Entry 15

June 17

Another day, another flight. I'm actually not feeling that great with my digestive track not responding positively to any medication. I drag myself up the hill and get a porter to carry my gear, as I just don’t have the energy to do it myself. It is a hot morning and the thermals don’t seem to have any incentive to rise. I let Grey and Alex launch first to see if it is worth getting ready at all and when they climb out I follow. To the right of the launch area is the Ultar Gorge and past that a scree slope that runs up to a concave vertical wall of several hundred meters high, a perfect thermal furnace. The lift is so strong it shunts you backwards. When I'm at the top of the wall my glider full frontals and opens asymmetrical resulting in a cascade of collapses and a double twist in my risers. When I untwist my glider dives towards the wall and with only meters to spare I manage to not smear myself on the rocks. Two thoughts flashed through my head; not very nice for the other pilot, flying next to me to see this happen; I'm not throwing my reserve as I will bounce on the wall and drag out my dying.

The other pilot, one of the Austrians, did consider landing after that but when he saw me hook straight into the same thermal changed his mind and had a great flight. I had sweaty palms for a bid but then got too busy flying again.  Another great flight followed flying close along the walls of Rakaposhe, dodging big over developing clouds  and landing in the fields  below the hotel just before the big gust frond hit the village. Grey was jealous about my flight the previous day so decided to make his last flight here in Hunza a long one. While the valley below him got battered by gust front after gust front he cruised around at 5000 meters. In the end he stayed up long enough for all the wind to blow away and surprised all present with a perfect top landing on the cemetery. On the radio he definitely sounded hypoxic and once on the ground his behavior was, well let’s say, different.

That was to be our last flight in Hunza. The next day the weather was not flyable and everybody needed a break anyway. Dimitry departed to Gilgit ahead of us to start the procedure to extend his visa. Laundry, Internet, eating and drinking coffee got us through that day with a dinner party organized by the Austrians in the evening for their departure the next day. Parties are real sausage factories here, weather it is a dinner invitation or a Para bum gathering there is never any women. The men dance with each other which is not everyone’s cup of tea, Alex retired as soon as the first moves were made. They are so conservative those Aussies.

19^th June.

We have hired a driver cum guide for our trip to Tarashing and Skardu. Manzoor is a well known figure in the Karimabad paragliding world with a good understanding of what pilots want. He is well connected and has a wealth of knowledge that comes in very handy.

However he has one weakness that impaired him to a dangerous level on our day of departure. As Dimitry didn’t have any news yet about his visa we decided to stay one more night in Karimabad and give Manzoor the time to sober up.

Ultar gorge behind Karimabad village

narrow cobbled alley ways

 Both Karimabad and the neighboring village have well preserved forts which stand on high strategic points. The Altit fort is surrounded by a well preserved village, build from local stone and mud with cobbled “souk like” alleyways.  The fort itself is in a Tibetan gumpa style, a remnant of the time that this area was one of the side tracks to the silk route.

Altit fort

altit fort

 A cup of tea in the adjacent orchard with the guide of the fort was very enlightening. I didn’t know that there are 74 different Islamic sects, of which a faire few can’t stand each other. Add to that the fact that Punjabis,Sindis, Balochis,Baltis, Chitralis, Hunzacutsz, Chen and other Partans, Kashmiris, Belsiskis all have a grudge or a conflict with each other and you get an idea of how complex a society this really is. Another interesting development is the slow move of China back into the Northern territories. With the new lake making transport to the north harder the Chinese are giving out food aid and other niceties. With the advance of the KKH it will be interesting to see what is going to happen in the years to come.

20^th June. After a morning of coffees, pancakes and last minute purchases we leave early afternoon for Gilgit. Manzoor has bought new tires for the Jeep which get fitted in the next town. I try to find another medicine to firm up my waste products, as everything I have tried so far hasn’t had the desired effect.  We drive the four hours to Gilgit where it is stinking hot. We find Dimitry in the hotel, still with no news about his visa. Manzoor, Dimitry and I drive to the Immigration office to see if we can speed things up. It is as if someone has decided that tourism is to be discouraged in Pakistan.  For some people it is hard enough to get a visa, now they have decided to make it even harder to extend a visa. Manzoor has friends in useful places but even with their help we cannot speed up the process, worst, it looks like Dimitry is not going to get his visa at all. The next morning we drive past the office again but the bureaucrat there is one of the worst sorts so we have to give up, Dimitry is going home and we drive on to Tarashing. We say our goodbyes at the bus station where we help him to buy a ticket for the next day and then we are off, direction Nanga Parbat.

changing tyres on our Jeep

We drive through the Gilgit river valley, past the confluence with the Indus and then leave the KKH to climb up in a narrow side valley that leads to Astore. The landscape is awesome, awesomely hot, awesomely rocky, awesomely big rivers. We drive out of the Hindu Kush into the Karakorum and the start of the Himalayas. The road snakes up the valley high above the raging Astore River till the valley opens up a bit and we drive into a much greener landscape.

Driving allong the Gilgit river

Sunset behind Nanga Parbat

The road goes on forever, crossing and re crossing the river on big new bridges. The road leads into the disputed border zone with India and therefore has a military purpose as well. Roads without such purpose get a lot less maintenance.  We climb higher and higher and leave the tar seal, drive around a corner and get an eyeful of Nanga Parbat with the setting sun behind it.

Flowers in the meadows. Orchids

We are back in glacier country with a big G and also have stepped back in time. Tarashing has no electricity or drink water supply and the main street is a track. We are back at 3000meter altitude and there for back in spring time. The willow trees are fresh green and the meadows are lush and flowering 

sunrise on Nanga Parbat

Not so happy about beiing taken on photo

We stay in a basic little guesthouse with very nice staff that whips up good basic grub for the hungry travelers. The evening we arrive, the cloudbase is at 8000 meters, which makes us enthusiastic about the next day’s possibilities.  I get up at 5.30am the next morning to catch the sunrise on the Rupal face of Nanga Parbat and to take some photos in the village. The sky is cloudless and after an early breakfast we jump in the Jeep to drive up as far as we can towards the launch area. Alex and Grey hire porters to carry their gear up the hill for the hour walk. At a slow pace it is doable for me but I definitely feel the altitude. We find a good spot to launch, facing the sun, with light thermals coming up. A cloudbase has formed at 5500meters and that is where it stays, limiting our possibilities.

Rupal face? Nanga Parbat

Heavy cloud over the valley

Rupal Glacier

I'm the first one to launch and have to work really hard to not slide into the valley. In the end I catch a thermal from a low spur which I share with a falcon. Grey has a hard time finding some lift but catches a good one low in the valley in the end and Alex, as usual, flies into a thermal straight after launching.  As usual we never fly together but all fly similar routes. The sky darkens rapidly where the four valleys meet and soon enough we are dodging big black over developing clouds. No big cross country potential unfortunately but we still get a few hours of airtime over some pretty special terrain

Alex decides to land first as he gets rained on and has a fairly eventful time of it. The downdrafts of the showers combined with the winds coming from the different valleys descending over the glaciers makes for an interesting mix. By the time Grey and I land the showers have dissipated and we put down comfortably on a green meadow in the middle of the village. Twenty minutes later the wind comes back with a revenge and almost tears the roof of the hotel.

Unfortunately, that is the only flight we get in Tarashing, the next day dawns cloudy and windy with no prospect of flying. Instead Grey and I walk up the Rupal valley and into the Stone Age. The houses are mud and rock with flat roofs with no windows, there is hardly any difference between them and the place they keep the cattle.  Life here revolves around the seasons and the production of enough food for the winter. All transport is by human portage or the help of donkeys of which the valley echo’s of braying. To get to this part of the valley, past Tarashing, one has to cross the snout of the Chungphar Glacier and climb up and down the lateral moraine on both sides. All the kids from the upper valley have to make the crossing twice to go to school, quiet different from getting on the school bus……

Glacier to cross to get to school

orchids galore

women working the fields

almost caught the mother on photo skinning a goat. She swang the knife at me, half in yest

Tea with the locals

primitive living

This time of the year it is the women that are in the fields doing the weeding and hilling up the potatoes (putting earth around the plants) and so there are dozens dotted around the landscape. Often when we approach they will move away or at least cover themselves up with their veils which makes me feel like I'm the big bad wolf praying on the innocent lambs.

It is a pity we can’t verbally communicate with the men we meet, as there is plenty of things I would like to ask. We get invited for cups of tea anyway and have a rudimentary conversation with hands and feed and a few words of English.

Entry 14. 27th june.Looks like I will be out of Internet access for some time, maybe two weeks. Dont get worried if it is 3 weeks

Entry 12

18-06

The days keep piling up and I hardly find the time to write a few words. Today was the forth flying day in a row and I'm looking forward to a rest day. On the 15^th Grey, Alex and I flew to Passou, the village we visited on the 12^th and 13^th. Not a very long flight in time and distance but totally awesome in scenery. Actually scenery is not the right word to describe the landscape we flew over. The scale of the mountains and glaciers is superlative with some of those rivers of ice more than 60Km long The mountains around here are all around the 6000meter mark with some reaching over 7000, with the valley floor around 2400 meters that still makes for big mountains.

flying north to Passou. The south end of Attabad lake just visible

The cloudbase has been low so far this season which means that we are trapped within the valley systems rather than being able to fly over the mountains from valley to valley. The high relative humidity makes for early developing cumuli that quickly over develop and therefore limit the distance we can fly.

The north end of Attabad lake right ottom and the fairytale mountain in the right top corner

 We still get some spectacular flights though and the flight to Passou was no exception. In the beginning of the flight we were all together but as Dimitry has no radio we usually loose him on the way. The flight took us over a high ridge running down from Ultar peak to the new lake and then across Ghulkin Glacier and Passou Glacier.

Passou glacier

Passou and Batura Glaciers

Him self with fairytale mountain in the background

Summitof Tupopan Mountain

Batura Glacier once more

The Fairytale mountain that we had been fantasizing about was only a glide away and all three of us got to thermal up the spires and pyramids of Tupopan mountain, with Alex doing merry go rounds around some of the spires to get some good video footage.

  The view over the Batura Glacier was breath taking as was the sight of the Passou and

Ghulkin Glaciers slowly passing by on the glide back to the head of the lake. The wind got stronger sinking down into the valley and, with the rivers of cold air coming down the glaciers, the last couple of hundred meters to the ground were quiet turbulent. I had my eye on the last green field at the snout of the glacier before the landscape turned to a dusty and rocky jumble. The last fifty meters were in vertical descend which almost made me land short and into a yard with some cows and goats. Forward speed increased just in time to make me land on my feet in the middle of the green field. Even here I was able to assemble a gathering of on looking kids and adults that were very helpful packing up my stuff and much amused when I turned my back and had a five minute pee right in front of them.

I had landed a few kilometers away from the head of the lake and with the late afternoon hour I was affright to mis the last boat across the lake. All the hurrying proved in vain as there was not enough passengers to fill a boat anyway. We got a short boat ride to the next village, Gulmit, where we found a hotel for the night.

 The village had a good feel to it and we would have loved to spend some more time there. In the evening Alex and I went for a walk through the narrow streets where we bumped into a very friendly woman that invited us into her home. No adventure without risk so I said yes sure we would love to see her house. We were let through a courtyard into a small hallway were we took of our shoes. From there we entered the main living quarters which had no windows. In the middle was a square area which is used to eat. Around the perimeter on three sides were mattresses and on the forth side was room for storage and a passage to the kitchen. In the living area sat a man that babbled a lot in Urdu. His young son was able to translate a bit and that is how we learned that this man was  blind, fifty years old and married five times. We got served salty tea and white bread and the old man played us a tune on the flute. When is the last time you invited a total stranger into your home for a cup of tea? I find these” golden moments”.

Friendly local woman making us a cup of tea

Near the boat ramp looking back at Tupopan Mountain

16th june.

The early bird gets the worm……… but not the first boat. We got up at 5.30am to have time for breakfast and to be back at the waterfront by 7am. We had to wait another hour before one of the boats picked us up. It was beautiful to see the early morning light creeping over the landscape and a very peaceful atmosphere hung over the lake. At the other end of the lake we got a Jeep for a reasonable price and by 10 am we were back at our hotel to grab a quick bite to eat before driving up to the launch.

Waiting for the boat in the morning the sun slowely glides into the valley

The flying conditions were a copy of the previous day with maybe a little les wind. The launch site is half an hour walk from the road up a steep rocky hillside. The launch site it selves is strewn with big boulders and the ground is bare but for the little line grabbers that seem to grow everywhere.

The north end of Rakaposhe with one of the Glaciers running of Mt Duran on the left

Alex is somewere in the picture. Close up on the face of rakaposhe

Today we decide to have a go at flying around Rakaposhe, a 7700 meter giant glacier covered mountain that dominates the landscape of the Hunza valley. When we got to the critical point where we have to cross the valley and fly onto one of the big spurs that come down from Rakaposhe, the clouds over develop and I end up flying in heavy snow. One moment it snows and the next the whole cloud just disappears and the sun comes out again. In Europe one would not fly in those conditions as the risk of getting sucked up in the clouds would be too real. Here we fly around the dark clouds or wait simply for the cloud to spend it selves.

The circumnavigation will have to wait for another day as the sky on the south side of the mountain really got to dark. Instead we glided along the glacier covered west face at 5000meters, 2.5Km under the summit. The whole flight I fly by myself and although we stay in radio contact it seems impossible to fly together. This is surely a matter of discipline as our Austrian friends stay together throughout their flights.

I glide back to Karimabad and prepare myself for the landing and the swarm of kids that with gather. Just in time I spot the Austrians and decide to work my way up to them.  The reward was one of the most beautiful flying experiences I’ve ever had. We worked our way up in the same thermals, flying along shear walls and over razor sharp ridges with the Ultar Glacier snaking its way down through the gorge more than a thousand meters below us. The late afternoon sun peeped through the clouds and bathed the snow and ice covered walls in a picture perfect light.

Flying with one of the Austrians along the face Hunza peak

Looking down on Ultarglacier with Karimabad far left

Lady Finger

We glided along the base of Lady Finger, a pinnacle of reddish rock that stands out from all the surrounding summits, to leave the Ultar basin and try and get to the sunny side of the ridge.  There the thermals were very strong and catapulted us to the 6000meter cloud base in no time.  With all this height I glided one more time along the vertical walls of Hunza Peak and the high hanging glaciers with huge ice cliffs to then fly out over the valley with 2000meters to spare. 

There are several places we can land but the one nearest to our hotel is in the cemetery. Muslims don’t seem to attach the same value to the death, as most of the graves are not more than a few rocks surrounding a pile of dirt and nobody seems to take offence when you walk straight over them.

It is a tricky landing spot with power lines at one end a sheer drop at another and five antenna towers at a third. I come in a bid high and risk to overshoot the landing and end up in the towers so with a few turns and a lot of flapping I plant myself on the side of a hillock with my glider dropping neatly in a more sophisticated grave, surrounded by wall. Perfect, as the crowd of kids is bigger than ever.

Entry eleven

June 14, 2012

It was twelve days ago that I had my last flight, lucky I don’t consider this trip a Para Gliding holiday, rather a holiday with some Para Gliding. Yesterday we, Grey, Alex myself and two guys from Switzerland, came back from a two day trip up the valley. Three years ago a massive landslide came down into the valley about 15Km from Karimabad that not only blocked the Karakoram Highway but also the Hunza river. It took one year for the water to reach the top of the dam and to form a lake that is now 35Km long, drowning several villages and isolating others that are now only accessible by boat.

To get to the lake we walked, got a ride on a tractor and stood on the back of a Jeep

Alex had to sit on the front of the Jeep to play counter balance

The village of Attabad stood formerly on the slope that gave way to gravity and a hundred houses disappeared in the disaster together with all the fields surrounding them. As if the people here don’t have a hard enough time already they now have to put up with a lake blocking the main north south connection. All goods have to be unloaded onto boats that have been trucked in from elsewere, ferried over the lake and reloaded at the other end, adding a huge cost to the transport.

The dam formed by the landslide is more than 100 meters high. A rough track has been cut to access the shoreline.

It is clear that nature has its own way, it has created a beautiful lake in this valley and it was a great excursion to cruse from one end to the other.  The wooden flat-bottomed boats are propelled by two motors mounted on a beam that sticks out over both boards. Each motor has a long drive shaft with a propeller at the end that is lowered into the water once away from the shore. There is no exhaust system so the noise is deafening.

Add caption

At the far end of the lake the Ghulkin Glacier reaches all the way down into the valley right to the road. The evidence of the forces of nature are omnipresent, the receding lake level has left a strip of land covered with silt 50cm thick, recent floods have carried tones and tones of sand and boulders down a stream and buried a recently build bridge, the glaciers have only recently receded and have left moraine walls behind, hundreds of meters high. It is an awesome landscape and still humans are channeling water to little green fields in the middle of this chaos, building roads and eking out a living.

hundreds of houses have disapeared under the water. The army has just recently lowered the outflow of the lake by ten meters. In the two years that the land has been under water, a deposit of 50cm of silt has been formed.

At the far end of the lake we took a taxi Van to the town of Pasou which turned out to be less than a village with fortunately a few guesthouses and a general store. Here the valley is wide with the river flowing in an enormous gravel bed. The surrounding mountains are limestone and in the light of the setting sun the clouds lifted to reveal the” fairytale like” juxtaposition of pyramids, turrets and spires that gave us all the desire to fly over and around them. The scale of the place is huge and made me feel small and vulnerable.

On the morning of the second day we went for a walk to try and find a suspension bridge that is strung over the river. Luckily we find out, before we attempt to do a loop walk, that a second bridge has been damaged by the rising lake so we don’t get stuck at the far end. Alex elects to hitch a ride back to the ferry as he has a problem with his knee. To get to the bridge we end up on some seriously narrow ledges with the river raging below us where a faux pas would be certain death. Grey is the wise man and retreats but I follow the Swiss boys and must admit to some sweaty palms. We got through though and found the bridge to be a true work of art. 

The settlement of Pasou with the Hunza river.

Grey found the proper way to reach the bridge over a newly carved out track so we all got to cross the suspension bridge that spans the Hunza river over 200 meters. The tiny planks that serve as steps were tread between the five cables that formed the walkway. Each plank was a step size apart and some were broken…….

We scrambled back up to the Karakoram Highway and caught a ride back to the ferry where we find Alex still waiting for the boat.



The KKH ready to be tar sealed

Limestone mountains looking like fairytail landscape.

scrambeling over a narrow ledge

 The Chinese, who are constructing the KKH have a big interest in this road. Not only is Pakistan a big market, this link to the nearest sea port is a lot shorter than through China itself. No wonder they are in a hurry to get rid of the lake or failing that, dig a tunnel around it.

So today we flew. The cloudbase was not very high and the wind fairly strong which made for turbulent flying conditions. Good to get some time in the air though.

Suspention bridge over the Hunza river.