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.

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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.