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.