floor of the Indus Motel was almost exclusively ours, so there was a considerable mess of equipment and stores scattered all over the hall floor. I made my way over to where Naima and Fatima were. After amusing them terribly by the fact that I was only wearing boxer shorts below, I crashed onto a bed and actually managed to catch a few hours of sleep. Touché unalterable rule of “no sleep the night before departure”!

The following few sections are journal entries for the journey starting from Skardu by jeep to Askole and onwards up to Skam La Base Camp. Day 0 to Day 2 is repeated but directly transcribed form my journal, so it can be skipped.

Also, the following is a brief list of dates and events:

• Monday         21^st July Went by jeep to Thongal
• Tuesday        22^nd July Started actual trek from Thongal to beyond Jhola somewhere.
• Wednesday 23^rd July Jhola to Sagon Nala
• Thursday      24^th July Sagon Nala to Horpicka
• Friday            25^th July Horpicka to Sinan Streams (formerly Sinan Lake)
• Saturday       26^th July Sinan Lakes to first camp on the Nobande Sobande glacier
• Sunday         27^th July Glacier to Hanipispur Mountain base camp
• Monday         28^th July Trekked three hours up to what was thought to be “striking range”
• Tuesday        29^th July Early morning, weather copped out. Moved on two more hours at mid-day to a better position to attempt Skam La
• Wednesday 30^th July Failed attempt at Skam La
• Thursday      31^st July Skam La top; no descent
• Friday            1^st August Khokhar, Qazi, Imran and Akram descend
• Saturday       2^nd August Bajwa, Zubair, Kazmi and Karrar descend; storm at Snow Lake
• Sunday         3^rd August No food; storm
• Monday         4^th August Forced march through storm to Karfogoro; no food
• Tuesday        5^th August Down the Biafo; Bajwa and Akram on helicopter to Skardu

***

Journal Entry: Day 0 to Day 2 Rebroadcast

Friday to Monday, Monday 21^st July 2003

[Days 0 – 2]

Where to begin… lots has happened in the past few days.

Currently about 7:00 pm and we are at Thongal. We got here at 3:00 pm having set out at 7:35 am – we made pretty good time. We are: Hasan, Yasir, Bajwa, Yogi, Burair, Hasan Zubair (Govinda), Ali Imran (Agent), Raza Kazmi, Qazi, Usman Ahmed and me. Usman, Yogi and Burair head up the Biafo and the rest are reattempting Skam La.

At the moment we are just getting dinner ready – potatoes, soup, rice – we’ve had some tea. Yogi has been doing the cooking and has mastered using the kerosene stove.

A while back we finalised our porter situation. Soon after, two villagers native to Askole came and kicked up a fuss about our group not taking any porters from their village. Anyhow after much talking and no listening the two went away… issue resolved?

We head for somewhere beyond Jhola tomorrow – i.e. the Skam La group. Ideally we should have been in Askole and tomorrow we were to head to Bulla. I think we can make it beyond it to beyond Jhola – most of our weight will be carried by porters – so we just race to there. We need to set out really early to avoid the extreme heat – I hate the Korophone-Jhola stretch – yuck!

Our group is an interesting mix. I am so glad that Bajwa has come – I think he is the one person I truly enjoy myself trekking with. Our group is fairly strong and we do have porters to support our initial push. Our planning has been better and things seem to have worked a little better – no major hitches thus far. So, the signs are good. It would be a shame if we didn’t cross the pass this time.

Our journey to Thongal was the usual – spectacular rock scenery near Dassu. I think I would really like to get more involved in rock climbing and come to these rock faces. Speaking of rock climbing, a couple of Spaniards returned from Trango, having ascended successfully. Hasan K was a bit jealous – maybe we’ll do a couple of pitches next year!

Usman’s coming with us was uncertain till about 11:30 pm last night – he had decided not to but he came around by then! He cursed himself for not having gone to sleep at 10 pm! But I think he is going to have an experience of a lifetime. I can sense his nervousness but that is expected on your first major Karakorams experience.

It has got a bit chillier. I think my stomach is not in perfect order at the moment – hope nothing happens. I don’t have camp slippers and am regretting that already – very useful item.

Transport has been interesting throughout. We went to the airport (we: Hasan K, Yasir and me) on Friday morning hoping to catch a flight. Of course we didn’t get a seat, so we drove all the way to Skardu in Yasir’s Santro. It was a blast – great fun. We have been given a camera and tonnes of film to capture our entire expedition. Anyhow, we managed to waste a couple of videotapes with complete off-the-wall wack-ball rubbish during the car ride – most fun!

In the morning today we were hoping to fit a lot of expedition food and 15 people into one loader [large, single cabin jeep turned into a pickup] – that didn’t work! So we got another loader.

I think Burair is not completely happy with me… he seems to be questioning me at every turn…

Last night/early this morning (1-3 am) was a very long and very wacky period. We got our packing done late but had to wake up early – so I decided not to sleep – I become a very strange person when half asleep! Naima will testify!

More later!

***

Journal Entry

Tuesday 22^nd July 2003

[Day 3]

Its 8:15 pm. We are at a point before Bullah but after Jhola Bridge. We woke up at 5:00 am. The morning saw massive problems with the porters – we had discovered that we had an 8^th load and not 7 like we originally thought. Anyhow, after much hassle Bajwa, Yasir and I set out – by 7:45 am or so. We made good time and got to Korophone by 11:00 am, about the same time as the others. Hasan wasn’t having a good day. We hung about at Korophone till 1:00 pm – our porters hadn’t showed up so we waited and finally gave up and left.

Then came that stretch in the Karakorams that I hate – Korophone to Jhola. And of course it was a horrible walk. Hot, dusty and just a pain.

Anyway, now at camp and there is no clear water at this campsite. We have relied on the gritty water of the Jhola Nala. Hassan Zubair devised a way to filter water – through a silk handkerchief. It worked well enough, as larger particles have been filtered out.

We haven’t set up tents – no need and it saves time in the morning. Yasir is currently explaining the workings of satellites to Rizwan. I hope I get a good night’s rest – tomorrow we wake up early and head to Panmah or hopefully beyond.

Interestingly we are already almost out of kerosene. So, today the porters cooked on a wood fire for us.

***

Journal Entry

Wednesday 23^rd July 2003

[Day 4]

Well we got an early start today – we were all walking by 6:00 am. We made good time and were at Bullah pretty quick.

Ok before continuing, a couple of points. Yesterday’s campsite was a pretty poor place to camp – primarily because of the lack of clean water. Also… I have forgotten the second point! Oh yeah: altitude – Thongal: 2882 metres, beyond Jhola 3100 metres, before Panmah (Sagon Nala) 3500 metres.

Currently we are at Sagon (or Sagon Nala) we got here at around 1:00 pm – which was too late to cross it. I got here at 12:20 pm or so and went all the way up the stream to check if there was some point of potentially crossing but I had no luck.

Anyhow, we are “stuck” here. We wanted to make it to Panmah. We’re probably an hour or so away from Bullah. Tomorrow is going to be a very difficult day. We “intend” to head to Camp Yogi of last year (a point before Shin Shia Biaho). I think that we are being a bit ambitious – as usual! Let’s hope we make it.

I was kind of disappointed – a bit depressed actually. Our campsite, if you want to call it that, is pretty poor again. There is an incredible population of flies and very persistent too. We’re about to have dinner soon. Daal and parathas cooked by one of the porters.

***

Journal: No Entry

Thursday 24^th July 2003

[Day 5]

***

Journal Entry

Friday 25^th July 2003

[Day 6]

Today has been quite a big day for us. Yesterday we walked from Sagon Nala to Horpika. Today we walked from Horpika to what is now the Sinan Stream (formerly the Sinan Lake; named so after one of the members of the expedition form last year; these are not formal names!), beyond Skinmang. We’ve covered a fair distance and have gained altitude as well – currently at 4275 metres.

Anyhow we started the day early as usual – we were walking by 7:00 am. It was really hard to wake people up this morning. Anyhow we made a good start. Our idea was to get onto the glacier and stay on it until we got to the moraine to cross to the Sinan Stream.

The idea kind of backfired – the glacier was awful to get through. We ended up getting too close to the moraine of Camp Yogi – walked along it and eventually ended up at Shin Shia Biaho. We had made pretty bad time – got there at 1:00 pm. We set out form there and headed fro Sinan Streams. Got there by 5:40 pm. A big day overall.

It’s probably 8:00 pm and Rizwan and Yasir are talking about – something. Yasir has also brought along a personal stereo thing and we are listening to Nusrat Fateh Ali.

I called home from the satellite phone – Iba picked up and I wished him a happy birthday.

This campsite is beautiful, compared to the others we’ve been at. A bit chilly though. We spotted some ibex on the top of the ridge behind our campsite. That is a good omen, according to our Balti friends.

***

Journal Entry

Saturday 26^th July 2003

[Day 7]

It’s 7:15 pm and we are camped on the Nobande Sobande – altitude 4500 metres.

It’s quite cold and I suspect it will go negative later. The weather is great though – been clear all day. We’ve had a slight wind blowing at us all day – really saps you. The wind has died down though. The surroundings looked so beautiful in the Alpenglow.

Anyhow, we started from the Sinan Streams at 7:30 am and shot down to here by 10:30 am. I attached myself to the porters and pushed pretty hard – we’ve come really far and really fast. Upon getting here we brewed some hot chocolate.

I think I have a cold or something – runny nose and have sneezed a lot. Our tent is pitched on a rather awkward bit of ice – hope I get some sleep.

We have dismissed the remaining 5 porters – so tomorrow we carry some pretty heavy loads.

In other news, we are still without success in making pudding.

I’m really looking forward to tomorrow. Tomorrow night we try and summit Hanipuspur. If we summit then we’ll be able to call ourselves mountaineers.

***

Journal Entry

Sunday 27^th July 2003

[Day 8]

[Morning]

Its morning – I’ve just woken up. Have had a pretty uncomfortable night. I didn’t have much on – just a shirt and so was losing a lot of heat to the ground. Finally got some sleep when I put my fleece on. The sun is out and it is mildly warmer. Every now and then you can hear a bird. Odd.

[Evening]

It’s about 7:00 pm now. We are almost at last year’s high point – close to the west ridge base camp of Hanipuspur.

The walk was ok today. There was hardly any snow on the glacier as compared to last year, so we didn’t need to rope up. It was cold though – a constant wind blowing in our faces and it was overcast. We are at 4800 metres – so we gained a bit of altitude.

We started out really late today – we set out at about 10:30 am and stopped walking by about 2:00 pm.

The weather, now, is beautiful. There is some cloud cover and the sun is peeping through. We all just took a bunch of photos.

Agent is keen to attempt Hanipuspur. I want to but I’m nervous somehow. Dinner was hardly substantial – Maggi noodles, soup and hot chocolate. Furthermore, my right knee is giving me a bit of trouble. In any case Agent has volunteered to do a weather check. So if alls good we go up Hanipuspur.

I really hope the weather holds in the next couple of days – we really ought to cross the pass this time round. I hope my knee doesn’t give me anymore trouble. It’s very odd – I’ve never had a pain develop like that before.

***

Journal: No Entry

Monday 28^th July 2003

[Day 8]

***

Skam La 29th July Summit

Journal Entry

Tuesday 29^th July 2003

[Day 9]

Yesterday we moved our camp a little further up the glacier from where we were originally going to attempt the pass.

We got to camp early and started cooking. Initially planned to make daal and rotis. But the roti idea was scrapped, as it was taking too long. Eventually I ended up cooking noodles, daal and pudding. Am getting good at preparing meals – especially pudding!

I stayed up pretty late cooking, while the others dozed. It was quite eerie in the darkness and the blue glow of the stoves.

It stayed clear till we were about to wake up. When we woke up at midnight the weather had turned bad and so we didn’t set out for the pass. I was quite depressed this morning. It was so reminiscent of last year. Well here we are a little farther still. Now we can see the pass and are a mere 30 odd minutes (or so we reckon) away from it.

We set out incredibly late from camp to get to where we are. I think we set out at around 12 noon. We walked about an hour or so and now are perfectly placed for an attempt on Skam La. Kazmi was having trouble today. We have hit 5050 metres. Yesterday’s camp was at 4900 metres. Interestingly one of my big breakthroughs came through today – I have walked above 5000 metres!

I have prepared today’s pudding. Yasir has some water on the boil – we are melting snow to fill up our bottles.

Tonight we attempt Skam La – I hope it stays clear; to go back the same way we came would be painful.

We have developed an interesting group dynamic. Yasir, Bajwa and I are part of the “Octopus” mohalla (Octopus is the name of my tent). Qazi and Hasan are part of the snobby “Kelty” mohalla. Then the lowest rung are the D3 walas!

***

Skam La 31st July Moscow and Hasan on Top of Skam La

No Way Down

Thursday 31^st July 2003

[Day 11]

It was about [get time] am – a little late, but we could afford to sleep in because we were close enough to the pass. I got the ropes ready and checked all the tie-in loops. We were packed up by and moving by [get time] am. I was a little concerned because the sun had started coming out and I was in no mood to experience the kind of dehydration we went through yesterday. But we made good progress, and even though the sun came out we were in good condition for the last ten or fifteen metres up. Hasan and I unclipped and free climbed to the top because this final ascent was very steep. The others stayed back. Hasan got up first and a few seconds later I joined him. We gazed down at the Sim Gang. We had done it – we had reached the top of Skam La. Hasan and I shook hands and embraced each other, feeling pretty damn good about ourselves. Now we contemplated the difficult descent ahead.

We got of all the others up, and there was a general sense of jubilation. After this was a series of victorious group photos and at this point I took out the Pakistani flag I had been carrying around in a waterproof case for the past ten days. Then we had to look for a logical point to cross. Hasan went to the right of where we were standing and I went to the left to check for paths. After a bit of exploration I noticed a huge gash that cut off what seemed a good point of descent lower down. I also noticed that what I was standing on was actually a cornice that could potentially break away. That meant we’d have to stay away from the left side and not get too close to the edge. Hasan had more luck and had found a very convenient little gully-like feature that we eventually used for our descent. This choice was not concurrent with the information given us by David Hamilton. Hamilton had said we’d find a logical descent to our left, and in fact we had visually confirmed this from where we were at the top. However it was rendered inaccessible by the big gash and the fact that a lot of this path was corniced to the left.[1]

Then this happened:

Everyone lines up, ropes up.

Hasan and I set up small anchor above the gully.

After this I go with my backpack to the bottom of rope.

I Down-climb to see how far it is (from up top it seemed like the rope covered most of the descent). I noted a crust of slightly softer snow and ice over harder ice-layer under it.

After the rope ends, slope becomes considerably steeper, 75-80 degrees… went down quite a way. It was cold; the sun had still not risen high enough to have hit this part of the slope.

Basically I noticed that there was still a long way down.

Climbed back up.

Quite exhausted by effort. Pooped.

Brought up debate again about whether to use gully or not.

The debate being: the descent was an easy climb down but given the group an easier route might be better.

However, we decide on this route in the end.

I was a little zapped by the morning’s effort and the snow on the top was becoming a lot softer because the sun was getting higher. It was obvious to us that we’d have to do something quick or leave the descent for tomorrow. I informed Hasan of the situation and he went down to set up the other rope for tomorrow. He instructed Hammad who came over as well and the two of us sat on the anchor to make sure it didn’t come out while Hasan was using it. We sat for what seemed like forever, and with the wind blowing it completely drained us. We tried to use Hammad’s mattress as a foil to the wind. Eventually we figured Hasan was not using anchor anymore and went to behind something to shelter from the wind. This was the first time I’d started feeling truly drained on this trip.

Meanwhile the others had set up our tents and were already brewing up something or other. Hasan came up (Hammad having already gone to the tents) and both of us had to wade back to camp with our backpacks on because the snow was so soft by this time. We crawled back to camp exhausted. Descent would have to be left for tomorrow.

The rest of the day was spent lounging around in the tent, brewing whatever we could. The snow melted directly had a terrible taste to it. Water consumption was really low. I suspect some unburned gas got mixed in – vile, poisonous taste. Low on food too. Had to get down quickly to Karfogoro to pick up food. I didn’t really feel the effects of altitude as such, no shortness of breath as we’d acclimatized beautifully throughout. Didn’t really give descent much thought – figured that people would use ropes as guide rails. Not everyone had a complete complement of equipment – only Yasir, Hasan, and myself had both crampons and mountaineering axes. I wonder now why everybody did not have a full complement of equipment; I think this was one of our key mistakes.

We listened to songs and drank some of the poisonous tasting water that we melted. I still can’t figure out why the water tasted so vile – I think that some of the stove gas was not completely combusted and condensed and fell into the water. Yuck! I was dehydrated.

Rizwan, Yasir and I were huddled in a tent talking about various things. For some reason we started talking about Yasir’s car, the Santro that Hasan, Yasir and I had come to Skardu in. And eventually the car became an issue – Rizwan and I insisted that the car was the older model and not the slightly sleeker newer version, while Yasir, the owner of the car insisted that it was indeed the newer version of the car. Why Rizwan and I so vehemently believed in the car being something different to what the owner claimed, I can’t say. Altitude – could be…

***

Four Descend

Friday 1^st August 2003

[Day 12 – Part 1]

I can’t recall this day too well. I remember the date very well, because after descending the pass I immediately called a couple of people and told them to remember the date and time because, I claimed, we had made history – which in a slightly contorted way we had.

My journal entries stopped the day before. After descending I wrote no more entries in my journal. The descent threw me off a little I suppose and I just couldn’t get around to writing anymore entries. On the way back I even thought long and hard about how I’d write about this day.

Thinking back, the one very clear image I have is Yasir’s crampon at eye level. He had borrowed Maheen’s crampons. They are a really good pair of Camp crampons, grey, lightweight alloy with blue straps. And very very sharp. And it was this image I had to look at for most of the day.

We started out early. Yesterday had meant that we needed to get our act together quickly because by 10:30 am or so everything begins to melt, including the slope we were to descend. So we got a relatively early start and were on the slope by about 6:00 am or so.

“So how are we going to do this?” I asked.

“Oh…I was hoping you had given it some thought!” Hasan replied.

“Rats!”

And with these famous words we began the descent of the Skam La.

We decided then, that Hasan would stay at one of the anchors, probably the first and I would station myself at another, probably the second. Then we would lower people down using belay devices – Hasan had a couple. This was a pretty poor plan but the only one that made some sense given that eight people had to be lowered. One of the immediate problems with the plan was that once lowered, where would those people go? After all, it was a slope and there were no natural ledges. It was decided that I would cut out a platform at the end of the first rope – but that still left the end of the second rope insecure: who would cut out a platform at the end of the second rope? Also, the gully wasn’t very wide and cutting into ice is no easy business – how would we fit up to eight people at anyone place in the gully?

Regardless a small reconnaissance had to be conducted in order to check our anchors and free the rope up. I descended down the first of the fixed ropes, using the figure-of-eight descender that Hasan lent me. The rope was very stiff due to ice freezing on to it. So half way down the first pitch, I undid the descender from the rope and used a twist of rope around my forearm for friction. I got down the first length thereby getting the rope unstuck and also proving that the first anchor held! The second anchor, however, was a mess: the screws had all but come out. So I called Hasan down to inspect it and redo it. I was not confident about setting that anchor. Hasan descended and redid the anchor. Here we stuck in an extra screw and clipped our backpacks into it.

Now I descended the second rope length to see how much more we would need to descend and whether we’d need another rope to descend. I started to descend and I was using a wrap of rope around my forearm for friction. The slope was not too severe – about seventy degrees by our estimate. However, toward the middle of the second rope length, the slope became a little steeper – perhaps around seventy five or eighty degrees. So I decided I wanted to use the figure-of-eight to descend the remainder of the rope length and unclipped it. Because the rope was incredibly stiff, it was very hard to get a bight of rope into the descender and while struggling to do so, the descender slipped from my hands and fell all the way down – never to be found again.

I felt pretty stupid at that point – and immediately apologised to Hasan, who was kind enough to say that the particular descender had to be retired anyway. I continued down the remainder of the rope and once down was a little confused. The gully took a bit of right after the rope, so one couldn’t see more than thirty or forty feet more of the gully. So I called Hasan to take a look and once down he felt that we were looking at a pretty straightforward descent – maybe needing to cut a few steps in the ice here or there. So we both went back up using jumars and I stayed at the second anchor.

I was already feeling a bit exhausted. Ascending up that rope really took it out of me and I suppose all the exercise the previous day didn’t really help. Hasan had it worse as he had to ascend both rope lengths.

I made sure I was standing securely at the second anchor and started to cut out a platform for about two people. Meanwhile I noticed the rope had not been pulled up – in order that the first person be lowered. I was also wondering how I would lower people, now that I had lost the figure-of-eight. I kept hacking away at the platform and eventually, also noticed some movement on the rope. Hammad was descending and was not being lowered. That was odd, I thought – weren’t we going to lower people? But I didn’t bother asking what was up – too tired by the hacking and also a bit confused by the lack of a descender. I had hacked out a small platform by this point but was left feeling drained. I also thought it might be an idea to clip myself into the anchor as well, so I clipped in a sling.

When Hammad came into visual range, I noticed that his feet weren’t looking too secure on the ice: his crampons weren’t tied on properly. But he was descending well. Then, maybe for the last twenty feet of the rope, his feet slipped out from under him and he started to slide. Brace yourself, I thought to myself and stuck an arm out. Hammad still firmly held onto the rope but was not producing enough friction to halt his slide. By the time he got to where I was he had slowed a little and I immediately grabbed him by the arm. This perhaps gave him some room to manoeuvre and allowed him to stop his slide and stand precariously on his crampons.

“Qazi, are you stable?”

“No… no I’m not!”

“Ok, I’m going to try and tie you in somewhere. Do you have a sling and biner?”

“No!”

“F*ck! Ok, I’m going to make a figure-of-eight knot at the end of the rope and tie you in.”

I started fumbling with the end of the rope trying to make a knot but it was difficult given that one of my hands was still busy holding onto Hammad.

“Qazi, I need to use both hands. Do you think you are stable enough for me to let go?”

“NO!!”

“Ok, grab on to me.”

“Where? How!!??”

“Somehow, I don’t know! Do something quick!”

“Ok, wait… yeah alright.”

Hammad kept his cool and maintained his precarious balance on the slope. I had to move fast but with cold fingers it was hard to. It was odd how in this emergency I was unable to put together one of mountaineering’s easiest and quickest knots. Then I noticed that Hammad didn’t have a karabiner in the main loop of his harness. So I would have to now undo the double figure-of-eight I had made, make a single figure-of-eight, loop the end through Hammad’s harness and double it. A few more nervous moments spent doing that and he was finally tied in. Then I directed him to move onto the platform and widen it since Ali Imran was now on his way down.

Briefly, Hasan supervises anchor at bottom of second rope length. Hasan, Yasir and I debate – what happens now: It’s late and we’re nowhere nearer to the bottom.

Yasir takes charge – the four of us are to head down and the remaining four follow tomorrow.

Now the four of us were down three rope lengths – or almost three rope lengths: we still had about ten metres of rope left to climb down. The decision to go all the way had now been finalised. I was in a strange numb euphoria (not a happy euphoria, just a very removed, dreamlike perspective). I was exhausted. I had my axe dug into the ice and was leaning onto it, my head touching the slope – which was melting, little streams of water developing everywhere. I looked to my right and saw Ali and Hammad also bent over onto the slope for support – lifeless. The sun was taking away any energy we had. I had a breathable black waterproof on and was absorbing a lot of heat. I opened my waterproof front to help cool of – but that hardly helped. I also had my warm hat on which only made matters worse. But I figured I ought to keep it on – maybe it provided some protection against direct sunlight.

Sleep. That’s what I wanted to do. I was so tired. I had my eyes closed for the most part while leaning on that slope. I have a feeling that Ali and Hammad also had their eyes closed – just give us an opportunity to rest.

Yasir, seemed to be the only one with some energy. Shouting the last few words of a conversation with Hasan – figuring out what we would need. I couldn’t think that far ahead all I could think of was the descent. How would we descend?

Yasir has a tendency to exert control in situations where no control is being exerted. We usually look to Hasan to call the shots, being the eldest and most experienced. But he can be too democratic as a leader at times, in that he tends to look for a consensual decision as opposed to the “right” decision. In this scenario again he was trying to achieve a consensual decision. Perhaps that would have been appropriate had we the luxury of time and had we less pressure on us. But we didn’t have either and it was vital that somebody take charge and make a decision. I don’t think that I would have taken Yasir’s decision. That is to say that I perhaps would not have made the same decision as him – for the four to descend. I was too stuck on group unity – it seemed instinctively wrong to split the party, especially if it could be helped. But Yasir, I think from a more removed, more objective, expedition level stance felt we ought to descend.

I think that, had I been in my senses, or at least a little more aware, I would have agreed to a descent (instead of debating with myself whether we should or should not split the group). And had I been more aware I would have insisted on taking one of the ropes with us for our descent.

But I wasn’t.

Yasir continued the conversation with Hasan. I couldn’t bother listening. Hammad and Ali were just as uninterested as I was. Then suddenly there was shouting. I looked up and Hammad’s backpack was hurtling down at us like a bobsled – racing down the narrow gully. First things – check if you’re anchored? Yes. What about Hammad and Ali – yes. Yasir – him too. Stab ice axe into slope, brace yourself.

Wham!

Something happened. I didn’t catch it. I had my eyes closed and was concentrating on gripping my ice axe in the arrest position. Ali, who was right next to me and Hammad, had lost their footing, but their anchors had held. Yasir was furious.

“WHAT THE F**K ARE YOU DOING HASAN!!??”

“I’m sorry… I’m really sorry!”

Hasan apologised. What had happened? Yasir asked.

“I don’t know… I thought the bags were anchored in.”

Now I remembered. It was my doing. I had casually stacked Hammad’s backpack onto Hasan’s and mine – I hadn’t felt it necessary to clip it in. It was also partly a necessity – there weren’t enough karabiners to go round and we had been in such a rush to get down. But my carelessness had nearly cost us here.

Yasir finished talking to Hasan. We had to move now. We struggled down the final ten or so metres of the last rope length. Now it became obvious to me how we would descend. I had the only ice axe of the four and was the lowest down – I would now have to cut steps for the remainder of the descent. This was a necessity as Hammad and Ali were effectively without crampons.

The rest of the descent was pain. It was hard work when I just didn’t have the capacity for it.

A lot of accounts of mountaineering don’t make a big deal out of cutting steps. It is routine work in routine situations. But it wasn’t a routine situation. We were severely dehydrated, hungry, tired and were being further drained by the climbing sun. The next five hours were pretty rough.

***

“ …been a rough day”

Friday 1^st August 2003

[Day 12 – Part 2]

Alright, get up now. We have to descend. Cut steps. Cut the first step. My glasses are so bloody fogged up. Can’t see a thing. Wipe them… with what? Haven’t got anything to wipe them with. It’s so fucking hot. Feeling dizzy. Ok rest. Cut the first step, Yasir insists. Ok, ok… I’ll do it. Raise myself, pull the axe back and strike the ice. Its hard. Its concrete. I hardly make a dent. Hit harder. Still no good. Keep at it. Ok we’ve got a step. Is this any use? We still have a few more metres of rope. Step isn’t deep. Hack some more. So tired. Lean back onto the slope. Its nice and cool. It’s fucking melting. I’m thirsty. Move down…? But I haven’t cut a step deep enough. Ok I’ll move down. Kick right leg in… now the left. Ok, cut a step before you collapse again. It’s so difficult, ice is too hard. Maybe it’ll soften up as the sun melts the slope… hack at it. Is it deep enough? No. cut some more. Move on Moscow, that’s good enough! Good enough… just a couple more blows. Yeah it’s good. Lean onto the slope. Rest. It’s nice and cool. My gloves are still dry. Put on your overmits, keep them dry. Overmits in my pocket… too difficult to get them out. Gloves are still dry. My hands are cold. Ok get moving. Why is Yasir in such a bloody hurry? Let the slope melt, I don’t give a shit. Look up. Ali is still using the rope. The steps aren’t deep enough. Cut them deeper. Can’t see anything with these god damn glasses. Look up. Ali’s going to fall. What happens when the rope ends? Cut the steps deeper. Move down. Hack another step. It’s good. Just another couple of hits. It’s good Moscow, move on… Yasir. But these steps aren’t that deep! Why do you want me to move so fast… ok next step. Slope’s melting. My gloves are getting wet. Cut the step… can’t… rest a bit, lean on my ice axe. Get moving Moscow the slope’s melting! Ok ok, I’ll move. Give me a second. You try cutting steps.

Have to find a rhythm.

[complete: descent]

The ice was becoming softer but that coincided with a general melting of the entire slope. Somehow, the intensity of the sun wasn’t as severe now either. I had settled into a good rhythm, hacking steps pretty quick. I was now actually a few steps further down then Yasir. And I thought this to myself, “Gee, I’ve actually settled into a pretty good rhythm… hope I don’t lose it!”, soon after which it became a struggle to hack steps again. I also remember thinking to myself at this point that I’d get really pissed off if Yasir asked me to film this, soon after which he asked me to film the descent! But surprisingly I didn’t get pissed off. I was far too numb to care – a state that made me infinitely acquiescent. So I dutifully climbed a couple of metres up to level myself with Yasir, who turned his backpack to me in order that I take out the camera. A wobbly balancing act ensued and without spilling anything from his backpack I managed to retrieve the camera. I didn’t film for more than half a minute and the entire episode saw all of us mouthing off the vilest things we could think of at that moment, generally directed at the slope itself. I panned up, caught the other three and any profound sentiments they might have had. I panned down… and figured I ought to switch off the camera and start cutting steps again.

It wasn’t so easy getting going once more. I entered a trance again. Hack at the slope, cut out a step, move down my right leg, move down my left leg, hack another step… keep going. The slope was less steep now but still steep enough to require steps – two of us didn’t have crampons on. There was a bergschrund at the bottom of the slope that was becoming more obvious. The slope eased up considerably after it but we had to be careful till we reached it.

We’re finally at the bergschrund: it’s late afternoon and we’ve been at it for nearly five hours now. I’m scared that the lip of the bergschrund may collapse and god knows how deep the thing goes. I voice my concern and we decide to try and locate some narrow point. More hacking – this time laterally, trying to find a narrow point. We go on for while, maybe half an hour. Finally, we come across what seems to be a relatively narrow point in the gap between the upper and lower lips of the bergschrund. I stick in the snow anchors into the slushy ice and snow of the slope and fashion a short tether by tying in the ends of two slings. I stuck the tether into the anchor and inched closer to the lip of the bergschrund. Doesn’t look to good and I’m in no mood to complicate out situation by falling into the bergschrund. We turn back, spotting another potential narrow point in the gap.

And then something incredible happened. History was made! Yasir slipped and slid toward the mouth of the bergschrund. I was busy focusing on my next step and I thin Yasir made some sounds to the general effect of “I’m slipping” and I caught sight of him get thrown over the mouth of the bergschrund, land comfortably on the other side and slide down the remainder of the way to the bottom.

So Yasir, was now officially the first Pakistani (in many years?) to have crossed the pass, in a rather unceremonious and ridiculously dangerous manner. What happened after of course is even more incredible. A couple of steps later, Hammad also decided that life wasn’t worth living and slipped, got thrown over the bergschrund and like Yasir, slid all the way down. Two in a row! It was unbelievably lucky. I was astounded by our luck – both of them got thrown clean over the gap.

Ali Imran and I walked on a little further and got to our predetermined crossing point. I couldn’t bother with even pretending to rigging up some kind of safety – if the bergschrund wanted to collapse it was most welcome to. I held my axe in the arrest grip and lunged across the gap, twisting round in order that my slide be arrested by the axe. I got out of the way and Ali Imran jumped and slid down to the bottom. I was tempted to just slide down too but I decided against it. We had done it and I think our descent deserved a decent end. I was going to walk it down – the slope was gentle enough.

It was over: we were all down now. Safe, but with the most idiotic things happening toward the end. I couldn’t believe our luck.

It was so beautiful and serene – pleasantly warm, while the sun was almost setting. Half stumbling, half walking down the final few steps to where the rest were. Yasir had the camera trained on me.

“How d’you feel Moscow?”

I raised my arms above my head – victory. I don’t remember saying anything but if I did then it was probably something like “We did it”. I came and sat close to where Yasir was. I knew that if I sat down I wouldn’t have it in me to be able to get up and do anything else. But I sat down nonetheless, and looked down to where the Sim Gang flowed down into Snow Lake. It was truly remarkable to look at.

I couldn’t think of anything – I was empty with relief. I was numb and pleasantly warm now. It felt so comfortable to be in this numb stupor. Yasir turned the camera to me again and asked me about what had happened during our descent. I started and I laughed a little – I was pleased we had made it.

I think my opinion of the beauty of that place was partly a result of my extreme relief. I was just plain relieved that we’d got down ok – I didn’t need to worry anymore. And it was incredible. And I was keen to take a picture but my camera was attached to my back pack, stuck somewhere on the descent slope.

[complete]

Back to reality. Had to get all this wet clothing off me – especially my socks and boots, which were soaked through. Yasir supervised the setting up of Hasan’s tent. How we’d fit in there, the four of us, was beyond me. But that was for later. The sun was fading fast and we had to get something inside us. Fortunately we had a stove and a couple of steel mugs. Yasir began melting snow in them, balancing both over the stove at the same time.  [complete]

***

2nd August Remaining Four Descend

Storm

Saturday 2^nd August 2003

[Day 13]

Woke up slightly cold and very groggy. I worried a lot about my feet – they were perpetually cold. The night had been… interesting – very cramped. Four guys in a two man tent sharing two sleeping bags really was a tough chore. I didn’t sleep much but I was far too burnt out to do anything apart from lying there and bearing it. What made the situation a whole lot more complicated was the fact that Hammad’s sleeping bag (one of the two sleeping bags we had) was the sort that only opened half way. That made sharing it really tough!

Regardless, we all crawled out and did our morning thing brought out the mattresses. We heard the remaining four shouting and talking. In fact that is the first sound I heard when I woke up in the morning. I think we were all concerned about how the remaining four would get down. They did have both ropes. But they were a weak party, given that Kazmi and Hassan Zubair had hardly any experience on snow and ice. We spread the mattresses and sat down to watch the show. I remembered that I had carried a small tin of halwa especially for this occasion and brought that out. It was a bit tough so we bit of chunks directly.

Rizwan did some pretty spectacular climbing from this point onwards. For the lengths of the ropes, he descended quite casually, with Hassan Zubair tied to his harness. At the end of the rope Hassan Zubair stopped, he wasn;t going to go any further without assistance. Meanwhile, Rizwan very neatly and quickly picked his way down the steps we’d cut the previous day. He downclimbed in less than a couple of minutes a section of the slope that yesterday had taken us almost five hours! He walked into camp, huffing and puffing with exhaustion. He was dehydrated quite badly and we got him to lie down on a mattress and I opened his jacket front to help him cool off. He narrated what the group had gone through the night before. No water, no food (they didn’t have matches). It transpired that Hassan Zubair had, in exhaustion and partly in worry over the descent, fainted as Rizwan was brining him down. Rizwan had been quite exceptional about the whole thing – bringing down a fellow member and just cakewalking the descent. Wow! Then we heard Hasan shout.

I got up and I could feel I was weak. I strapped on my crampons, picked up my axe and started walking toward the slope. Hassan Zubair had to be brought down. But he was so high how would I ever get there? I crossed the bergschrund and started climbing up step by step. I was exhausted and going up was difficult to say the least. But I got half way up to Hassan Zubair. Then something quite stupid happened. Hasan shouted at me or generally – the thrust of which was that nobody was helping and that we should go stuff ourselves. Now, that was a perfectly reasonable sentiment at the time, given the fact that nobody actually was helping with the second descent. However, given my condition and general mood at the time and also the fact that I was on my way up, I figured the comment was a bit uncalled for so I shouted right back and mouthed off a couple of curse words for good effect. That was that. I asked Hassan Zubair if he’d make it down ok, which he assured me he would – upon which I turned back. I was furious – here I was trying to help and I’m getting cursed and shouted at?

That was a mistake though. I should have realised that Hasan needed help and that was just the pressure of the circumstance he was in that made him say what he had. I should have gone up to where Hassan Zubair was and taken either him or Kazmi down with me. But I turned back and went back to camp in a huff. I was angry and flung my crampons and ice axe away when I got back. Yasir and Rizwan tried to calm me. And what happened next made me realise that I should have stayed on and helped.

Hassan Zubair had begun descending and Yasir had gone to the base of the slope to try and guide him down. Meanwhile Hasan and Kazmi had come to the point where Hassan Zubair had been left by Rizwan. I had decided to look up at the descent after my little anger fit – needed to see that all ended ok. Kazmi let out something between a yell and a cry for help and started hurtling down toward the bergschrund. He’s had it, I thought. If Kazmi survived that he’d be a very very lucky man indeed. It happened quickly and Kazmi had picked up considerable speed by the time he came to the bergschrund. Then he slammed into the lower lip of the bergschrund and I was sure he’d have broken something. He hung on and stopped dead for a few seconds. I thought he’d been knocked out. But he started to move again and struggled to get out of the bergschrund. I felt incredible relief and just squatted, holding my face in my hands. Kazmi had nearly gotten killed.

Now it was just a matter of Hasan getting down – which he was doing, steadily down climbing.

About four of us escorted Hasan down the last few metres to where everyone had generally decided to pile up. It was a muted sort of victory. I was displeased, put off by everything and how we had done it. We finished off the halwa and got ready to move on.

Meanwhile, Rizwan’s sleeping slipped out of his backpack and rolled down the gentle slope about 200 metres or so from where we were. We were all so pooped that for some time we just hung about deciding whether or not to retrieve it. The sun was incredibly strong and was dehydrating us fast. We decided not to get the sleeping back and make do with what we did have on us. And so we started our walk down the Sim Gang Glacier.

About two hours later, the weather began to deteriorate. Hasan wasn’t too happy with the situation and he said something that lingered with me for the rest of the trip out of the Lake – something to the effect of “Snow Lake swallows whole roped teams”. Scary. The party stopped and Yasir and I went ahead to scout out the distance left. We were certainly not going to make it to Karfogoro today. Yasir is always a voice of hope at these rather dreary moments and I returned a bit cheered. We set up camp and began piling up snow on one end of our site to protect the tents from wind. I don’t know just how effective those walls were going to be given that they weren’t too high. And so we got on with it. We cooked the last of our “real” food. After this we would not have any substantial rations, apart from some fruit drink and a bit of flour.

Our sleeping arrangements were very interesting that night. Rizwan had lost his sleeping bag earlier, and I had lost my tent in the bergschrund at the bottom of the pass. So now, we had to squeeze five people into a 3-man tent and share four sleeping bags between the five of us. We lay two bags down on the floor of the tent and would spread the other two over the five of us. Snug!

***

Stormed in at Snow Lake

Sunday 3^rd August 2003

[Day 14]

This has to be one of the most depressing days of my life. Stuck in a tent with four other grown men, cramped for space with nothing to eat and nothing to read. [complete]

***

Skam La 4th August Storming Snowlake

Through the Storm and on to Karfogoro

Monday 4^th August 2003

[Day 15]

I woke up and I was in a dismal mood. Stuck in this miserable tent, hungry and tired and without a good night’s rest.

But it was very still. I couldn’t hear the pitter-patter of snow falling on the tent. Went out for the morning ritual and found, much to my happiness, that the sky had cleared just a tiny bit. There seemed to be a break in the clouds. This was it – we had to move now. I went back into the tent and got the idea going with Rizwan, who received it very positively indeed after taking a look outside. We had to move now or we’d lose our chance to get out of this mess.

Rizwan and I spoke to Hasan. He didn’t seem at all in the mood to move.

“You’ll get killed, we’ll all get killed – this is a Snow Lake storm”

But what was the alternative – wait it out? If this was a Snow Lake storm then it could last for days and we were out of food. And then of course there was the lure of food at Karfogoro that Yogi’s team should have dumped for us. I wasn’t going to let this go. We had a break in the weather and we needed to move. Yasir was game too. Hasan was still unconvinced and was acting pretty gloomy overall. This place was getting to us all and I think Hasan too was being overcome by general lethargy and listlessness. This annoyed me greatly at the time. I didn’t see an alternative.

Whatever it was, we were going to move and Rizwan and I galvanised the whole party into action. The break in the weather meant that we could pack things up, clean up and move out. I looked over the ropes and checked the tie-in knots. There was a reluctance to go. People were feeling weak and lethargic. Two days of sitting around and wasting away had taken its toll on this already dehydrated and hungry group. Hassan Zubair wasn’t feeling too good, so I took the tent from him to lighten his load. Hammad, ever cheerful, also looked a little out of sorts. All this didn’t bode well for the day ahead. All packed up and we were set to go. I tied in behind Hasan as usual.

This was going to be a long and scary haul. What Hasan had said the day before about whole roped-teams falling into the deep crevasses of Snow Lake and vanishing had scared me somewhat.

We began our long and exhausting trudge down the Sim Gang, following the base of the mountains to our left. We knew from the map that there were two large arced sections we had to get across. After the arcs we’d be at the corner of Snow Lake where the Biafo Glacier exits.

Hasan had the toughest job today. He was in lead and he had to constantly check for hidden crevasses, using his trusty walking poles as probes. Every time he’d suspect a crevasse he’d mark it and call out, then I’d call out to the guy behind me and so on until the last person knew. Every so often I’d see Hasan slip part way into a crevasse and I’d immediately throw myself into an arrest position in case he was going to go down further. This was frustrating – both for Hasan, as he’d be the one taking a wet and tiresome semi-plunge into some small crevasse or the other and for me to drop down every time and pick myself up. It didn’t help that today I had a very heavy load, carrying the D3 (tent) along with my regular load. It was a tiring rhythm. Walk some, mark crevasse, leap over crevasse, walk some, Hasan slips into small crevasse, I fall to arrest, get up, walk some, mark crevasse, keep moving… To further the fun, there were these near invisible potholes, full of water, everywhere. So every now and then one of us would sink knee deep into slush. Add wet and cold feet to the mix and you have a very annoyed party of trekkers.

We trudge along like this for some 3 hours and cross one of the arcs and are now well down the Sim Gang and we can see the corner of Snow Lake and the Biafo… or so we think. We’ve developed a good rhythm – an exhausting one but we can keep it up now. There’s a complete lull in the atmosphere around us. The storm has lost its severity, it never really picked up after the break. But it’s overcast and threatens to snow. We rest at this amazing formation with two large aquamarine pools of water. Water at last! We drink up and fill our bottles. The first good water we’ve had in days. It’s heavenly! I sit on a small mound of snow and look in front of me, to the north and see the sun briefly peep through in a very haunting way – grey and orange through a cover of clouds. It reminds me of a surreal Japanese painting. We start up again, revitalised by the water.

Food. Food fantasies begin to creep into the mind now. God, what I’d give to eat one of those volatile chappal kebabs at Pukhtun Khwah in Skardu. That reminds me of last year, summer of 2002 when six of us went up the Panmah and Nobande Sobande but didn’t cross Skam La. Sinan (one of the members form the 2002 group) used the back of a small carton of cheese to write down a months worth of places to go and eat out at – that’s how bad food fantasies can get! Fruit – I wanted fruit, lots of it. I craved the crispness and freshness of some good fruit. Oh well, it’d have to wait!

8 hours of walking and we neared the end of the second large arc of mountains. The corner seemed to be close at hand. And it came and went. We got confused. Hasan, Yasir and Rizwan who had been to Karfogoro back in 2000 began debating whether where we were was indeed Karfogoro.

“These places tend to change a bit so…”

“I recall it had a lot of rocks strewn about.”

“And look dead ahead – that looks like Rabbit Peak to me.”

But there was uncertainty. We had come to the end of the arc and there seemed to be a change in the terrain, a lot more rocks strewn all over the place, which the three (Hasan, Yasir and Rizwan) figured to be the terrain at Karfogoro. We kept walking in this uncertainty and a fear began creeping over me – what if we were lost?

Soon we entered a gully with a stream running down the middle of it, formed by the mountainside to our left and a large mound-formation to our right. We kept walking through this gully. I was getting pretty nervous now – the fear of being lost in the mountains was getting to me. Yet how silly to have felt that way – there was no doubt that we would hit the Biafo if we kept walking in this direction. But the paranoia seems to creep in at moments like these. Hasan got a little nervous too, especially as we entered the gully. He looked back and asked me whether we should go on. Yasir, ever cool, shouted out –“Let’s keep moving, no need to worry, Karfogoro is just round the corner”.

[complete]

Karfogoro at last!

Where’s the food?

***

Down the Biafo?

Tuesday 5^th August 2003

[Day 16]

I sought Hasan’s reassurance. I wanted to know that we’d make it because very honestly I didn’t think we had great chances. Our food was down to a half bag of porridge, a few packets of soup, some fruit juice powder and a bit of flour. Given that we were easily looking at another three days of walking, that didn’t exactly seem like a lot of food to me, compounded by the fact that we hadn’t exactly been packing it on in the past ten days. If we were stormed in again even if for a day or two, we would be in trouble. I felt weak. Very weak. I had never felt this way on any of my treks and that scared me. We were all weak and that scared me too.

It was sunny and I was squatting near our tent trying to figure out how to pack up. Yasir was mucking around with the satellite phone trying to charge it in the meagre sunlight, when it sounded off – a message. My recollection of this is a bit vague. Yasir didn’t exactly specify the contents but the message stated that helicopters were on their way and further that a team had been sent up the Biafo for us! That sounded very unbelievable to me. But the immediate connection I made was to the phone call we had made a couple of days earlier to my dad. And immediately I wondered about what would happen if helicopters actually came. We were out of the worst of our trouble – we had walked ourselves out of the storm. And Hasan’s first reaction to the messages didn’t seem very “positive” to me – he was of the opinion that we would turn them away. It made sense – we weren’t in trouble anymore and ideally we were a few days away from the end of our journey. But what if the helicopters actually came and what if they insisted on taking us? What would I do? Would we send them away? They had probably been sent through some coordinated effort from my dad, which meant that he had probably faced considerable expense to have had them sent over. What of that?

And then we got a call from Maheen. And here was another ambiguous event. Yasir received the call and apparently Maheen confirmed that helicopters had been sent for us. But according to Yasir he had asked her to tell them to stand by. Later on it transpired that Maheen had replied to Yasir’s request by saying “Nothing doing” and “You’re getting on those choppers”. I wasn’t too sure what the exact content of the conversation was but there was considerable ambiguity in my mind as to what was happening.

Regardless, I put all that aside, assuming that the helicopters had been put on standby and looking forward to meeting the team that had been sent for us – food!

I had a gut feeling that something was up and that some kind of weird choice would have to be made. Already I was thinking of the possibilities and how to handle them.

The walk down the Biafo was – pleasant. It was relatively flat and it was a safer surface without snow and the danger of hidden crevasses. And of course the weather was relatively better – it wasn’t exactly sunny but at least it wasn’t a storm.

We walked and chatted and all the time I felt nervous – about the earlier phone conversation. What if some sort of helicopter was on its way – what would we do then? We didn’t really need it anymore – we’d walked ourselves out of trouble.

And then we heard and saw a helicopter go by, up the Biafo toward Snow Lake. And a second one. Finally, a brand new Bell chopper located us – brand new: not in the green colour that other army aviation choppers have. The Bell circled a few times and Hasan signalled for it to go away. It didn’t. In fact, it landed close by and the pilot called to one of us and I went over. I told him that we were ok and that we didn’t need a rescue anymore. For some reason it didn’t occur to anyone of us to ask whether they had some food on them. Regardless the pilot asked my name and it told him and he signalled some sort of recognition. He said that he’d need someone to go with him to just confirm that the rescue was ok and that he’d drop whoever it was back.

I ran back to the group and told them this. Hasan suggested that I go with the pilot and do the confirmation. I figured that it wouldn’t take to long, so I left my pack and told everyone to wait for me and that I’ll be right back. However, Hasan told me to take my bag with me. Then as I was leaving, someone remembered that I had the cooking utensils and that I ought to take them out. This was odd, because as far as I was concerned I was coming right back. Regardless, I didn’t argue and took out the cooking gear.

I got into the chopper and put on the headset. The pilot introduced himself and his co-pilot. The helicopter was being tested, hence it was brand new and unmarked. The co-pilot was a European, although I can’t recall from where exactly. After the introduction the pilot said that there was room for another, so I opened the door and beckoned for someone to come. Yasir and Rizwan came. I told them and after a very amusing and confused sort of debate between the two, Rizwan decided to hop in for the ride.

The flight down to Paiju (Paiju is the last pre-glacier camp, before the Baltoro Glacier, enroute to K2) was spectacular. I tried to pick out places I knew. Rizwan and I were enjoying our ride thoroughly. The flight took a while – maybe 40 minutes or so. A nagging concern I had was the cost of this ride.

Once at Paiju, the situation took a new turn. We went down to a tent where other army aviation officers were sitting and got talking to them. One of the majors started scaring the hell out of us about the cost of this thing – something to the order of US $800 per hour. That really took the wind out of the two of us. Who was going to pay this enormous sum of money, and that too for a rescue confirmation ride? Going back seemed like a silly thing to do. It was suggested to us that instead we hitch a ride back to Skardu, as a sortie was already scheduled for that and organise whatever relief effort we wanted form there. That made sense and given the scare about the costs of the operation till that point (two Lamas had been sent after us plus the Bell; all had been in the air for a couple of hours a piece), it made sense to the two of us.

We had a quick meal with the offices. It was delicious. After the last few days of some pretty nonexistent food, this really was heavenly. The sortie out to Skardu was being readied. Meanwhile, the officers got talking to us, asking us why we did what we did and what we did when we weren’t in the mountains nurturing our suicidal tendencies. They turned out to be a really cynical bunch. But quite interesting and very amusing nonetheless.

[pleasant meal; amusing and cynical aviation officers]

The ride back to Skardu was tremendous. What takes eight hours of difficult jeep journeying we compressed and finished in less than half an hour, following the valley out. We got talking to our pilots, relatively young guys both in their early thirties thought both looked younger than Rizwan and I. They talked about their marriages, about their careers. We landed at some spot well out of the main Skardu town area. We waved they good bye and went down the road to wait for some sort of transport. Soon after, we were in a cab on our way to the Indus Motel, looking like hell itself.

Looking at the video of this day, the video that Yasir shot, I’m disappointed. The group that remained reacted in a slightly cynical manner. Although I suppose it was due to them – having not eaten and being exhausted for days had taken its toll on all of us. But it disappointed me to hear some of the things that were said when the chopper took off. There seemed a need to separate Rizwan and myself from the rest of them. It was obvious that the helicopter was by this point not a necessity but that it came now seemed an embarrassment, a blow to our self-reliance. Kazmi

***

Back in Skardu

Tuesday 5^th – Wednesday 6^th August 2003

[Day 16 – 17]

We walked into the Indus Motel looking like hell and immediately looked to make a call. Our first concern was acquiring food, a guide and vehicle to travel back up to Askole. But first we’d have to call home confirm the rescue and then look to make the next move. Called home and it turned out that some relief party had been sent up to meet up with us so we ought to stand down. But a little while later it turned out that no such party had been sent and it looked like we might have to go after all. That suited me fine – I was in no mood to dump my team and I certainly didn’t want to look like I had. I was filthy but I figured that that was good – if I bathed and cleaned up I might have to drive myself a bit harder to go back.

But it so happened that soon we were both bathed and clean. We had been told to stand down and that if we were to take any action than it would be in case more help was needed. From our conversations with the people at home it transpired that some sort of relief effort was on its way with food. Apparently Askole policemen were already on their way up to meet the party, carrying food. In hindsight, we just shouldn’t have accepted this piece of information and if I have one regret from the expedition, it is this. Rizwan and I cleaned up and got on with it.

We ate dinner at the K2 motel down the road from the Indus Motel, having gotten Yasir’s car and its keys from Nazir (one of the brothers who own the Indus Motel). After dinner we had green tea in the garden. It was absolutely beautiful. At dinner we were met by Captain Hisham. He interviewed us briefly about the whole operation and told us that we were to report to the local headquarters first thing in the morning.

[Wednesday 6^th August]

First thing in the morning: we reported to army headquarters and were debriefed by Major Khuzaima. He was a very sharp, wily sort of character – totally in control of the situation and the sort of person who is always inquisitive about what’s going on around him. Anyhow, he interviewed us and he asked us why we had called for the helicopter and we explained what had happened. Why didn’t you try and get the helicopter’s attention when they first appeared? What about the rest of the group – why didn’t they get on board? And so on.[complete]

Back at the Indus Motel that evening, we reinitiated communications with Islamabad and it transpired that the police party with food had not in fact set out and that no such party was due to. This misinformation had been supplied to the Army who had in turn told the concerned people, namely the people based in Islamabad, the same. So the first thing that we figured was to get supplies together and set out for our party who would by this stage be well down the Biafo. What a waste of time. Had we been informed earlier that no such party had set out we would have set out the very instant we got to Skardu.

Regardless we got whatever we could together with the money we had. I spoke to my father and told him of what we were planning to do and he advised me that we hire a local guide instead and entrust him with getting the food across. It made sense. By this point it really was more symbolic than anything – in all likelihood the remainder of the group would troop in the next day anyway. But we had to do what we set out to in the first place by taking the ride out.

Nazir boosted the supplies with cans of sardines and packets of powdered juice. We packed this up, hired a local loader and packed it off to Askole.

***

[title]

Thursday 7^th August 2003

[Day 17]

We spent the day waiting. We expected the group to arrive tonight. So we had a day to kill.

Nazir is an incredibly resourceful man. He knows all of Skardu and owns a considerable number of businesses in it, including, poultry. Rizwan, Nazir and I got into Yasir’s car and decided to picnic at Satpara Lake. Nazir grabbed a couple of chickens from his poultry shop and we sped off towards the lake.

[meet the paindoos]

Once back at the Indus Motel, we met an incredibly interesting gentlemen by the name of Nicholas. He sported a scraggy beard, long unkempt hair and wore a Balti hat – very much the wild mountain man image. Rizwan and I got talking to him and it turned out that he was French, lived in Tibet with his Tibetan wife and children, spoke 14 different languages including English, French, Balti, Urdu and a host of Tibetan languages, was involved in a host of socio-cultural research – a very impressive scholar! Rizwan and I were reacting to trekking generally and were planning something on bicycles for the following year – avoiding mountains and snow for a bit! We mentioned this to Nicholas and he told us that Tibet would be an ideal spot for such a trip. Interestingly, he also mentioned that Baltistan is one end of the Tibetan Plateau and the languages are incredibly similar.

[stuff…?]

We drove Yasir’s car all the way into the Shigar Valley – probably about 45 minutes worth of driving and then we walked some way. We waited for our jeep to come and a couple of jeeps passed but they weren’t ours. I was wondering how they’d react or if they’d react at all. I felt guilty and at the same time I knew I would feel relief at seeing them.

The jeep finally came, we recognised it. And Rizwan and I jumped up onto the back immediately to say hi to everyone. They were mostly dozing off and didn’t really respond as such. It felt strange. Awkward. We got a few muffled responses that said hi and cursed in good-natured fun. It felt strange though, hanging onto the back of the loader, speeding along quietly in the night air in Shigar valley.

We hung onto the back until we got to where we had parked Yasir’s car. The three of us got off and drove back, quiet for the most part. It just felt so awkward. Rizwan and I had felt genuine relief at seeing the party and we laughed and shouted to them as soon as we saw them but it felt awkward right after. Guilt? It was like we were guilty of something and more importantly that we were meant to feel it whatever the case may be.

Back at the Indus Motel things just got more awkward. Hammad, Ali Imran and Hassan Zubair were really happy to see us and when they got off the loader they hugged and chatted with us. Kazmi and Yasir were in good spirits too I suppose. Hasan was annoyed – and whatever it was, was being directed at Rizwan and me. As soon as he got off the loader he made a beeline for the reception, without really acknowledging Rizwan and me. Having looked at the video for those portions of the journey when we weren’t with this crew, there really was some degree of upset, a bad taste in the mouth.

Or maybe it was just me. I felt guilty inside. At the time, part of me felt like I had abandoned my team. Perhaps it was this nagging guilt that made me look at all of this in such a poor way. And yet when I think back to it, I did what made the most sense, given my circumstance.

[complete]

***

Homeward Bound

Friday 8^th – Saturday 9^th August 2003

[Day 18 – 19]

The morning was another surreal, awkward event for me. Everyone was bathed and breakfasted, and we congregated in Yasir and Hasan’s room, at the end of the hall, the room that overlooked the river. We all made attempts at conversation. Bits and pieces of the trek were talked about. The descent came up. I apologised about losing the figure of eight descender to Hasan again and gave him a couple of my ice-screws to compensate. Yasir reminded me that this trek seemed to fit into the general pattern of my treks thus far – I never seem to complete a route, which is true to an extent.

[complete]

***

End Game

August 2003

I wanted to make history and that is why I went to Skam La. Skam La had till last year held no specific attraction to me. In July 2002, I set of with six other people and headed up the Panmah with a vague idea about the historical significance of a first Pakistani crossing of the pass. I had no idea about the difficulty or the kind of technical skills required. The expedition in July 2002 could in the best analysis be termed a very good reconnaissance of the Panmah Glacier, the Nobande Sobande Glacier and the general approach to the Skam La.

In the worst analysis it was perhaps a very naïve attempt at a fairly difficult objective. The successful crossing was not an easy task, as I hope my account thus far has illustrated. Last year we had perhaps a few days worth of food – four days at a pinch, when we felt we were in a position to cross the pass. Luckily, I feel, the weather didn’t hold and that night, in late July 2002, we decided to turn back.

That was the event of significance. That was what made Skam La a worthwhile objective in my mind. It had no emotional significance till that night when we turned back. It is important to note this because for others it did have some other, powerful significance. Hammad comes to the mountains because for him it is important to periodically fill himself with the pure aesthetic pleasure of being up there. So the pass held a kind of beauty for him – part of just being in the mountains. For Hasan, it comes down to a long term ambition he has – to attempt and with any luck, cross the six Snow Lake passes. Snow Lake for him is significant to him not only as a wild and beautiful place but also as the challenge of crossing the six very technical, very tough Snow Lake passes. Rizwan, I have always felt, has had more than just an aesthetic motivation for coming to the mountains – I think he definitely enjoys the social side of it! He comes to have a blast with his friends. Yasir I haven’t been able to decode yet – there is an element of sport that he enjoys and I think he revels in the challenge and hardship that the mountains throw at him. I guess its knowing that you can do something, that you can endure something so trying that gets him.

For me the mountains have always offered good sport. Trekking in the Karakorams will test the will, endurance, strength and character of anyone. I tend to be clumsy, speaking optimistically, at most conventional sport – I do not have that talent in me. But endurance sport is one arena in which I feel I am even mildly worthy. Running, cycling, swimming and trekking have always appealed to me, especially their endurance and long distance elements. That night when we turned back, something inside me clicked – very subtly and with out my noticing it: just a germ of an idea – Skam La had won round one. At the time, I was, like everyone else, too bothered about our return to give it much thought. I was glad to be alive and looking forward to chomping down immeasurable quantities of chapli kebabs back in Skardu. And anyway we had already decided that the summer of 2003 should be spent on organising an expedition to Spantik (Golden Peak). But the germ multiplied and grew and while returning from a rather dull mountain safety course in November 2002, it hit me.

Or rather, us.

Hammad and I were sharing the front seat of one of the two jeeps that was heading down from Lake Saif-ul-Maluk. And we both started talking about the plans for the summer of 2003. Of course we touched the idea of Spantik and how we would go about it. But we both sounded very uninterested in Spantik (my reluctance was fuelled more by the idea that I would, in my capacity of President of LAS, have to try and look for sponsorship!). So we both started talking about our recent attempt at Skam La and how it was such beautiful and untouched terrain. And then we both simultaneously came around to the idea that maybe the summer of 2003 should be a reattempt of the pass. Perfect! Now I wouldn’t have to be bothered about finding sponsorship for Spantik and more importantly there were others who were keen to reattempt the pass. There was now a chance to attempt the pass again, to complete the route, get good sport in the process and very significantly be the first set of Pakistanis to cross the Skam La, thus make history.

Now, Skam La carried some significance for me. It was not just sport now, it had the twist of my realising that a second attempt had a better chance of crossing and thus the chance to make history.

A rather odd combination and perhaps a slightly crack-pot-dictator set of motives meant I wanted to go to Skam La.

I know for a fact that my extreme interpretation of trekking (and maybe mountaineering when and if I ever climb them!) as a sport is a transient one. Prior to this interpretation I had no interpretation and prior to that I was completely sold to the idea of going to the mountains for the “good views you get”! Of course it is oneself that decides what to go up to the mountains for and that will change and adapt for as long as one goes up the hills. It is important to know why one goes to the mountains – that will determine one’s attitude and performance up there.

I like what Stephen Venables has to say about the mountains. I remember telling Rizwan early on in the expedition that when we get higher up and get to colder, snowy-icy terrain, I feel a lot more alive. Venables has something similar to say. He says that going to the mountains provides “a sense of living intensely and being intensely alive” [quoted from “Mountain Men” by Mick Conefrey and Tim Jordan]. I think I agree to a large extent. There were points when I was, I felt, very close to my physical limits and those periods I felt numb. But once I got through those periods I felt very alive – I appreciated my “aliveness” a great deal.

And of course for those who aren’t too clear, and quite honestly I am one of them (!), there is a rather clever solution. Or at least a phrase that offers an interesting escape to this problem. And the phrase is: “Because they’re there”. This statement is attributed to George Mallory, who attempted and disappeared on Everest in the 1930s and some suspect that it’s more just a myth than real. But it’s a convenient little phrase, from a mountaineering legend so we might as well shut up and live with its open-endedness!

[complete]

Post-script: Eight Brave Pakistanis

Summer 2004

To think that after it all happened, the helicopter would be such an issue. I was interviewed briefly for the video that was being edited for Skam La 2003 and the interviewer’s first question was whether I got flak from my team about having gone in the helicopter. “Why should I get flak?” I thought.

For a full year after and beyond, Rizwan and my contributions to the expedition were conveniently bundled away, reduced because of this controversy. It irritated and angered the both of us and, interestingly, till well after the expedition, if the two of us ever got talking about it, we would get quite worked up.

It’s a strange world and by now, almost a year later, the kinds of interpretations that abound about what “actually” happened at Skam La amuse me at one level and frustrate me at another. I’m amused that many people felt that my father sent helicopters to rescue me. The day we called, the day my entire tent, all five of us in there having consented, called my home and informed my parents that we were in trouble. The decision was taken by the group present in the tent at the time – including Rizwan, Hassan Zubair, Ali Imran, Raza Kazmi and myself. The actions that were taken after were meant for the benefit of the entire group. It is impossible that my parents would send aid exclusively for me. Moreover, I do not see why it was wrong for the five members who decided to call in and inform the outside world that we could potentially get into quite a mess.

By the 6^th of August we had effectively walked ourselves out of trouble and I will maintain that the decision to get out of the storm at Snow Lake was one that Rizwan and I had pushed for. Had the two of us not pushed for the team to move on, we could have stayed stuck there for days and who knows what would have happened to the team then. Our food situation was precarious – we effectively had nothing to eat. Even at Karfogoro, we had not found the provisions that were to have been left for us.

More importantly, the army aviation rescue team had the wrong objective – they had been told we were lost. However, we were not lost, but rather had run out of food. Had the chopper brought us some food, I think they would have had a far more successful rescue operation on their hands.

Hindsight is a wonderful faculty or quality that we posses as human beings. It all worked out fine in the end and luckily no one was hurt and we had no major mishap. Looking back at it many would argue that calling in a helicopter was excessive. I agree. By the time the helicopter arrived we were effectively out of trouble. But the time we called, we were in a mess and it was useful to have told someone out there that things could get worse. I just wonder, had something gone wrong on that trek (for instance, had we waited days upon days for the storm to finish), would the helicopter issue still be debated?

Regardless, I hope that this account provides a clear enough perspective on what happened at Skam La.

I also hope that people look beyond helicopters and realise that eight very brave Pakistanis achieved something quite unique in the summer of 2003.

[1] Note that in 2004, Karavan Leaders also crossed this pass via the left side. They found the descent was quite straightforward, with only a small 100m-rope section, implying that this pass changes from year to year. This indicates that the left still seems to be the ideal side for descent.

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A brief overview of what happened in Attabad Village of Hunza Valley

Karakorams.com Note: This text and email below was sent as an email to the LUMS Adventure Society alias by Mariam Malik

Landslide lake in Pakistan

Five months ago, on January 4th, 2010 in the remote Hunza River Valley of northern Pakistan, a massive landslide buried the village of Attabad, destroying 26 homes, killing 20 people, and damming up the Hunza River. As the newly-formed lake grew, authorities rushed to evacuate and supply those affected in the landslide area and upstream. The lake is now over 300 feet deep and 16km (10 mi) long, submerging miles of highway, farms and homes. Earlier this week, the lake reached the top of the natural dam, and began to spill out – rapid erosion of the landslide debris has authorities worried about a potential breach, and locals have been evacuated as officials monitor the developing situation. Special thanks to the Pamir Times for sharing their photos and coverage of this event. 

 

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Book Review on the Boys of Everest by Clint Willis

Imagine writing a chapter with multiple fill-in-the-blanks, copying it 20 times and using a computer program to insert names, dates and location in the relevant positions. That is what this book reads like. Case in point, the author repeats himself on at-least three occasions, describing three seperate crevasse falls in three seperate locations as “..his legs dangled above the void like an insects”. Although the book is a comprehensive alamnac of Chris Bonington’s expeditions and climbs, the author in his afterword section acknowledges that he only spent 2 breakfast meetings with Chris himself and this lack of research shows.

The book moves in a chronological order starting from the early days of Bonington’s climbing years. The ascent of the north face of the Eiger is covered in significant detail and does make an interesting read. The book also details the relationships that Chris had with several climbers of the generation but does not delve into significant detail of the strength of the friendships beyond what occured on a particular climb. The book is also somewhat sketchy in describing the routes of certain key ascents and i had to reference the internet to find greater detail.

If you’re interested to know how many camps, length of rope and who led what pitch on a certain bonington expedition, buy this book. If you’re looking for anything even slightly more engaging, stay away.

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August 1, 2006. Friday

In retrospect, it’s funny that that day turned out to be Friday. I lost all sense of time up there. Life amongst the mountains boils down to the here and now. The only thing on your mind is getting your body safely through the obstacles and difficulties of the day and the terrain, one step at a time. I remember Friday prayers at Khoburtse, but only because the porters were praying. I realized what was happening and what day it was and performed ablutions in the freezing cold stream of Khoburtse where I had been sitting post-trek in the midday sun without my hat, soaking my blistered feet in it, with the massive Baltoro behind my back to the north and before me a mountain wall interspersed with deep ravines widened and ‘maintained’ by wild and craggy black and white glaciers that flowed down some peak too far away down the ravine and too hidden by fog to be clearly visible. Gusts of cold wind would occasionally blow down that deep dangerous looking ravine, signaling either a Karakoram draft within its corridors or more probably, an avalanche on one of the numerous peaks hidden within its cold dark lonely depths. It was after I joined the prayers that I realized I was being led by a Shiite imam. When we were done, I got a few strange looks from the porters and I hoped no one would go berserk in a fit of misplaced religious fervor. Weird customs abound in mountainous areas sometimes. It was all good though and they didn’t say much, except a few whispered conversations amongst themselves. Come to think about it, that was one enjoyable prayer.

But August 1st… August 1st was a Friday and we were at Concordia, the point of convergence of the Baltoro Glacier, the Godwin-Austen glacier coming down south from K2 to meet the Baltoro, and the West-Vigne Glacier going down further south from the Baltoro, which kept going on inexorably east towards India and the Line of Control. It was the first “big day” of the trek.

I woke up after sunrise but still had time to capture this glorious moment. By the photographer creed, I should have been flogged for getting up that late and missing the actual sunrise, but the lovely thing about being surrounded by a host of 8000m+ peaks is, that the sun takes a while climbing up above ‘em. Hah!

We had our usual hot chocolate powder milk and wheat biscuit with cheese non-breakfast and pushed our starving forms towards K2′s pyramid. To be honest, I wasn’t tempted to walk all the way to the giant’s base-camp. I was 5 hour walk away from it and I could see it just fine from here. I figured a peak towering 8611 meters above sea level would look as huge, whether you were right underneath it or a 5 hour walk away. I was wrong.

As I trudged on over the boulder strewn Godwin-Austen glacier, for the first time, Broadpeak began to dwindle in size and K2 began to grow and I realized that there was a visible difference in their height that had been imperceptible from Concordia. The halfway mark on the way to the K2 base-camp is the Broadpeak base-camp. Najam and I, walking for the first time after about 7 days without our 14 kg backpacks went a little nuts and I proposed a race – at 5000 meters. We ran without a care in the world over the rocky uneven surface of the glacier, trusting implicitly to our ankle-length boots to protect us from a crippling ankle injury. We must have covered about 25 meters. I won; and I got a headache.

My oxygen starved brain was not amused by my body’s antics and refused to cooperate. I dragged myself a half hour onwards till I came across Wolfgang’s campsite. Now Wolfgang was a 65 year old portly German with a mild heart condition who sold used cars back in Germany. And he was doing the trek till K2 alone with just his guide and porters to keep him company. His wife had backed out of the trek for some reason I was not able to decipher through my broken German and his daughter had chosen to tour Europe with her boyfriend instead. So here he was, at the roof of the world, with a large kitchen and a bevy of porters, feeling all alone. He was a fun guy and we had struck up a conversation around Skam Tsok in the early stages of the trek. I struck up a conversation because I love talking to people from different cultures and because I have found in my experience that elderly Europeans and Americans are more fun to talk to. They seem to be more grounded than the younger generations. But given Wolfgang’s broken English and my broken German, advanced exchanges of ideas were out of the question. Interestingly, our limited common lingual ground was enough for him to let me know he liked the legs on one of the elderly Spanish sisters also trekking with us. He would cackle and pretend to be interested. Once I realized our lingual barrier did not allow for more complex conversations, I settled down for just the company – and the food. We were starving. Had been since the start when we made the critical mistake of not factoring in money and porters for fuel. We had completely discounted fuel our from calculations, a mistake the Edinburgh Expedition of 2008 almost made, but that’s another story. So when it came time to stock our expedition in Skardu and the Porter Sirdar brought it (fuel) up, we realized we would have to hire 2 more porters to carry fuel. Our emergency fund got wiped out hiring an additional porter and buying the fuel. In addition, we had to ditch food to make space for the fuel etc, since if I remember correctly, we could only afford 1 porter and not 2. We essentially came down to a chocolate powder-milk concoction for breakfast, Maggie noodles/soup for lunch and a measly serving of rice and lentils for dinner. For 13 straight days. At 4500 meters plus. With 14 kg backpacks. With 8 hour trekking days.
Not good.

As it turned out, Asjad’s knee injury that he had sustained back in Lahore got worse and he had to return from the trek after Day 2. I wonder what the food situation would have been for us had he stayed on. So anyway….there I was, making friends with a lonely old German with a well stocked kitchen. In my defense I shall say I did not plan it. Not at first anyway. But Wolfgang’s cook was efficient and he would serve pakoras and proper soup and Chinese rice with actual chicken inside it. We just couldn’t say no to his generous treats. Sometimes when I was completely starving, I would go sit by Wolfgang’s table and wait for the cook to serve snacks while I made smalltalk with Wolfgang. No, I didn’t care that I was being bayghairat. I was too hungry. Besides, I have crashed quite a few college dinners/receptions/conferences during LUMS. Heck, I wouldn’t even bother to dress up while I crashed the parties at college. So yes,bayghairat party-crasher sitting right here. Ok, where was I? Oh yes….August 1st.

So there I was, facing north half way down the Godwin Austen Glacier at Broadpeak base-camp, with the hulking mass of Broadpeak to my right, Concordia behind me and K2 another 2.5 hours trek ahead of me, with a splitting headache and nausea, courtesy the 25 meter race at 5000 meters. (Note to self: Try and avoid euphoria next time and contain sudden urges to sprint over dangerous terrain 5 kilometers above sea-level.) And there before me lazing around on his light-weight foldable stool was the impressive bulk of Wolfgang in a blue jersey. I laughed thankfully and sat down with him. He wasn’t feeling too good either so he retired to his tent. I was sitting on the stool, wondering what to do next when his cook came up. God bless that man. He had prepared chicken corn soup minus the corn and since Wolfgang wouldn’t eat it, he would be damned if it went to waste. He insisted I eat 2 bowls and some bread with it. I was too tired and nauseous to get up and hug him at that point or I would have. I ate those 2 bowls and the world stop spinning. I had to admire the general level of generosity around the place. A liter of Pepsi costs about Rs. 1300 (US$ 20) up there once all the portering cost gets added to it. And here were my saviors, offering me soup. Good wholesome soup with real chicken in it and not a hint of Maggie masala! God bless Wolfgang and his guide and cook.

I got up shakily from my meal and was half-heartedly thinking of making the rest of the walk to K2 base-camp when Jamil Jadq, Wolfgang’s expert and talkative guide came along. He took one look at me and guided me to an empty tent. “Sleep. We are all mucking around anyway and no one will use this tent.” So while Najam and Ahsan explored K2 memorial and the K2 base-camp, I slept. I don’t regret it one bit. That race had to be won. And that was one awful headache.

We returned to camp at Concordia an hour before sunset and I managed to catch a fairly decent sunset. There was an awkward moment when I was forced to enter a European mess tent during their dinner to ask a friend (another German!) for spare batteries that he had since mine had suddenly died in the chill Karakoram night that was descending upon us. I steeled myself and kept from staring at the mutton ribs and the peanut butter etc on the dinner, looked my German friend in the eye, apologized for disturbing dinner and got the batteries. He even came out in the middle of his dinner to check out the sunset, which was really quite brilliant. The sunset I mean.

The rest of the goras weren’t too happy with me generally. I can’t imagine why. Well actually I can. Half the Brits on the expedition looked as if they were carrying the shadowy remnants of the British Empire on their shoulders (and all that attitude was just dying to come out at the sight of a bearded native) and I was tempted to mess with them on quite a few occasions. Eventually though, I just backed off and minded my own business but only because I was too tired to bug them. I needed food dammit! I did mess with them on one occasion. The European expedition had been organized by a Pakistani-Brit named Sohail who was pretty cool. We chatted quite a bit along the way. He invited me to come sit with them where I was met with frigid silence and snide remarks from a couple of the group members. If I recall correctly, one of ‘em asked me what my ‘claim to fame’ was out of the blue in a fairly nasty tone and I shot back: “Oh I have a beard.” Conversation pretty much froze after that point. I experienced first hand then what Bertie had meant about the cold British reserve. Fortunately, I met Dave back in Karimabad and he dispelled any stereotypes I might have been making. Unfortunately though, there aren’t too many Brits that I have met who are as cool as Dave. Sad I tell you. On the other hand, I haven’t met that many, so I shall withhold judgment till my sample size is larger. But I digress…

That was our last night at Concordia. And we had promised the Pakistani soldiers camped in their synthetic ‘igloo’ and heavy Chinese sleeping bags that we would come visit them one last time before we left the area. The troops had entertained us the day before by playing and cheating outrageously at Ludo, and singing first Punjabi and then amidst some mildly voiced objections, Indian songs. I am actually not sure who entertained whom. They were bored out of their minds up there and they really welcomed these crazy desis who were apparently as nuts as the goras were and for no godly reason, had taken it upon themselves to come visit their forsaken land.

We were all tired and not tempted to go, but they had invited us for dinner. I started cooking up visions of Hob Nob steak in my head and then forced myself to come back to earth. “Veggies. The most you can expect is veggies,” I told myself. We walked the dangerous boulder strewn glacier back west for about 20 minutes in meager torchlight, always afraid we would get lost in the black Karakoram night. We did get lost a few times, but one of us would then climb the nearest rocky mound and scan the area ahead to look for the Pakistani army camp outlined against the minimal light of the moon, under the shadow of the hauntingly lovely Mitre peak. Dinner turned out to be subdued affair. It was dhaal and energile, and I actually found myself wishing I had been back in our tent eating our dhall chawal with the achar. Oh that achar. It’s strange but in retrospect, I thought a lot about food. Something about the basic nature of the mountain. It strips things off you and leaves the man bare. It is very difficult to hold on to culture up there.

One things keeps coming back at you though. The grandeur and sheer mind boggling vastness of the place and, if you are a believing man, His boundless majesty.

We said our goodbyes to the troops under a clouded moon, and made our way back to the tent on the treacherous stone of the Baltoro. We needed to sleep. If all went according to plan, we would soon be staring up at the vertical face of the steep icy wall that is the Gondogoro La, the high altitude pass that was to be the singular most difficult step along our journey.

August 2nd, 2006. Saturday

The Baltoro Glacier, The West-Vigne Glacier

I was lazy that morning; more I think from the upset stomach (Concordia’s lack of sanitation is legendary) than from the ‘race’ from which I had quite recovered after the night’s sleep. Or maybe it was just sleeping at 4900 meters for the first time during a trek that had started off somewhere around 2500 meters. I expected that day like others before it to involve another long lazy zigzagging walk down rock and dirt – pretty much like what we had now become used to, but I was in for a surprise.

I don’t much remember breakfast, which given our meager food reserves is probably a good thing. If I recall correctly, we had pretty much given up on having breakfast and would gulp down tea or hot chocolate for the warmth of it and resort to eating cheese and wheat biscuits – I could not stand the sight of those things for more than a year after the summer of 2006- as we walked. Eating cheese and biscuits as you walked was easier. It kept your mind off the long way ahead and the ache in your body and you figured that as long as you were eating it on the go and not while sitting down, it wasn’t breakfast. Not really. It was just a snack. And soon there would be hot delicious Maggie noodles – yes, it can actually taste great when you are that tired and cold – for ‘lunch’, which was the name we gave to stopping for 30 minutes in the middle of nowhere under the burning hot sun and waiting for our porters to brew Maggie noodles/soup. With Happy Cow cheese in it – naturally. And maybe there would be some delicious snack that we had packed away in our blue drums and forgotten about that would miraculously pop up.
I had dreams.

Ahsan as usual was the first one out of the tent. The combination of Ahsan’s energy and Najam’s bayghairati would make me worm out of my sleeping bag. Najam was almost always the last one out. In fact by the time Najam normally rolled out of his sleeping bag, we were all dressed (i.e I had switched my lone trekking t-shirt for my lone night t-shirt), had finished breakfast, had taken the waterproof outer-layer off the tent and were basically waiting for him to get out so that we could pack up the tent. More often than not, given our slightly short tempers in the mornings courtesy the cold, drowsiness and the hunger, we started telling him he could pack the tent himself if he would take that long waking up. Ahsan would help him pack the tent away anyway, more I think because he couldn’t bear to not be ambulatory than out of any Samaritan motivations. I was fairly Zen about the delay in breaking camp. It was all rock and snow and ice and mountain around us and it would all be rock and snow and ice and mountain when we started moving and it would still be rock and snow and ice and mountain when we ended the day. What was the hurry?

We got done with packing the tent that day without Ahsan hovering over our heads for a change. I think he was off negotiating terms with the porters. Concordia is the biggest campsite on the Baltoro. It is the confluence of 3 glaciers. It’s like a roundabout joining 3 huge highways that you can see from space or in a GoogleEarth map. It is also home to the densest population of 8000m+ peaks in the world. There are 4 of them within a day or twos walk of each other and thus draw mountaineering expeditions from around the world, who pay the government of Pakistan thousands of dollars in permit fees as they arrive, hoping to ‘conquer’ K2, Broadpeak, G1 and G2 or perhaps the slightly ‘smaller’ G3 and G4. Concordia is where the large expedition parties converge and there is always work for the porters. These expeditions and their mules by the way, are also the reason I had a spectacularly upset stomach.

The mules leave droppings in glacial melt that trickles down the Baltoro and as you walk up the glacier a couple of days behind the expeditions, you see this crystal clear mountain stream that looks like purity incarnate and under the burning midday sun, you drink from it, only to realize a few kilometers and a few hours later that the beasts of burdeon have been having a field day upstream. On top of all of that, with mountaineers from around the world coming together and with no proper sanitation, Austrian, American, Spanish, French, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Polish, German, British and Pakistani germs get together and par-tay. Diarrhea is very very common.

But never mind that now. Our primary concern that morning was letting go of as may porters as we could. The porters would hopefully find work with one of the returning expeditions, and carry equipment back to Skardu down the Baltoro the way we had just come. The fewer porters that we took onwards from this point, the cheaper it would be for us since porters got paid by stages, and anyone coming along with us from this point on would have to be with us till the end. Such was the nature of the terrain of the mountain pass. We had started out with 7 porters and a porter-sardar (leader) and I was hoping we could let 4 porters go, and be down to 3 porters and the sardar. It would save money.

And money was very important for us. Not having accounted for fuel in our initial calculations had cost us dearly and we were very short of funds. An additional factor that was complicating our lives was the fact that from here onwards, it was all 5,000 meters plus, and porters refused to carry their initial porter-loads of 25 kgs above 5000m. Each porter would only carry 20 kgs (Yes, that’s still a lot but I was just looking at the impersonal logistics of it at that point). So while we had used up food and fuel in the last 9 days – we ate all the heavier and more delicious food items at Concordia so that porter-loads would be minimal for the attempt at the pass itself and so that we could get rid of as many porters as we could – we would still need quite a few porters given that each would now be carrying less. Ahsan came back from his talks with the porters and told us 2 of them were leaving us. They had found work with one of the expeditions returning back over the Baltoro. We apparently needed the rest of them. I tried to talk to Ahsan about the details of the logistics but he wasn’t in the mood to discuss. He had taken the decision and that was it. His attitude had pissed me off earlier at Payiu as well when he had been negotiating with the local shopkeeper to sell off our excess fuel (in our worried state over not having factored for fuel, we bought more than we needed in Skardu) and had not been open to suggestions/discussions but then I figured, what the heck. I was here to enjoy myself, and if he wanted to handle management and logistics alone, that was one less thing for me to worry about. I would much rather sit back and enjoy the scenery anyway. I suppose at some point, the line between carrying your own weight in a group and carrying your ego gets blurred.

At any rate, we were to move on with 5 porters and a sardar for the attempt at the pass. Honestly speaking, the pass hadn’t even begun worrying me at that point. LAS expeditions before us had made it safely across, albeit with harrowing tales of loose rock, slippery ice and the insanely steep descent, and I assumed we would too. I wasn’t worrying about anything more than the problem right in front of me at that point, which was trying to figure out if we had enough money to pay the porters who were departing as well as the remaining porters who we would need to pay at the end of the trek. Our initial calculations (which Asjad, Ahsan, Faraz and I had done on an excel sheet in the RISEPAK office over the 2 days it had taken the idea of the trek to germinate) did not allow, as far as I remembered, for 5 porters and a sardar carrying on all the way to the end. We had planned to be carrying less overall weight at this point than we actually were. Oh well. Plans shlans. What ever went according to plan anyway? I discussed it with Ahsan and he told me he had some dollars stashed away that we could use. I was much reassured. I was also carrying my debit card on me and hoped there was an ATM handy back in Skardu. Who knew with these mountain towns.

We emptied out our blue drums, gave away all the excess biscuits and cheese etc to the porters who would no longer be with us, and re-divided the food, cutlery, gas stoves and tent amongst the remaining porters. We said goodbye to the 2 porters, hugged them, asked them to forgive us if we had done or said something to offend them and moved on.

Within 20 minutes of the start of the trek, I knew this wasn’t going to be a normal day. We had been used to a certain terrain by this point; lots of loose relatively flat rock covering the glacial ice, over which we often went boulder hopping. The trail would zig-zag across the glacier and at the same time, move up and down. It wasn’t the zig-zagging I minded as much as the climbing and the descending. Every time we walked 2 kilometers, we covered perhaps a third of a kilometer in a straight line; or less. The glacier hadn’t exactly been a highway; till now.

As I crested a rise, I saw stretching out before me an enormous flat stretch of ice. It was as if a monstrous tractor had been taken to the glacier and had left behind small furrows and ridges in its trail; this was the exceedingly lovely West-Vigne Glacier.

I took one more step and slipped badly. I stabilized myself on my climbing stick and looked down. We were not on rock anymore. This was ice. Very very slippery ice; and it was at an angle. I realized I was standing on top of a dome of ice perhaps 60 feet high and I actually had to climb down the steep sides. There was a moment of panic. There was no way I could do this with the way my boots were slipping on this surface. Shouldn’t I have crampons and an ice-axe at this point? I stopped, looked back and waited for someone to catch up with me. Najam was first and he made it across on his sneakers. What the hell?! I was wearing Diggers for God’s sake. This shouldn’t be happening. That’s when I remembered what my Diggers had been through. They had initially belonged to Aamir Alvi, who had done the Batura trek in them back in 2003. I had then done Lupghar Sar in them in 2004, followed by Boisum Pass in 2005 after which I had lent them to someone who had done the very trek I was doing at this point in them. After that, I had done the Haramosh La trek in them. These boots were screwed. The grip on them was at any rate, and I hadn’t realized that because most of my treks had been in Shimshal. Barren scree-filled sand and dirt Shimshal. This was my first time on proper ice and I was going to break a bone at the very least if I kept on trying to navigate this surface with these boots. Uh-oh. Where do you get new shoes in the middle of a glacier? I waited for inspiration and the rest of my team. Bakir, our porter sardar caught up with me and I told him the problem. He nodded, told me not to worry and led me across the ice dome, holding my hand like a baby. And I fell; and fell. This was embarrassing. More than that, it was pissing me off. I cursed under my breath, clamped down on the frustration that was welling up and tried to get through this ice-dome so I could resume normal trekking over (hopefully) normal surface. Bakir realized how bad the grip on my boots was and took out socks and told me to wear them on top of my boots. I looked at him quizzically, shrugged and put them on. What the hell. It couldn’t be worse than my current state. The thick cotton socks on my boots gave them grip; too much grip sometimes. The cotton would stick to the freezing cold ice and give me purchase but if I stopped for too long, as was my wont when out of breath – and I was out of breath a lot at that altitude – the ice would positively grab hold of the socks and not let go. Trying to wrest the cottony ‘soles’ of my boots off the ice was as dangerous as lack of purchase and would disbalance me without fail. I struggled across and somehow made it down to level surface, where I breathed a sigh of relief. Too soon. The entire highway before me turned out to be made of the same stuff. Hard slippery ice. Damn it! Oh well, at least it was relatively flat.

I looked back at the icy dome like surface I had just cleared and realized it was where the terminal moraine of the West-Vigne met the lateral moraine of the Baltoro. The lateral moraine of the glacier is a high ridge that is found on either side of the glacier all along its length. Think of it as the bank of a river. Except these ‘banks’ are highly uneven, littered with loose rock, mounds and boulders and normally rise in height from 50 to a couple of hundred feet (in my experience). The terminal moraine is the end of the glacier, the snout. And it’s one messy place with rocks and boulders and crevices and emerald green moraine lakes filled with glacial melt and salts and minerals that give them their unique green/blue colour. And it’s much higher than the surrounding area which means you have to climb, which tires the heck out of you. Crossing moraines isn’t really a lot of fun. At any rate, I was past the maddened earth where the 2 glaciers met and was on a relatively flat surface. Except it was still ice.

I grew up in Karachi – the city that will see snowfall the day hell freezes over – and had always thought snow and ice to be synonymous. If it was white, it was snow/ice. I wasn’t picky what you called it – till now. Snow is nice and soft and you sink into it and it gives your boots lots of grip. You don’t slip in snow, though if it’s deep and soft and freshly fallen, you can sink all the way to your knees or your waist – or God forbid all the way to your chest which happened to Hasan Karrar once and Hasan is 6 ft 6 inches – which let me tell you, is no fun when you are carrying about 18 kgs on your back. But ice. Ice is more like…slippery rock. I began to wish for crampons; eventually, I gave up trying to walk with my cottony soles and took them off. They weren’t helping, specially since I was having trouble breathing today which made me stop a lot which made my feet stick to the ground. My stomach was churning, I was feeling lightheaded and slightly feverish, each breath was a wheeze and all I wanted to do was to sit down. So I did. For almost half an hour. It was luxury or would have been had it not been for the pain in my stomach. Bakir actually stopped and sat down next to me for all of the 30 minutes for which I was grateful. Knowing you are the tail is a bad feeling. At that point, I thought it was the altitude messing with my head, but in retrospect, I think it must have been the combination of the the upset stomach, the fever and the lack of proper food over the last 10 days. Oh, that and my digestive disorder with which I had been diagnosed a couple of months before the trek courtesy PDC food. Oh well, no help for it. Better get moving.

The walk down the vast expanse of the West-Vigne – I suspect I walked 10 to 12 kilometers in those 6 hours and I did not walk even half the length of it – took me 2 hours more than everyone else. The glacier was at least 2 kilometers wide, probably 3, and was bordered by peaks easily exceeding 5500 meters. Heck I was standing at 5000 meters. The peaks were probably 6000 meters+. No one has been dumb enough to even try and begin naming them. There are hundreds of them. As I stood there, completely out of breath at the tail of the expedition, I turned back and looked up in awe at the massive bulks of Broadpeak and K2, towering above the West-Vigne. There, dwarfed under the breathtaking mass of Broadpeak stood the British Expedition, resting and catching its breath. I just stood there, gawking and gaping at the raw majesty of the scape before me. It was stunning. If the altitude hadn’t already had me wheezing, I am sure the sight would have left me breathless all on its own. For a few moments, I even forgot the churning in my stomach. I snapped a quick shot of the glacier disappearing away into the distant south, barely taking the time to choose the settings on my camera, turned around, brought K2 and Broadpeak into the frame and snapped. Enough with the photos. I needed to walk on, so I could lose myself in the limbo of my mind and forget how much it hurt. I walked on, past green glacial melt that was moving much faster than I would have believed possible on a relatively flat surface. I idly wondered what kept it flowing and then, as my boots slipped again on the ice, I realized falling into that 2 foot deep green stream of glacial melt might actually mean death. The running water had made the channel it flowed in incredibly slick and slippery. If one were to step or fall into that stream, there was no chance at all that they would be able to stand straight; the stream would take you with it the 10 odd kilometers down the glacier where you would probably die of hypothermia or pneumonia or one of those other fun ways to die in the cold. With such cheery thoughts, I moved on, making a mental note to keep my distance from the glacial melt, pretty though it looked.

I stopped to catch my breath and looked back. The British expedition was slowly catching up with me and the sight of their tiny forms dwarfed by the two massive 8 thousand-ers made me laugh at the absurdity of the sight. We were ants. Ants. I took another picture and crawled on.

The glacial melt which had been a small stream soon became a strong angry churning thing. I wondered why the melt was stronger up the glacier, then figured it was probably the doing of the midday sun. Oh well. Who cared. I walked on in my silly slippery boots. A sudden rumbling made me look up. I scanned the horizon. Nothing. I looked around. Sound echoed in this icy vastness; it got trapped between huge mountains and echoed off them. Must have been an avalanche, I told myself and moved on. Soon there was another one. It was Chogo Lisa, the 7665 meter cone shaped peak further to my left which had killed the man who first sumitted Nanga Parbat, the Killer Mountain. There was at least one avalanche an hour throughout the time that we spent on that glacier and we spent about 12 hours on it. It was a crazy crazy place and we later heard of an Italian couple that was waiting at Ali Camp hoping to climb up Chogo Lisa and then ski down it. I laughed in my head at the crazy people the world had when I heard that. Ski down Chogo Lisa indeed. Mad people. Completely nuts I tell you. For some reason, I didn’t place myself in that crazy category. I was just going to attempt a fairly easy pass. Nothing really hard core.

The entire day’s walk had been on ice and I was thinking unpleasant thoughts of how nasty it would be to sleep on ice, when I realized the rest of my party was to the right of the glacier and I was pretty much in the middle where I had been walking along lost in my thoughts; and separating us was a small river that a few kilometers and 2 hours back had been a trickle. Not good. I looked for a place to ford – no jump – over it and found nothing narrow enough. I walked on looking for a narrow spot where I could leap across the green glacial melt but it was easily 7 feet. No way I was doing that with a 14 kg backpack on my shoulders that was killing me with its weight today for some reason, and to top it all off, very slippery shoes that would make a good solid take off impossible. Walk on young man, walk on. As Tintin would say, crumbs!

As I walked south, looking for a narrower spot, I realized I didn’t stink as much today. The familiar smell of dried sweat mixed with the almost pleasant smell of sun-block was missing. Oh yeah, I didn’t apply any sunblock today, and the extra Red LAS jacket I was wearing today on top of my full sleeved t-shirt in deference to my first time at 5000 meters+ on ice was masking the sweat. Now that I come to think about it, the only reason I was able to tolerate that jacket through the heat of the day’s trek was because of the fever I had but didn’t realize. I suspect that is why the backpack seemed heavier.

I finally found a place to jump over the river, walked west and realized gleefully we would be camping on rock and not ice. Awesome. Except there was a really scary looking crevice between me and the campsite. I was still on ice but I was too tired to go around. Screw it. I jumped and made it across thankfully. Almost grinning I walked into camp at around 2 pm and collapsed inside our tent which (thankfully) had already been set up. One good thing about being the last one at the campsite: you never have to set up camp. Muah!

I took my time taking off my boots and getting into the sleeping bag. Ahsan was already asleep in our tent that housed 3. Najam was off with the porters methinks. As I settled down into my sleeping bag and as the exhaustion hit me, Ahsan woke up and told me we were going to attempt the pass tonight. I looked at him in stunned disbelief – I had been vaguely counting on a day and a half of rest – and told him there was no way I was going to be able to do that pass tonight. The churning in my stomach and the almost pleasurable pain of the fever that was wracking my body nodded feverishly in agreement. No pun intended. I saw surprise flicker across Ahsan’s face at my pronouncement and then resolve replaced it. “Well, we have to do it. The weather is bad and they think the clouds could cut the pass off for the entire season soon.” I was about to suggest a day attempt at the pass tomorrow when I remembered Lonely Planet specifically warns of danger of avalanche in the area and attempting it in day light with more melt was definitely not a good idea.

I swore underneath my breath. The clouds had indeed been following us since Payiu. If they caught up with us, we were screwed. If the pass became unnavigable due to bad weather, we would all have to walk back down the West-Vigne and then the Baltoro which would take us about 6 to 7 days as opposed to the 2 days of trekking we would have to do once we were over the pass. Damn damn damn. My fever was getting worse, and my stomach had ditched nodding in favour of growling , screaming and raging. I wasn’t up for a 7 day walk down 2 glaciers and I was certain I couldn’t do the pass in my current condition either. Oh yeah, and we didn’t have food for 7 days. Short of a paralyzing fit, I could imagine nothing else that could give me the excuse I needed to avoid the pass tonight. Damn it.

“Is there lunch?” I asked, raising myself on my elbow inside my sleeping bag.

“Maggie noodles. It’s being prepared.”

I lay back waiting desperately for that one hot bowl of liquid. I was going to make it last as long as I could. But first I would hold it in my hands and feel the warmth. The soup/noodles took its time. I think Najam brought me a bowl after almost an hour – well it felt like an hour anyway – and I held on to the bowl, letting the warmth seep into my palms. And then my stomach growled. Crap. No pun intended.

That afternoon and evening, from about 3 pm to 10 pm, while Ahsan and Najam slept, I made at least 6 trips to the small gorge south of the campsite that had become the camp toilet. Ahsan eventually woke up and suggested I take some meds for the diarrhea. We sorted through our med-kit, and after mutual agreement decided that Flagyl was indeed for an upset stomach. I stared at that med-kit, looking for inspiration and saw a leaf of Panadols. I don’t like taking meds and had taken all of about 5 Panadols in the last 10 years. Oh well..desperate times. I wolfed down 2.

All three of us were tired and hit the sleeping bags again. I think it was about 6 pm. I lay there trying to find sleep that would not come. As the fever took me, I wondered how difficult the pass was going to be. I wondered if there was a realistic chance I could die tonight and clinically put it at 10%. Don’t ask me how. I just pulled the number out of the air and my gut nodded, so I went with that. I wasn’t too worried though. I had a lot of confidence in my ability to handle the terrain and more importantly, in last minute adrenaline rushes, but I figured I would set things right with God just in case. I zipped up my sleeping bag, and in that silence, prayed. I tried to cry because prayer is always better answered if you cry but the tears wouldn’t come. Sometimes, it sucks to be a guy. I tried wallowing in self pity but that didn’t really work either, so I settled for a one-to-one with God. We talked for about 5 minutes or maybe it was 10. I apologized for all my sins and asked Him to forgive me if I died tonight. Thanks a lot.

Once I had made my peace of sorts, I slept for a few hours. I woke up feeling refreshed and with a sense of dead calm over me. I don’t know if it was the sleep, or the Flagyl and the 2 Panadols, or the prayer. Or a combination thereof. All I knew was, I was back in the game. Heck yeah!

I lay there trying to push myself back to sleep because I figured I needed all the rest I could get but sleep continued to evade me. And now that I was feeling better and with this unearthly calm that had come over me, I threw pragmatism to the winds and walked out of the tent. I slipped on my old nearly-had-it Nike sandals and walked over to the Porter shelter. It wasn’t much of a shelter; they had a stone ‘wall’ on 2 sides, a plastic sheet for a floor and had pitched a plastic sheet on top for cover that was held up above their heads at a height of about 4 feet by random climbing poles. I marveled at their ingenuity and their ability to make do with almost nothing and sat down amongst them, ducking under the canopy. Bakir, our talkative porter sardar, was busy with brewing Balti tea – that lovely thing the Baltis make with their special tea-leaves, garam masala (hot spice), salt and yak butter – so fortunately there was no one to disturb my reverie. I wanted to be alone in the crowd. I sat there on that plastic sheet lost in thought, enjoying the warmth of the shelter and the feel of people moving around and whispering softly amongst themselves. It was akin to the proverbial moment before the storm. I closed my eyes and grinned to myself, lost in the moment. Bakir woke me with a touch and offered me some stone bread that one of the porters had made. I gratefully accepted. It was warm, it was real solid food and it was wheat for my crazed stomach. Perfect. I munched on that stone bread and drank hot salty Balti chai under that plastic canopy, craning my neck to look up at the moon shining just above the white sheathed Chogo Lisa in a sky so blue-black and clear, it almost made me want to sing; or cry, or recite poetry. The sky has never ever made me feel that way. It was some night.

Bakir and I talked in whispers and I asked him how much ice there was on the pass. I was worried about my silly slipping boots. Bakir told me to switch boots. I looked at him in shock for a minute, then actually began to consider the idea. “What about you?”

“I can make it. No problem,” he said. I looked at him doubtfully and then around at the other porters, some of whom were walking around in frikkin plastic shoes! Madness. I shook my head at the insanity of it and looked at this superman sitting besides. Well, they did grow up on the mountain. But still…

“Hmm.” I thought some more. It was a selfish thing that I was about to do and I really didn’t want to be looking down at Bakir’s dead body lying in a ditch someplace half way along the pass because he had slipped in my shoes. On the other hand, these guys were walking along in plastic shoes that were made to slip and happily chugging along. I selfishly decided my need was greater than his and his experience and knowledge of the terrain much greater than mine and if they could walk this terrain again and again in those plastic boots, then Bakir would be just fine in mine. I tried on Bakir’s boots and they fit. We completed the exchange and I looked worriedly at Bakir.

“Bakir, are you sure?” The man smiled and shook his head without much worry. Damn, but I felt bad. But only for a moment. My stomach grumbled and a wave of weakness passed through me and I started worrying about being able to make the pass at all, slipping boots or not. The feeling of calm in my head did not go away though and that was reassuring. We walked over to where Ahsan was sitting besides our campfire and there was talk of other parties that had arrived at Ali Camp and were going to be attempting the pass with us. There were going to be about 30 people attempting the pass that night.

“Wow. Poori paltan hai.”

“Hah, yes. Looks like.”

“What about the ropes?” I asked Ahsan and Bakir. Gondogoro La (Gondogoro means pieces of broken rock) is a technical glaciated pass. It’s a 700 meter wall of snow at an angle of maybe 50 or 60 degrees on our side of it (i.e. the northern side) and its an even steeper 700 meters or so of loose rock and ice on the south side. You need rope to go up and you definitely need rope to come down the other side. And there is danger of avalanche, so it is attempted at night when there is no sun. Oh joy. The ropes had already been placed by a rescue team based in Ali Camp, and they charged everyone crossing the pass at different rates, depending on if they were porters, locals or foreigners. We sent Bakir off to negotiate with the team, telling him to bring the price down for us since we had no goras on our team and were all desis. He came back telling us they were going to charge a thousand rupees per person in our party including the porters. I don’t remember the details but I think Bakir and Ahsan brought them down to 500 for each of the porters. I started to worry about the money, and then figured I would just let Ahsan do the worrying.

Around us, expeditions were packing up, voices were shouting, camps were being broken and a ragged queue of trekkers was forming. Apparently, we would be walking to the base of the pass and going up it in single file. I wondered if were going to be roped up but Bakir said no. He also warned me to keep my distance from porters when I was in the queue. I raised my brows quizzically and he told me the altitude did things to porters stomachs and it was a good idea to keep your distance when walking behind them. Ahhh. Ok. I nodded in comprehension and he strode off, hopping across slippery surfaces in my boots like a mountain goat. I shook my head wryly. Nuts.

We were joined by Sohail from the British expedition and a woman from the Italian expedition passed around sweets. I smiled at her, my headlamp blinding her for a second as I looked up at her and accepted the Fox’s kee sweet. When everyone was geared up and ready in the queue, someone started raising what sounded initially like slogans. And they were. Religious cries.

“Allaaaaaaaah hu Akbar!” a porter shouted and his cry was echoed by the entire party except the foreigners who were looking around in bemusement. The answering cry echoed within the rather vast confines of the glacier and the mountains boxing it. I cringed, expecting another massive avalanche on Chogo Lisa across the glacier, or at least rockfall. Nothing happened though and another cry went up into the night. It raised the hair on my arms and neck and I felt my spirits lift. I was just getting into the whole yelling-at-the-roof-of-the-world-in-the-dead-of- night thing when they changed their cry to: “Ya Ali madad!” Sigh. Intercession and all that. Yes of course. Naturally. Ah well… Moving on.

Once the cries had died down, we started moving single file down into a snow filled valley, surrounded on 3 sides by mountains rising up like cliffs. It was an unreal feeling being in that place, (Picture not mine by the way. Since we attempted the pass at night, I did not have the light to snap anything like this) surrounded by tall mountains so close to us. Had we done this part of the trek in daylight, I suspect I would have worried quite a bit about avalanche. As it was, I couldn’t see much of where we were or where we were going and when after an hour we hit soft snow, I was far too busy cursing at its softness to look around at the sheer snow laden walls rising around us. I was sinking all the way up to my knees and it was very annoying.

I plodded on in the darkness and suddenly felt rather than saw the nearness of the white wall that rose up before me. I looked up at the steep wall that we were supposed to climb all of tonight and with a twinge in my stomach that had nothing whatsoever to do with an upset tummy, realized I couldn’t see the top of it.

Uh oh.

August 3rd, 2006, Sunday

12:00 am

The mountain stretched away before and above me into the night. There wasn’t a lot I could make out in the cloudy moonlit night, even with the snow helping reflect light. It was just a big wall of snow in front of me that I and my friends had to climb. Not knowing how much I had to climb actually helped. No thought or energy was wasted on thinking about how difficult the climb would be. There was nothing for it. You saw the white wall of packed snow in front of you, and you climbed. If the headlamps bobbing away above you into the darkness weren’t enough directions, then you could just about close your eyes, grab the really thick rope that was hanging all the way down from the top of the pass – and for which we had paid 500 Rupees each for a one time use – and climb on.

The climb itself wasn’t very grueling. We aren’t talking pitons and hard sheer rock surfaces. It was steep but not that steep. Not at first anyway. And the snow was packed, your boots found purchase, easily enough and very soon you realized some kind soul had actually dug out large steps three times the size of your boot into the snow wall. Easy purchase.

I grabbed the thick rope in my left hand, made sure my feet were placed securely within the steps cut into the mountain, dug my climbing stick into the packed snow with my right and pushed up one more step. This went on the whole night. There really wasn’t much else to remember about that climb, except for the time I heard a scream above me half way up – it must have been 3 am – followed by two whizzing sounds a few feet to my right. Someone above me had lost both climbing sticks. A few more feet to the left and they woulda hit me. I chuckled silently to myself and shook my head as I realized they could have hit me on the head, possibly hard enough to knock me off the wall. I had been climbing half the night so I figured it must be at least a 500 foot drop from where I was on the wall to the bottom. I tried to turn and see how far up I was, but I didn’t trust the steps in the packed snow enough to try gymnastics like that this high on the wall. Besides, my backpack stuck out about 3 feet from my back and prevented me from really turning around. Oh well. Still alive, still climbing.

Towards the latter part of the night, the climbing became slower and the wall steeper. It was more difficult to move, and I found myself out of breath more regularly and at shorter intervals. Altitude. Gondogoro was supposed to be 5940 meters at the top, if Lonely Planet was to be trusted; and if my experience on this trek was anything to go by, it wasn’t. My GPS unit had measured pretty much every campsite over the last 8 days at a few 100 meters less than the figures John Mock and Kimberly O Neil gave in their biblical trekking guide, so I wasn’t really sanguine about hitting ‘almost’ 6000 meters when I got to the top. I had been annoyed with Gondogoro La at the start of the trek for not being 60 meters, and a small part of me still hung on to the hope that for once, Lonely Planet had gotten its altitudes right. I really wanted to reach ‘almost’ 6000. I looked up and in the early light of day, saw the gang hanging on to the rope and moving on upwards, about to crest the pass. It was quite steep.

I summited the pass about 30 minutes before sunrise and gasped and plodded my way to the top, to find Najam sitting there, looking around, smoking a cigarette. “Are you insane! You are at almost 6000 meters!” He didn’t seem to mind though. I was gasping and short of breath, mostly because the weight of the backpack seemed to have increased and I swear I could feel my lungs shrink. Najam was in great spirits though. He wanted me to take out my camera and take pictures. I didn’t give a crap. My fever felt like it was coming back, my stomach was twinging albeit mildly from the prolonged lack of proper food and IBS, and all I wanted was to be left alone so I could sit quietly and regain my breath. Najam stood up with Bakir and told me to take a picture of the 2 of them. Scowling, I finally took out the Powershot and quickly snapped a few shots. That’s when I really looked up and around me. To the north, past Najam’s backpack, climbing stick and the thick rope I had just climbed up on, K2 and Broadpeak were visible cloaked in white, along with pretty much the entire Gasherbrum series. The clouds that had been following us throughout the trek had finally caught up with us. I felt I was at the roof of the world; a white puffy cloudy roof.

I turned to look south – our path for the next 3 days – where Laila’s gorgeous needle soared up before me to its 6050 meter majesty. Someone had strung out bright buddhist prayer flags (and a 1.5 liter 7-Up kee botal) right at the edge of precipice where they fluttered over our heads in ominously beauty in the early morning breeze. In retrospect, I wish I had gotten a clear day at the top. The clouds filtered the sunlight from the scape before me and obstructed visibility, but mannnnnnnn. What a view! The Gondogoro valley lay spread out at our feet, the Gondogoro glacier below us to the left, leading up to base of the spectacular Laila and a little to the right, on the western lateral moraine of the Gondogoro Glacier, the green patch that was Xuspang.

I was almost as high up as Laila’s summit! Awesome! I took out my GPS unit and took a reading. 5620 meters. What the hell? That couldn’t be right. Maybe I wasn’t really at the top yet. I walked some more and the figure dropped. Blast. We had barely exceeded five and a half thousand meters. So much for 6000.

At the very top, I figured I was done with the tough part. Descents were tough for people with weak legs and I knew that was one problem I didn’t have. I plodded through the ankle deep snow weighed down by my backpack and looked down at the descent past the toes of my boots and for the first time in my life, felt pure fear try and rise up within me. I have been anxious and angry and afraid and uncomfortable and annoyed and irritated and many other things in my life. But this was definitely and without question the first time I had felt fear. Pure fear. The descent was insane. It seemed to go straight down over flimsy rock outcrops that looked as if they would crumble and fall off if rabbits stepped on them; and at first sight, it looked about 80 degrees in gradient. We had to go down that? The fear rose up in me for all of a fraction of a second and in that second I considered multiple options, all of which involved me not going down that rock wall. Pretend to faint and be carried down? Call a chopper and be airlifted out? Go back down the way you came, and walk up the West-Vigne, and down the Baltoro all over again and end up in the green wheat-fields of Askole? I considered all of these and a few other options that I don’t quite recall but all of which were as crazy. All of this happened in a fraction of a second. Within the same fraction of a second, I also discarded these options. Can’t call a chopper. Costs 6 lakhs and we don’t have a Sat phone anyway. Can’t pretend to faint. That’s just not who I am. Can’t go back the way I came. Need food, fuel and a tent for that and the porters carrying it have already gone on ahead. Once I had firmly and logically cut off all escape routes in my mind, I deliberately clamped down on the fear.Fear just makes you panic. Panic just makes you dead. Old lessons I had learned when trying to swim back to the shore in a quickly receding tide. Oh well. Nothing for it. I think I recited the kalima before I started the descent though. Friends have repeatedly asked me for a picture of that descent. But really people, I kinda had other things on my mind.

The descent was – in two words – harrowing and exhilarating. I had sat at the top letting people who reached the top after me go down before me. I wanted to catch my breath. I think a small part of me also wanted to see if anyone fell to his/her death. But that didn’t seem to happen so I figured it was safe enough, mad though the descent looked. Once I had regained my breath, I forced my legs to get off the edge and down onto a foothold on that crazy wall and realized there were 2 thick ropes that I could hold on to. Excellent.

I grabbed both the ropes in my hands and inched down. The rock underneath my feet broke away more than once. When the rock wasn’t busy breaking away, the layer of ice on it was doing its best to make me slip. Bloody hell. Ice on top of flaky rock and a mad angle of descent? Perfect. Just perfect. I decided the safest way to go down was pretty much lying on my back. That way I had multiple points of contacts with things other than thin air. I could hold on to the 2 ropes with my right hand, sit on the rock wall and drag my behind along it to slow my descent. And I could use the climbing stick in my left hand to further find anchor somewhere amidst the crazy formations of the pass and stabilize myself. The porters above and below me screamed at me not to go down like that but their screams pretty much got lost in the wind and it wasn’t like I gave a crap about what they were saying anyway. I was going down slow and safe and I didn’t care if I had to drag my behind down. This wall was frikkin’ steep! That’s when I dislodged what must have been a 10 kg rock. It seemed to dislodge itself in slow motion and then continued to bounce down in slow motion over what felt like an entire minute. There were screams of warning from above and below and everyone descending along the twin lines of rope froze. The ones at the top stared at the rock going down and the ones below stared up at the rock coming down. I was in the middle, watching its progress, half expecting it to hit someone and kill them. I wondered if there were criminal proceedings you had to go through for accidentally killing a fellow trekker. The rock safely bumped and hopped down without hitting anyone. I cringed, thinking of all the curses the 25 odd people below must have for me. At that point, I figured there might actually be something in what the porters were saying and decided to change my stance on the method of descent. So I stood up – and fell. The rock under my feet broke away; the layer of ice on it had made me slip before it broke anyway. Oh joy. The climbing stick in my left hand flailed about in the air, my feet scrambled to find purchase and my entire weight was supported for a few critical moments by my right arm. I knew I had been right to reserve my right arm for the ropes. When the world stopped spinning, I realized I was lying on my back on the steep face of the mountain.. Well I was actually lying on top of my backpack and my behind. My feet were just minor anchors, and my body was actually held in place by my behind, my backpack, my right hand on the ropes and partially by the climbing stick in my left hand.I raised my head slightly and looked down the length of my body and past my boots at the drop below me and at the valley spreading out before me. Strangely enough, I felt no fear. Just a slight rush of exhilaration and adrenaline. It’s amazing how much your body can put up with when asked to.

I gingerly stood up after a few moments of deep breathing and tentatively thrust out with my climbing stick. The stick found a small opening between two rocks and lodged itself there. I gradually let my weight off the rope and using the stick moved one step forward. And the stick collapsed. It was one of those extendable affairs whose bottom screws on to the top part and apparently, it had become unscrewed. I found myself falling on my behind again with just the upper half of the climbing stick in my hand. Blast. I stabilized myself, looked at the climbing stick in annoyance and mentally shook my head. The lower half had either fallen down or was stuck in some hole a few feet above my head. I really didn’t care where it was. It could stay there for all of eternity for all I cared. I got my breath back, packed up the stick as best and I could and looped it around my wrist, freeing my left hand.

About that time, I got really pissed at being scared. Damn that mountain anyway. Who did it think it was? I was seriously getting tired of my heart trying to pound its way through my chest. The adrenaline rushes from the repeated falls made my blood course through my body. I suddenly felt very very elated, very very confident and very very indestructible. So I got up, my feet on what I think was a 60 degree slope of flaky rock (though it might have been less) and with both gloved hands holding the two ropes I started walking quite confidently down the mountain. I slipped a few times but my arms felt like steel and easily supported the weight of my backpack and I. No problems senor. Bring it on. After 2 minutes of this, I felt so confident, I started sliding down. Just like the scree slopes of Shimshal. It’s all about confidence baby! Hoo yeah! Without waiting for my feet to find real purchase, I would slightly open the palms of both hands and slide down the twin ropes till my hands reached the next big fat knot in the ropes. The knots would stop my arms from sliding down further. If at that point, my feet had purchase, I would remain standing. If they didn’t, my arms would be called upon to keep me attached to the rope while I unceremoniously plonked down on my ass and halted my quickening descent. The backpack really helped. I think I my back woulda been riddled with scratches and cuts had I not had that backpack.

The crazy part of the descent was over in 45 minutes and they were without doubt the most thrilling moments of my life. The high! Once the angle of descent became less steep, I grinned and hopped my way down to almost level ground. This part of the descent reminded me intensely of the crazy part of the climb up Lupghar’s eastern moraine that we navigated back on my first trek in 2004. Back then it had been crazy. Now, it was heaven. I casually walked down that 2 foot ledge, stopping to take a leak (I distinctly remmeber the wind blew at all the wrong times). The wind was blowing, it looked like it might rain and I felt as if I didn’t have a care in the world, so I went to sleep for 30 minutes right on that ledge. Woh kya kehtay hain na, kay neend toa sooli par bhee aa jati hai. I woke up again, reminded myself most accidents happened on descents and that it wasn’t over yet; I walked on. I met up with a heart surgeon from Georgia at the base of the pass. He had just summitted G2 and was sitting down eating dried apricots, abusing his guide in a friendly manner. We talked a bit. He didn’t have water but he had apricots and offered me some.

“Why are you shouting at your guide?”

“That idiot. He tell me..short cut. This.” Points up at Gondogoro La. “This short cut? Mad man. If I had known how dangerous this was, I woulda gone back the same way I came.”

I laughed and then stopped. Wait a second. This guy just frikkin summitted G2. G2 is an Eight frikkin’ thousander!

“This is too dangerous?” I asked

“Yes, look. The rock keeps breaking. Is dangerous. You need helmets. No one has helmets, or harnesses.”

Point.
So hold on a second. The guy who just frikkin’ summitted the 13th tallest peak in the world thinks Gondogoro La is so dangerous he would rather have made a 5 day detour? Cool! I knew altitude wasn’t everything, and that G2 is considered one of the easier peaks to climb but still!
Haha! Way cool!

We sat there at what my GPS said was around 4900 meters (I had descended about 720 meters), ate dried apricots and talked. We took a picture and I walked on towards Xuspang. It was a 2 hour walk and I was dying of thirst along the way. Fortunately, I met Rachel from the British expedition and she offered me water. She didn’t have a huge issue letting me drink out of her canteen for which I was quite thankful. I had needed water desperately at an earlier stage of my trek and the Brit trekking with me at that point had had issues with me drinking out of the same bottle and hence I was denied water for a good 3 hours. Not a fun thing, let me tell you. Rachel unfrotunately didn’t have enough water. I walked for another hour, found a stream, dropped to my stomach without taking off my backpack and lapped away for a good 15 minutes. I eventually walked into the completely unreal campsite at Xuspang – a stunning splash of reds and blues and yellows in the midst of that unexpected green – sometime around 1 pm, looked around me and started laughing.

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There’s no other way of putting it: I’m a trekking junkie. If you get excited at the sight of blue barrels or loaders or know the importance of carrying extra washers for the kerosene stoves, then you’re probably a trekking junkie too. If on the other hand, none of this makes any sense to you, and you’re off on a self-organized trek, then this page may be of some help to you.

It takes years of experience before one can get apt at organizing a few tons of gear, to be carried by dozens of porters, for a few weeks on end. Out of our entire lot of mountain vagabonds, Atif Paracha knows more about organizing treks than the rest of us combined. Hopefully, one of these days he’ll make good use of his expertise and write an essay for karakorams.com. Until then, use this essay as a starting point, ask for information from other travelers and make sure you have infinite patience and a great sense of humor.

Most people end up doing the “big” treks in Baltistan with a travel company who will make all the arrangements for you. While organizing a trek yourself can seem like quite a chore, it is possible, and it can also be a lot of fun. Our Snow Lake traverse and trek up to Concordia (K2 Base camp) and back was organized by ourselves. We found that not only did we end up doing these treks on a shoestring budget, but that this also gave us a chance to work closely with locals making these treks an extremely rewarding experience.

But organizing treks by yourself can be a challenge. This is the case if you don’t speak the language. Also, rules and regulations vary from region to region, so when in doubt double check with the Ministry of Tourism. Please remember to be extra-polite when dealing with locals. People in the Northern Areas have begun to resent the bossy attitude shown by certain foreigner and domestic tourists. On the whole, Baltis make honest employees, and porters do not hesitate to follow government regulations.

For sight seeing around Baltistan, and suggestions on where to stay and eat, please refer to Skardu, Baltistan .

Guides and Cooks
Even if you are not going with a travel company, a guide is recommended. Guides can be useful in arranging supplies, hiring porters and negotiating with jeep drivers. And most importantly, guides, errr… guide, keeping you out of hidden crevices, help you find water and know how far the next campsite is (don’t bother asking porters – they’ll always say “five minutes!”)

Freelance guides abound in Baltistan and most of them know what they are doing. Expect to pay upwards of 500 rupees a day for a freelance guide.

A cook is also a good idea if you are trekking in a big group. In a small group you can get by without one but cooking for anymore than a few people can be a pain. Your quality of life becomes much higher if you do not have to start tea yourself the moment you come into camp or wash dirty dishes in a cold mountain stream at night. In the summer months there is no shortage of cooks in Skardu, Baltistan . Expect to pay around 400 rupees for day.

Porters

 
Balti porters put all other porters in the Northern Areas to shame. Simply put, they are honest, hard-working and highly professional folks. Most of them speak Urdu as well Balti and they love singing. The singing that you hear every night at the major campsites is not just a show put on for foreigners.

When you trek you pay porters according to stages. A stage is supposed to be a days march but most people end up walking at least two stages over a six to eight hour day. The rate in Baltistan last year (2001) was 220 rupees per stage. In Baltistan, a porter carries 25 kilograms plus their own bedding. Until you are on a glacier, porters carry their own food (you pay them close to 50 rupees per porter/day – double check this amount). Once on a glacier you have to provide them with a fixed amount of food and fuel per day – the exact amount can be determined by looking at Ministry of Tourism guidelines. Porters are dismissed along the way as you consume your provisions. Porters who are dismissed and are returning empty get paid half wage for walking back. If you dismiss your porters at a trailhead you do not need to pay them half wages as they are not walking back empty. In addition you have to pay them approximately 200 rupees for personal equipment.

Porters carry their own bedding and every eight porters is to be issued one tarp which they make into a makeshift shelter. Every ten porters or so is to be given one kerosene stove plus kerosene.

If you’re organizing your own trip all this may end up getting very complicated. That’s why it helps to have a head porter, a porter sirdar. Ministry regulates that you need a sirdar for more than 25 porters. We recommend that you hire a sirdar even if you have less than 25.

Finding the right sirdar is the key. Ask around in your hotel for recommendations. It is also a good idea to ask tour operators. It is essential to have a sirdar who has worked in this capacity before as it is the sirdar who will handle the porters for you. This includes hiring porters, dismissing them, and handing out food rations. In other words, the sirdar is your liaison between you and the porters. Feel free to ask for letters of recommendation though keep in mind that fewer sirdars and porters have these than you may imagine.

It is a good idea to sit down with a sirdar before the trek and carefully go over every aspect of the trek. This includes the route of the journey, how many days you expect to be trekking for, how many porters you’ll need and how many supplies you’ll need to take with you. Be very clear about what you expect from the porters and be certain of what is expected of you. Put everything down on paper and both parties should sign it. Do not rely on a verbal contract. This avoids misunderstanding later on. Do make it a point to consult the latest Ministry regulations as rates fluctuate every year and porter regulations are considerably more complex than what we have dealt with here.

Certain trekking companies inflate rates and it is not unlikely that you may be asked for more wages along the way. We have found that these issues can be resolved with a little polite but firm negotiation especially if you have already clarified all aspects of the trek with your sirdar before. Avoid taking a “I am the law” stance and try to resolve the situation constructively. A tip at the end of the trek is expected. This is usually ten percent of what you have paid them.

On the trek, make it a point to be extremely polite with your porters. In our experience with Balti porters, we have found them to be extremely helpful and sincere often going out of their way to help travelers. A smile, a handshake, and a “salaam” go a long way in creating bonds of camaraderie that lasts forever. Baltis take a great pride in Baltistan; if you find a particularly vista breathtaking them tell them that. It pleases them no end. Be generous with doling out medicine (bring lots of aspirin), cigarettes, or oral rehydration salts if you have extra. Remember that these are men who work extremely hard to eke out a living during the summer months that has to last them the entire year. When you are respectful of them and their culture, they shall reciprocate. This makes trekking a worthwhile experience that goes way beyond just admiring mountain scenery.

Supplies

We started out as backpackers, taking just the bare essentials, and carrying everything in a large backpack. As we started heading out on longer routes the logistics became increasingly complex. In the summer of 2000, I remembered looking at a hundred kilos of food that we were taking along for the Snow Lake traverse and groaning at the sheer quantity. Little did I know that the following year we would have more than one and half tons of food, fuel, and other equipment as headed up the Baltoro (ours was a “lightweight” trip up Biafo-Hispar. Between six trekkers we had four porters. Our K2, 2001 trek was also a minimalist one, where we started out with 43 porters per 24 trekkers. Unbelievable as it may sound, last year the trekker to porter ratio on the Baltoro was anywhere between 1:6 to 1:10).

Food supplies are best procured in Lahore or ‘Pindi where you’ll get the best variety and best selection. Having said that, you’ll find pretty much everything you need in Skardu, Baltistan as well. This includes everything from canned fruit to imported chocolates and food, and less exotic items such as biscuits, jam and porridge.

As mentioned above, you’ll need to provide food for the porters once you are on a glacier. Instead of trying to the math yourself of how much flour, and tea and sugar you’ll need, you can go to numerous shops in the town and ask for porter rations based on how many porters you’ll be employing for how many days. Many shops around Yadgar Chowk offer this service.

Tarps and kerosene stoves are available between Yadgar and Husseini Chowk. Tarps cost about 800 rupees and a kerosene stove will set you back 500 to 800 depending on whether it has one or two burners. Double check that it works properly, and buy an extra washer or two and some basic tools for servicing. It may seem extravagant at the time but you do not want to be stuck halfway up with the Biafo with a stove that doesn’t work! Kerosene is readily available, as are large 25 liter jerry-cans. For transporting food, blue plastic barrels work best. These are cheaper in ‘Pindi. Expect to pay between 150 and 300 rupees per barrel depending on capacity and whether you buy them new or used.

Some camping equipment is available in the bazaar as well, though of course, there is not much selection, nor is it particularly cheap. In a pinch, you should be able to buy sleeping bags, tents, and boots though these are best procured down-country. There is a limited amount of climbing hardware that is also available. This equipment is all used and of course, not recommended. Again, prices tend to be on the high side, and you would end up paying a lot for used for used equipment. Needless to say if you’re off climbing or if your going on a trek where you’ll need technical equipment, it is best to have all supplies with you prior to arrival in Baltistan.

Do not count on finding camping gas either. While many stores now carry small camping gas cylinders, many of them have been refilled, and are not very reliable. Buying camping gas from a departing expedition is your best bet but there is no guarantee that you shall be able to find any. If your traveling with porters, your best bet is to simply buy a large kerosene stove. Porters and cooks are proficient are using these and making the necessary repairs.

Jeeps
You’ll need to hire jeeps pretty much wherever you trek in Baltistan. There are two types of jeeps, the normal VIP ones that sit up to five people and luggage and the “loaders.” Loaders are cargo jeeps that are open at the back and can be pilled sky high with luggage and passengers.

The two most popular destinations for trekking and climbing are Hushe and Askole. By the middle of the summer, there are roadblocks between Skurdu and Hushe and Skurdu and Askole. When you reach a roadblock you carry your luggage across and get in the next jeep (there are always jeeps in between the blocks). Expect to pay between 3,000 and 4,000 for jeeps to both these destinations. If the road is blocked, you do not pay each jeep driver separately. Rather, negotiate with the driver who will make arrangements all the way through.

Numerous jeeps ply the road in Skurdu so ask for the best rates. We have taken jeeps from Shah Travel and from Rustom in the past and both have given us good service.

Afterthoughts
Going on a long trek in Baltistan involves many logistical challenges, and compared to the simplicity of backpacking, the logistics are indeed daunting. Of course, if your traveling with a guide or a travel company then all these logistics are part of behind the scenes operations that you do not have to worry about. Doing it yourself, on the other hand, requires weeks and often times months of preparation. We’ve been trekking for a while and still learn something new every summer.

Nobody knows it all and do not hesitate to ask for advice if you’re confused about something. Skurdu is teeming with guides, sirdars and experienced trekkers who are usually willing to help you out. When in doubt, double-check your information or the prices that are being quoted to you. Always maintain a sense of humor and have a high degree of patience. Try not to panic if you fall a day or two behind schedule or if unexpected costs come up (both the above will happen). The accompany photographs are from our 2001 trek up baltoro glacier.

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I keep coming across sites of climbers, organizations and sometimes just plain beautiful images of the karakorams. This post will keep track of some of the more notable sites and photos that I find. Keep checking back for updates.

1. Cloud Climbing: Beautiful photographs taken from around the Gasherbrum I expedition, includes photos of Lahore, Skardu and the Gasherbrum Sancutary
2. Mountain Light: Site with photographs from the late Galen Rowell, when it comes to photographs of the Karakorams, he is hard to beat.

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A team of 6 from the Karakorams.com community successfully crossed Lukpe-La from Shimshal into Snow-Lake last year in July, photos, videos and essays are yet to be received from the team. Will post them up as soon as i receive them.

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And now that you are there….

Karimabad has a lot to offer. For starters, most visitors head up to the Baltit Fort that was renovated a few years ago. To get to the Baltit Fort; well just walk in the direction of the Fort which is located at the end of Karimabad and is visible from everywhere. A trip to the Altit Fort is highly recommended. Unlike Baltit, the Altit Fort is in ruins though word in Karimabad this year was that renovations on the fort had begun. To get to Altit Fort simply walk to Altit village that is a mere 20 minutes away from Karimabad.

Taking a jeep up to Duikkar for sunrise has been a popular activity with the LUMS crowd despite the 4:00 AM wake up calls. The ride costs about Rs. 700/- and climbs a high ridge above Altit village for views of Rakaposhi Base Camp (Taghafari) , Diran, Golden Peak (Spantik), and Ultar. Supposedly, the views are fantastic, and hopefully one of these days I’ll get up early and haul myself onto a jeep going up. Our students are equally ecstatic about the parathas that can be had for breakfast after sunrise.

On the opposite side of the Hunza river is region of Nagar. A trip to Hopar village to view the Thirst is also recommended. Hopar Glacier is the fastest moving glacier in Pakistan and for those who are reasonably fit, we recommend hiking down to the glacier to view the beast. From Karimabad, jeeps to Hopar and back cost Rs. 800/-.

The most highly recommended day hike from Karimabad is up to the pastures by the Ultar Base Camp. Simply follow the irrigation channel that gushes from behind the obvious gorge behind the Baltit Fort. Unless you leave at dawn and are exceptionally fit, expect to spend the entire day going up and down. Locals claim that they can go up and in a mere two to three hours and I don’t doubt them. But the three times I’ve been up to the pastures it’s been a solid day hike to the pastures and back.

The trail climbs steeply up a narrow gorge and depending on the conditions of the trail that particular year, expect a strenuous walk. In the summer, carry water and something to munch on as the gorge can get hot by early afternoon. If this is your first time in the mountains, or you’re unsure of your ability on steep, tricky terrain, it makes good sense to hire a local freelance guide to show you the way. Numerous accidents have taken place in the area, some fatal, and these could have been prevented with a little bit of care. A freelance guide should cost you no more than a few hundred rupees. Alternately, you can ask the management in any hotel and restaurant to recommend a young lad to accompany you. Many school going children have time off in the summer and this is a great chance for them to make some pocket money.

Once at the pastures you are rewarded by stunning views of the jagged Ultar ridges and the extremely steep Ultar Glacier. Below is a lovely meadow with ample tent space and clean water. Should you not have your own camping equipment, a local entrepreneur rents out tents for the night and can prepare food as well. Day hikers can buy tea, soft drinks, and snacks. Beware that for some unknown reason, a few years ago these services were extremely expensive. Be sure to ask for prices beforehand to avoid an extremely rude shock afterwards.

From the pastures it is supposedly another three to four hours to Hon Pass at 4,000 meters. Hon Pass is said to offer superb views of the entire lower Hunza valley. A young helper whom Nasir employs at the Punjab Sindh claims he can ascend the Pass from Karimabad in less than two hours by climbing up the mountain behind the Baltit Fort. For the rest of us mere mortals, Hon would certainly be an overnight trip.

Lastly, Karimabad has a surprising number of souvenir shops that sell local handicrafts. Depending on what you are buying and whom you are buying from, the handicrafts can range from cheap to ludicrously expensive. We are poor, dirt-bag travelers – and probably shall be well into the foreseeable future – quite content to simply admire the crafts. Feel free to negotiate the prices, but avoid the aggressive bargaining tactics common down-country. Sher Ali runs the Hunza Weaving Center, a shop with a diverse selection of handicrafts. He is also a well-known local musician well versed in the musical traditions of Hunza.

In addition, Karimabad has a few shops that stock canned food, chocolates, film (including slide film and sometimes black and white too), and most types of camera batteries. Prices are usually ten percent more than what you would pay in the big cities. A shop next to Karim’s Hotel has some trekking and climbing equipment, and a few shops sell second hand boots. Needless to say, secondhand climbing equipment is NOT recommended.

There are two surprisingly good bookstores in Karimabad. The GM Beig Bookstore is located in front of Punjab Sindh and has a good collection of travel books and some fiction. Opposite Hill Top Hotel is Cafe de Hunza, Pakistan’s only cafe’ bookstore. The selection is as good as it is going to get in the Northern Areas. In addition, the cafe’ also serves all sorts of exotic hot drinks, waffles, and other goodies that you wouldn’t expect to find in Hunza.

Getting away from it all
Between Karimabad and the Chinese border at Khunjerab Top lies Gojal, North Hunza. If you have time then this area is worth travelling to as well.

Most people make a day trip to Khunjerab Top that lies above 15,000 feet. Jeeps charge approximately Rs. 2,000/- leaving early in the morning and returning by late evening (in the summer months buses can make it up to the Pass). It’s a solid six hours in both directions, so do make sure that you leave early in the morning.

People have mixed feelings about the trip. For the most part, the vehicle passes through a dry, barren valley so don’t expect any of the greenery that you see in Karimabad. But this terrain has a grandeur of it’s own and the journey is certainly worth doing at least once. Once at the top you can expect shortness of breath (unless you’re a trekker and already acclimatized), Chinese and Pakistan sentries, patches of snow, and in July, plenty of alpine flowers.

En route to Khunjerab you pass through Gulmit, Passu and Sost. Gulmit and Passu are quaint towns located on the The Karakoram Highway . They offer a respite from the touristed Karimabad and are worth staying at if you have the time. Both places have only three or four hotels each so walk around till you find one that suites your taste and budget. Passu is the starting point for treks in Shimshal , the A Stroll Along The Batura , and up the Passu Glacier. Because of increase in trade with neighboring China, Sost has seen rapid development as a result of which the town has lost a lot of its charm. Nonetheless it’s a lot easier to find food or a place to stay now that it was twelve years ago when I first visited.

Because of its remoteness, no public vehicles go to Khunjerab Pass so your only option is renting your own vehicle. If you want to travel to Gulmit, Passu, or Sost you have a good chance of catching a public van in Aliabad which will charge between Rs. 50/- to Rs. 100/- per person for the above destinations. Otherwise, jeeps to Gulmit and Passu from Karimabad should charge Rs. 800/-, whereas a jeep to Sost should charge Rs. 1500/-. Sost is also the launching point for NATCO buses and jeeps heading for Tashkargan, in China’s Xinjiang Province. Note that beyond Karimabad, the availability of petrol and diesel is sometimes a problem, and these may impede travel

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