Trekking PAKISTAN

Local adventurers brave shoestring paths cut into cliffs and blinding glaciers to see a beautiful, rugged country

Story and photos by Ruth Anne Kocour and Elizabeth White Rassiga

SPECIAL TO THE RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL

Why Pakistan? people ask. The question is probably a good one. Traveling in Pakistan is challenging both physically and culturally. It’s also relatively hazardous, especially in the context of the United States’ recent bombing of Pakistan’s neighbor, Afghanistan, of India and Pakistan’s recent nuclear tests and their on-going war over the disputed Kashmir region (Editor’s note: As this story was going to press on Friday, the U.S. Embassy, the U.N building and a U.S. cultural center in Islamabad, Pakistan, were fired upon with rockets, allegedly by supporters of Osama bin Laden).

Travel in Pakistan requires extensive experience traveling in Third World countries as well as mountaineering and survival skills. Simply put, it’s not a place we can recommend to others.

For us, however, the reason is perhaps tied to Webster’s definition of wanderlust: an impulse, longing or urge to wander or travel. For us, two well-traveled, professional, Reno women in our 50s, Pakistan offered the challenges we have come to yearn.

When she was 6, seasoned mountain climber Ruth Anne would disappear virtually all day into the Minnesota woods behind her home, just exploring. As a child, Elizabeth mentally wandered through the stalls of exotic bazaars depicted in turn-of-the-century magazines. After meeting four years ago, we realized we would be perfect "journey partners."

In the past two years, we have taken as many trips to explore the geography of northern Pakistan, where towering peaks obliterate the horizon in every direction.

Our first trip was to Concordia, in Pakistan’s northwest, at the base of 28,251-foot K2, the second-tallest mountain in the world. Here, the three largest mountain ranges in the world converge: the Himalayas, the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush. They are products of enormous collisions of continental plates, which began eons ago and continue today. The youngest of these, the Karakoram, is still rising faster than erosion can wear it down. This, the second highest range in the world, boasts 19 peaks over 25,000 feet, with K2 as its crown.

Our goal was to trek there. Not to climb the mountain, just to be there. It would require crossing Baltoro Glacier and some of Earth’s most strenuous, dangerous and dynamic terrain.

The opening lines of our travel itinerary read: "For the enjoyment of your trip, a ‘go with the flow’ attitude is necessary. Many factors will influence your trip such as weather, health, route conditions, etc. Please do not take this itinerary very seriously!"

Change is a fact of life in Pakistan. A mere two weeks before we left home an American was shot and killed and his wife wounded as they camped in a restricted area of Northern Pakistan. This added even more tension to the larger political climate we were in. We checked State Department travel advisories and spoke with the Pakistan Consulate. The decision to go was final only when we boarded the plane.

At our first stop, London, we visited a Pakistani dress shop to buy the traditional shalwar khjameez to camouflage our conspicuous Westerness during our flight to Pakistan and any time we were in public areas while in the country. Of course, traveling with Ruth Anne, a 6-foot-tall blond, even in traditional dress and veil, was like traveling with a lighthouse.

Once we finally landed in Islamabad and gathered up our gear, Sahib Noor, limping badly and walking with a cane, met us. The pale, limping man was to have been our lead guide. Immediately, he described an accident that occurred several weeks earlier involving a failed American K2 expedition. The unsuccessful climbers decided to leave the area by crossing a high pass that required roping together and fixing lines into the ice. During that attempt, a hanging ice wall broke from the top of the Vigne Glacier, setting off a massive avalanche that crushed two porters. Noor was blown 30 feet into the air by the wind blast. When he regained consciousness, he realized his leg was badly injured. A porter lay beside him totally dismembered. Unable to walk out, Noor waited days for the weather to clear and an army helicopter to evacuate him. He swore he would not return to K2 for at least 10 years.

We were informed that his younger brother would be leading our trek. The second morning, as we ate breakfast with Noor’s brother, Fazal, we learned he was taking typhoid medication. This concerned us both from the standpoint of contracting the illness ourselves and/or the guide becoming debilitated en route to K2. Fazal would accompany us only because Noor was injured. Otherwise, the doctor had prescribed bed rest while he battled his disease.

Starting out

Our starting point for the trek was at Skardu. If you can imagine a teacup with a skinny runway at the bottom, you have an accurate picture of the airport that was built in Skardu in the 1940s. Pilots dive onto the runway surrounded by vertical giants of unyielding granite, ice and snow. Our team comprised 23 porters, a cook, assistant cook, Fazal and his assistant, Amin. We used no pack animals; everything was carried by humans.

Baltoro Glacier is one of the longest in the world, nearly 40 miles long and more than a mile wide. This torturous river of moving ice is riddled with crevasses, unstable slopes of loose pebbles and strewn rubble from the steady barrage of falling rocks and mud slides. At times, we crossed vast boulder fields with rocks the size of buses.

Our 16-day round trip consisted of day after day of walking, climbing, slipping, scrambling and falling. At night we prayed we would be safe and counted bruises. Paths a boot-width wide along cliff walls hundreds of feet above raging glacial rivers sent adrenaline levels off the scale. Fortunately we were not crossing in the spring runoff, when unstable mountainsides above turn the entire glacier into a "boulder alley" with people as bowling pins scampering to miss huge rocks. If the devil has a playground, it is surely the Baltoro Glacier.

Between being frightened to death and exhausted, we were treated to spectacular scenery: spiring granite towers and a saw-tooth mountain corridor of peaks that got steadily larger as we progressed up the glacier.

Throughout our trip, we had to submit our itineraries for approval by federal, regional and military authorities. Every day or so we passed and checked in with Pakistan Army troops stationed in tiny outposts. We were close to the disputed region of Kashmir, a strategically sensitive and restricted area where China, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India all come within 150 miles of each other. The conflict over Kashmir has been ongoing since 1947, resulting in two wars. Once we reached K2, it was only a right turn and a short distance to the Indo-Pakistan cease-fire line.

Finally, weeks after leaving Reno, we reached Concordia, the confluence of five glaciers, and site of eight of the world’s 30 highest mountains, including K2. The afternoon light was brilliant, glinting off snow-covered K2, Broad Peak, the Gasherbrum and Masherbrum groups. For one entire afternoon cameras snapped as we reveled in the wonder of having reached this awesome viewpoint — the vertical Hall of Fame. When we woke the next morning, a storm obscured everything but the nearest objects. Heavy snow fell as Fazal and the porters packed up camp as fast as possible to evacuate the area. By 7 a.m., we began the trek out, only this time in inclement weather. Was it worth an afternoon of sunny splendor spent in the company of the true giants of the world? Absolutely.

We laid out this fall’s trip before we left Pakistan last year. It was to be a more pleasurable "garden trek" at Elizabeth’s insistence; she claimed the Baltoro depleted her adrenal gland.

We returned in mid-August to Islamabad after checking the travel advisories, as the war over Kashmir had escalated greatly. The terrorist Osama bin Laden had gone into hiding, and the United States had escalated its search for him. Fazal, looking and feeling much stronger, met us at the airport eager to be off trekking the Wakhan Corridor of the Northwest Frontier Province, along the western border of Pakistan.

The Pakistan government allowed us access to an area that had only recently opened to foreign travelers. We would trek the mountains separating Afghanistan and Pakistan, then continue north along the Russian and Chinese borders. The foot journey would take us through the Hindu Kush and Pamir mountain ranges, into the Karakoram, over the 16,800-foot Chillinji Pass and end in Hunza, the ancient Shangri-La.

Second time around

We caravaned out of Islamabad in two jeeps crammed with six people and all our equipment. Six bumpy, dust-choking days later, after far too many close encounters with 2,000-foot roadside overlooks, we reached the starting point of the trek. Walking was a relief, and this we did for weeks, some days for as long as 15 1/2 hours. Unlike last year, we did not have the same porters the entire trip. Each time we crossed a regional boundary, Fazal interviewed and hired a new group of locals. Many of these porters were wealthy men, with large herds of yak and sheep. They hired on for the adventure and local notoriety. They pressed their animals into service, usually some assortment of donkeys, horses and yaks.

Initially the terrain was much more to Elizabeth’s liking than the treacherous Baltoro Glacier the year before. The high valleys of the Hindu Kush, beginning at 10,000 feet, are populated by small villages with no more than 20 or so people. Afghan refugees, nomads and shepherds share the land, moving their flocks of sheep and goats as they have for centuries through alpine meadows. Now pastoral scenes, those same peaceful valleys once were used for training maneuvers by the Soviets during the war with Afghanistan. At times we were only a one-hour walk from Afghanistan. Remnants of Russian supplies still dotted the landscape — a steel bed frame outside a sun-dried mud brick dwelling, ammo cans and shells, crashed helicopter parts.

The garden trek ended abruptly one morning when "Go with the flow" kicked in. Fazal casually said, "Today we will be crossing a small glacier." The small glacier proved to be one of many to come and worse than any single spot on the Baltoro. Glare ice glinted harshly in the morning sun, and when the yaks instinctively refused to cross narrow ice bridges spanning gaping crevasses, porters whipped and forced them into action.

While the valley trek was indeed garden-like, especially during the fall harvest, there was no denying the hazards we constantly faced. We crossed deep gorges and raging rivers on twig bridges and in one-person boxes suspended from frayed cables. These amounted to only a few of the daily dares along the way.

The people in this part of the world possess a stoic attitude toward the imminent danger and death inherent in their everyday routines — an attitude often unsettling to foreigners. The coup de grace came at supper one night when Fazal announced, "From here on there can be no turning back." Our point of no return began with a hike up a 1,000-foot scree wall in rain and snow, followed the next day by an icy 2,000-foot vertical monster. Open the window on a 20-story building, step out onto a narrow snow and ice-covered window ledge, then climb straight up for over two hours, and you have the basic picture.

Even more striking than the eye-popping scenery or its perils was the warmth and courage of the people we met.

A highlight came in one of the last villages we visited, where a family invited us into their home. The house was made of saplings covered with juniper branches and canvas. Inside, hand-woven carpets covered the ground, a fire pit was in the center, with a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape. Hanging from the saplings were guns, water bottles, clothing and a goat carcass, which had been dried and inflated for carrying water. It was so dark, we didn’t see many of these things until we saw our flash photos developed much later.

Sharing a bite

As we sat in the darkness, they fed us home-made bread, yak cheese, which tasted like unsalted butter, and chapatis (Indian-style flat bread.) We ate and drank goat milk tea while they watched. Elizabeth passed around photos of her family, which they loved. We left one with them as a memento.

These people were some of the most generous souls on Earth. Set against the hostile world they occupy, they had little or nothing to give except their hearts. Their example alone offers many lessons that we in the Western world have forgotten.

One of the great benefits of pursuing such extraordinary itineraries is exposure to remote cultures. Here the real odyssey begins — where all roads end, at the threshold of microcosms with horizons that reach only as far as the next valley. We were aware how fragile these places are, that the mere presence of an outsider may alter the balance by serving as a window to an existence never realized and to expectations that can never be met. We tried to maintain non-invasive sensibility, realizing that we may have been their only glimpse of a world beyond.

Less than a month after our return home, the Pakistan military overtook the government. The entire country must now "go with the flow" as they rewrite their own history without other cultures dictating it. For us, the coup was more than just a news story; it was reason to lie awake at night concerned for the welfare of our many friends there.

That visceral link is cause enough for us to visit such remarkable places, because it takes us beyond our own routines, making even the most remote cultures integral parts of our lives. Events there are no longer simply abstractions. We look forward to returning soon.