But I’ll try.
It was still dark when I left my hotel room with my bags all packed, and snuck across the unlit lobby of my hotel and out to the street to wait for the Land Cruiser. A couple donkey carts trotted down the street, and one or two cars whizzed by in the predawn darkness. But Kashgar was still mostly asleep. Even the muezzin hadn’t begun his call to the faithful.
Herve, our other passenger, and Hanna, the Finnish/Australian environmental scientist, met me outside soon after I got to the street, and we stood together and waited, exchanging few words.
Herve was a young French guy, with long ratty hair tied loosely back in a ponytail, and the droopy-eyed, open-mouthed look, which some French guys seem to be born with. He had met with Robbie, Max and I the day before while we ate at the cafe, mainly to tell us how sick he was, and that his stomach problems might cause him to cancel his plan to come with us.
We had inquired about his ailment, and what he was doing to take care of it, and it became apparent that he was entirely ignorant about what to do to treat persistent diarrhea and vomiting. He had been trying to cure his problem by eating a lot of tomatoes and french fries, and I told him that other than by adding alcohol, he probably couldn’t have chosen a worse course of action. We recommended a diet of boiled rice and weak tea to him, and told him to go back to bed and see how he felt in the morning.
And now here he was, standing out in the cool predawn in his T-shirt, shorts and sandals, saying that he was feeling “mach bettuhr.” I asked him if he had any warm clothes with him, as we would be crossing a 15,000-foot pass, and it could be very cold and windy up there. “Oh, reeelee?” he exclaimed. “Wull, I have some sheens and a sweatshuhrt, but det’s oll.” He was dragging a huge duffel bag behind him, which could have accommodated a full wardrobe for many types of weather, but he’d neglected to bring even a windbreaker with him. Didn’t this guy have any idea where we were going? I thought to myself. But hey, if he froze his ass off, that was his problem.
We’d contracted to have the car pick up Robbie and Max at their hotel, and then swing by and get us at ours. So at 7:15, right on time, the white Land Cruiser drove up and we tossed our bags in the back, and drove off through the dark city.
The sky didn’t begin to lighten until we were well past the outskirts of Kashgar, but the dusty haze or fog (or smog) which had enveloped the city since the day we arrived was with us still as we swept past tiny villages on the dry plain. Now and then we’d pass a farmer herding some goats on the road, but otherwise we rode through a ghost world, with specters barely visible at the margins of our vision.
It was only when we began to climb up into the Ghez river canyon that the fog began to lift. Soon we could see the sheer walls of coral red stone, rising to heights which we could not yet make out. The river bed contained many meandering channels, but the road was washed out or covered with gravelly silt in so many places, that we could see that the quiet river wasn’t always so serene.
The road passed on the right side of the riverbed, directly up against the canyon wall, which in places went straight up for at least a thousand feet. And the many boulders smashed on the roadbed had fallen from these walls, probably without bouncing more than once on their way down. I leaned forward in the front seat and peered up into the heights, imagining the force such rocks would have if they struck the car. It wouldn’t be a pretty sight.
Often the road was completely washed away, and only a four-wheel vehicle such as ours could maneuver around the gaping holes in the pavement. I could see why the highway had been closed for three days, and why it had taken them so long to reopen it. To look at the many repairs yet to be attempted, it seemed madness to construct a road in such a violently changing environment. But I’m certainly happy that they did.
At about ten the fog was completely lifted, and we were climbing well up toward the upper end of the canyon. Above towered massive snow-covered crags, and the early morning sun—we were still on Beijing time—painted them pink and orange. We made the driver stop so that we could take some photographs.
Then the canyon leveled out at a broad, swampy valley, ringed by sand dunes. Pools of water, some almost the size of small lakes, and mirror smooth in the still air, reflected the high peaks nearby. I wanted the driver to stop again, but a new picturesque vista appeared almost every minute, and to stop for them all would have made the trip twice as long.
We were now leaving the high Pamir Mountains, and were seeing the last of the nomadic Kyrgyz herdsmen. Their horses, cows and dzus, a cross between a yak and a cow, grazed on the dry stubby grass, and here and there a yurt sat, isolated in the vast landscape. Soon we were to enter Tajik country, a more settled, farming group of people.
In the distance appeared the massive ice-covered, rounded domes of Mustagh-Ata and Kongur Shan, two 7000-meter giants soaring above the high plateau. We skirted their bases and turned due south.
As we climbed slowly higher, through valleys where Tajik farmers scythed their grass the way they did it when Alexander crossed these same mountains in the 4th century BC, we stopped again to take pictures of their tiny villages with the distant Hindu Kush peaks shining through the lingering haze. Here we captured scenes which literally have not changed for millennia. The chronological disconnect was as disorienting to me as the rapidly thinning air.
But when we approached the Chinese customs post at Tashkurgan, my mind snapped back to attention. The driver pulled into the dusty yard, filled with Pakistani traders, all dressed in flowing shalwar kamiz, and milling about, waiting for the Chinese police to inspect their vehicles and goods.
Our ordeal wasn’t nearly as bad as the one we had experienced entering China, and within half an hour we had our passports stamped and were on our way again.
Still the road climbed, past Chinese army units repairing damaged sections of the road, and trying to redirect mountain streams that constantly threatened the road base. The snow level was now only slightly higher than we were, and the craggy peaks on each side of us were layered with permanent glaciers. But the icy winds which I had encountered crossing into China over the Torugart pass were not in evidence, and at 15,000 feet, the weather was cool, but for the altitude, incredibly good. Herve had lucked out, as had the rest of us.
Khunjerab Pass
For soon after crossing through the final Chinese checkpoint, we arrived at the summit, and without being asked, our driver pulled over so we could immortalize the moment with our cameras. There was almost no wind, and we didn’t even need sweaters as we snapped pictures for each other, and gazed down into Pakistan.
The Karakoram
The Karakoram mountains, which means “black, crumbling rocks” in the local Tajik dialect, begin near the border, and immediately after the first Pakistani border post, the highway tumbles down almost 4000 feet within a few miles. The rocks do look almost coal black, and all around is evidence of their instability. Several hundred Chinese and Pakistani laborers lost their lives blasting a road through this part of the mountains, and judging by the many collapsed sections of the highway, the maintenance must be intense and continuous.
But I had never seen mountains such as these. Where the Tien Shan had been crystalline, and the Pamirs massive, the Karakorams looked malevolent. Even when topped by a crust of snow and ice, their blackened, crumbling flanks threaten anyone foolish enough to try to scale them. And indeed, K2, the second highest mountain in the world is in the Karakoram Range, and is known as the deadliest of all mountains. The Karakorams contain the largest accumulation of high peaks in the world, more than the Himalayas even, and many of them are still unclimbed, such is the difficulty and danger in attempting to scale them.
And right through these angry giants is where the Pakistani and Chinese engineers decided to build their highway, and the mountains have been fighting them ever since. Our driver had to constantly dodge large boulders sitting in the roadbed, and we kicked up plumes of dust where landslides had run across the highway. About three miles before the Pakistani customs post at Sost, we were stopped for about ten minutes while the road crews bulldozed a new landslide off the side of the highway.
But we made it to Sost, where our driver’s job was finished, and we unloaded our bags and went through Pakistani immigration. And what a change it was from China! We were whisked through without a baggage check, and really the most onerous part of the procedure was that we were asked to sign a statement saying that we weren’t bringing in any drugs, weapons, or alcohol. Almost painless!
Though we were in Sost and through customs much earlier than planned, our original idea to catch the four-o’clock bus to Passu, our destination for the night, fell through. The highway was still too damaged for buses just below Passu, and so they weren’t running at all. But our problem was solved when we managed to hire a man and his tiny Suzuki pickup truck to take us the 15 miles down the road for 500 rupees, or about $12.50. The little Suzuki groaned under the weight of six people and their bags, but we made it unscathed to Passu, and were deposited at the Passu Village Inn—in about an hour.
The Inn sat down by the Hunza River, in the middle of an apple orchard, and I managed to get a room with a view of the surrounding peaks, and a bathroom with hot shower for $7.50 a night. Here I hoped to hike in the surrounding mountains, and I prayed that the fine weather would hold out.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t linger in Passu, as my time on this trip was running out, and with the highway still damaged, I needed to make way down out of the mountains by jeep while I still could, So I’d only spend two nights there, and then get to Lahore via the quickest method I could find.
But for that night, I’d sleep in a good bed and listen to the creek by my window burble on its way down to the river. The Hunza valley is the origin of the myth of Shangri-La, and as I lay in my bed, it was easy to imagine why.