Light Within

I have been back in Lahore since the early morning of 22 September. I was fortunate to get the plane from Kashgar to Islamabad and thus escape the bone-jarring 16 hour bus ride from the former to Gilgit where I would have laid up for the night and then faced another similar journey of equal duration to Rawalpindi. And then another few hours by train or coach to Lahore. But from the beginning.

We were equally lucky going out for we got the plane to Skardu on 10 August where we found everything in order waiting for us. Ghulam Mohammed, who was handling this trip, is a very good operator. On the following morning we were on the jeeps to Askole - World's End. I bore with me a framed photograph of Haji Mehdi who ran that store in Askole back in 1990 where we purchased, among other things a bag of potato mix which was mistaken for powder milk up on Lukpe La and we had potato tea - a novelty, but who had since died. His sons now run a little inn in the village. So now I have a photograph of one of his sons holding up a picture of their father.

The walk began the next morning and we went up the Panmah Glacier. On the fourth day out we reached Shingchakpi Camp Ground where Godwin-Austen had met with the four Baltis coming out of the swirling storm clouds. Weather remained persistently bad with clouds obscuring the higher peaks and daily evening showers of rain.

We did not camp at Shingchakpi but carried on to the next camp ground about four hours farther. This was Skinmung which lies in a fertile ablation valley on the right bank of the Chring Glacier. After a day of rest the main camp was left here and we three expeditioners (Nasser Khan, Naeem Awan and I) together with out two high altitude guides moved to a yet higher camp towards the Muztagh Pass. Nasser called it Falling Rock Camp because all day and night long rocks came tumbling down the slope behind our camp. The two high altitude guides made a reconnaissance to the base of Muztagh Pass and reported that there was a largish ice cap at its foot where, they said, 'a plane can land' while the pass itself was a 200 metre rock face. We knew then that the Muztagh was no trekker's pass, but a mountaineer's.

Nevertheless, the next morning we all went out together - the five of us - with the mountaineering gear. For the first time we were on a white glacier in a dramatic landscape. At about a kilometre from the pass we halted. Below us, about a 100 metres lower, was the basin of Chiring Glacier with a few crevasses clearly visible and beyond the rock face did indeed rise a full 200 metres. To me it did not seem insurmountable. In fact, it looked rather easy. Above it was the large ice cornice that was perhaps 50 metres high with its hood facing our direction. This was the real menace and could not have been passed without seriously endangering ourselves.

And this was the north side of the pass where ice conditions should logically have been better. We did not know what lay on the south side in the basin of the Sarpo Laggo Glacier. The other worry was that in our queries before leaving both Nasser and I had heard that the Chinese maintained a military presence on the Sarpo Laggo. And the Chinese being who they are, we were afraid we would all be run in and no one would know of us until several months later. We knew then that we had reached the end of our trek on this side. We returned to Skardu the way we had come.

Nasser and Naeem being government employees left me and I made my way from Skardu to Gilgit and from there to Kashgar. There I learned that my trekking permit which had been applied for two weeks earlier had not yet come through. And so I was laid up in Kashgar for three days. But since I wanted to look for Balti people in Yarkand, I went off with my guide (who spoke some English). In Yarkand we did meet up with a wonderful Balti man who spoke Urdu for he had been travelling in Pakistan. Neither he nor he said anyone else remembered why their ancestors came to Yarkand. Nor too did he know which route had been taken. He said his great-grandfather was the one to have settled here. This would mean the Baltis were travelling as late as after Younghusband's journeys in 1887 and two years later.

After I had nearly despaired of my permit coming through, it eventually did. I suspect the Chinese were doubtful of my credentials. We must not forget how the bearded brigade of Pakistan started sectarian trouble in Kashgar back in the days of the Gen Zia (1986). Moreover, I was being told by my tour operator and others that no Pakistani had ever come walking in Xinjiang. The only Pakis they knew there were the uneducated small time traders. So if the Chinese were suspicious, I couldn't really blame them.

The permit finally came through and we found ourselves in Raskam village where we had three camels awaiting us. So Wahab, my guide, Seet, the camel handler and I set out along the Surukhwat River for Aghil Pass (Shipton crossed it in 1937 to climb a nearby peak and look into the headwaters of the Surukhwat). Three days later we were in the very dramatic valley of the Shaksgam River. Broad and pebbly, the valley was bordered by scree and conglomerate slopes wind-eroded into crazy ravines. In September the river itself was braided across the flood plain in several streams. Wahab said the valley was completely swamped from June to August.

Where the river coming down from K-2 North Glacier runs into the Shaksgam, there is a rock in the middle of the flood plain. About a hundred metres high it is called Kindik Tash - Navel Rock. Twelve years ago in Lahore Mike and Rhona had a book titled To the Navel of the Earth. I don't know why I never borrowed to read it, but now when I heard this name, I knew the author would have been here. We turned south into the valley of K-2 North and for the first time I saw the famous Tibetan Wild Ass. A pair of them was startled as they grazed in a side ravine when we suddenly clattered down the slope. They made off in a hurry. Handsome animals they were too, not the drab grey of our asses, but a golden brown, taller and more powerfully built. They stopped at about 200 metres from us and looked us over carefully. But they were gone before I could change lenses to photograph them.

Beyond lay Suget (Willow) Jungle. Shipton, Tilman, Spender and Auden had camped here in 1937 while they mapped the Shaksgam. I have to re-read Blank on the Map to see if there were any trees in Shipton's time, because now there were only Salix bushes. My guide wanted me to climb a ridge and look at the north face of K-2 and for the first time I told him that was not my aim. Until then, for fear of being stopped from going any further, I had lied about wishing to see only K-2. So I took him with me to the toe of the Sarpo Laggo Glacier and told him how the Baltis would have come. From that point, according to the GPS, it was only 28.5 km to the foot of the Muztagh Pass where we had turned back. And the big disappointment was that the nearest Chinese presence was at Raskam, five days' march away! We could have come down all the way without fear of persecution. Had we known that, we would have actually attempted to cross the Muztagh.

But I am not disappointed. I have seen the way the Baltis travelled to Yarkand long before the first European explorers ventured in these places. The big find is that the Chinese and Uighur names for K-2 are derivatives of the Balti. From Chogo Ri (Great Mountain), the Uighur and Kirghiz called it Chogor and the Chinese Chongoli. The Chinese even stress the last syllable like the Baltis.

So that is in brief the story of the Muztagh Pass expedition. By the way, in Skardu I discovered that Yerkinpa was not a mulberry but an apricot. It being the end of the season, I was not able to take a sapling to Yarkand because, they said, it would just not go, it would die because it was so late in the season.

Salman Rashid is a traveler and travel writer of international repute. He has written many books including jhelum: CITY OF THE VITASTA
 

Tags: Traveling, Tourism, Travel Expiditions