My travel diaries
Monday 30 July, 2007 - Chilas, Karakoram Highway, Pakistan
My alarm wakes me at 4am, with a huge electrical storm flashing away outside. A quick shower, then it's down to breakfast and we are on the road at 5am, just as dawn is beginning to break.
On the road
We leave Islamabad in driving rain, but there is plenty of space in the bus and the journey is comfortable, although it turns out to be inordinately long. It's a couple of hours before the heavy rain abates and I discover this part of Pakistan to be a green and fertile place. The terrain is quite flat to begin with; fields stretch around us, but the hills are never very far away, rising up among the clouds on the horizon.
After two or three hours the road starts gradually rising and we emerge onto a wide grassy plateau. We stop at a pleasant spot with a verandah and a neat little garden where we have 9am tea. Despite a break in the rain, it's warm and humid. The four hours from Islamabad seem to have passed quickly, but we are still not fully awake and are all a bit subdued. In fact, nobody says a word as we sip our tea and Geoff divides up the cake Moeen has brought as a gift.
"I bet you didn't expect to be travelling with such interesting people," Geoff says to Moeen, deadpan. I later find out this is his style of humour, though this particular comment could easily have been made in all seriousness.
The Indus Valley
After half an hour we continue on the road. Lindsay's husband Toby, a short, stocky character who looks to me like he might turn out to be a bit an athlete, is fascinated by the colourful, intricately decorated lorries we pass on the road and keeps taking photographs. At 11am our road joins the mighty Indus River and follows it for the remainder of the day, weaving in and out high above its frequent tributaries.
We stop for lunch in the small town of Besham on the Karakoram Highway, where we sit in the upstairs restaurant of one of its few hotels. It's good to get out for a leg stretch. I was wide awake for the first few hours of the drive, but now the scenery is getting much more interesting I find myself nodding off at frequent intervals. This continues after lunch. I'm sitting on the right side of the bus, and the sides of the Indus Valley are so steep that whether I have a view depends on whether we're driving on the left or right of the river. Fortunately, for much of the afternoon the river is on our right. Before lunch we were passing through pine forest, but now the landscape is becoming increasingly arid, until eventually the vegetation disappears altogether and rocks and scree slopes are all around us.
Hitch-hiking the Karakoram Highway
We have an afternoon tea break in a place called Dasu, where we sit on a spartan roof terrace overlooking the river and drink coffee. I'm still in the toilet when the bus is about to depart, and by the time I get outside the building it's just pulling away. I have to bang on the door to be let in. Nobody seems to have noticed that I wasn't there, and they're all looking a bit sheepish as I take my seat.
"You weren't quick enough!" I tell them.
I have a quick glance at my map. The principal buildings in Dasu appear to be a "Police Colony" (whatever that is), a barracks and a gun shop. It probably isn't the sort of place you want to try hitching a lift out of.
Afterwards the Indus is to our left and I have just a rocky wall to stare at out of my window, so I fall asleep. When I wake up it's been dark for some time and we're just pulling into a hotel in Chilas. I look at my watch; it's 8pm and we've been on the road for 15 hours. This isn't the best way to appreciate the Karakoram Highway, but at times it's been impressive when I've been awake. Our hotel is a nice clean authentic stone affair. There is another huge buffet to tuck into, and so far I've been eating pretty well in Pakistan. Toby, Lindsay and I try a tin of the Bavaria non-alcoholic beer. Being a strict Muslim country, alcohol is illegal here, so this is the best we're going to get till we reach China. I notice from the label that this particular brew is not just 0% alcohol content, but 0.0%. It's horrible, and I have to wash it down with water. The food is good though, and I sleep well afterwards.Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Next
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