Retour
19 June 2004
Send company t-shirts immediately!
It was a strange coming together - by the 16th we were two big teams sitting
down to dinner, what was really odd was the
variety of Hawaiian and 60's Polynesian shirts - not natty, suave or
debonair, plain boring travel shirts (the writer included), even a leather
waistcoat on one of our number, and as for the French climbing pants, that's
best left to your imaginations...
We realised why the North Face climbing team had matching logo t-shirts -
surely now they will summit. Our teamsters prickle with individuality - and thank goodness for that.
Send clean underwear
Veterans of Pakistan pray fervently that the Skardu flight runs, knowing
only too well the horrible alternative to get yourself up to Skardu. While
the newbies went to bed pent up with anticipation for the great drive on the
KKH "we have heard so much about", the rest of us just lay there dreading
the thought of what was to come.
Our ground agents(ATP) provided two excellent buses and slightly less than
suicidal drivers, but it is still a long, tough, two day drive. Leaving the
plains behind the heat doesn't relent. We climbed over the first hills and
dropped into the Indus River valley which turns into one of the most
forbidding gorges there is. Formidable in every sense of the word. From a
roadside altitude of 1000m, the peaks aboce scream skyward to over 5000m;
sheer, imposing faces, utterly impossible to trek thru with a raging, muddy
Indus below. Impressive and outlandish, and on a grand scale, but
fascinating in the impossibility of the terrain; a true barrier here that
puzzled the great explorers for more than a century.
By Chilas the terrain had softened and we had a pleasant if not warm night
at the Panorama. Instead of aircon the 'swamp coolers' or 'desert coolers',
we had a fan with six curved blades an Afghan swordsman might be proud of,
luckily held in place by concrete.
The next day Nanga Parbat enthralled us, its massive snows soft in the haze.
Soon after is the spot where the three mountain ranges meet - the Himalaya,
the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram - the Indus, and the Gilgit rivers merge,
both of roughly equal size, and each a mass of turbulence.
We entered the Indus' Rhondu gorges, similarly formidable and on an
impossible scale, the road is closer to the river and its raw power in brown
flood was awe-inspiring. But some people managed to sleep thru the endless
tight curves as the road cuts deep into the rock sides at every
opportunity.
Again the terrain softened (a relative thing around here though!) and by
late afternoon we were relaxing in the gardens of the K2 motel. At 2200m
the climate is warm and pleasant, but the hills are still rugged, and the
vistas expansive.
We are staying the 19th here as the last of the paperwork is completed, a
visa extended and two people's missing luggage will hopefully catch us up.
Tomorrow, hopefully everything completed, we will drive to Askole for our
first night camping.
The next dispatch will in a few days.
Regards, Jamie