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Journey In
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At
the time Harry
worked as a mechanic for an engine development company, and he took care of the rather superior version of an Austin K9
ex-WD truck that had been bought. This probably explains why it got us
there and back with a lot less problems than the previous epic; I had
been the “mechanic” then, more of a bodger really. In my defence,
the road had also improved a lot in four years, there was now tarmac all
the way. We took the same route (click here for
map) as far as just
after the Kabul gorge, where we had turned left up the Kunar River at
Jalalabad for Nuristan in 1970. This time we just carried straight on
over the famous Khyber Pass to Peshawar then Islamabad. The
stifling heat of this, the administrative capital, was already bad
enough, though we were told that it was cool compared to the rest of the
country, being already a bit higher. The traditional wrangling with
officialdom was taken care of and with Ickbal, our young liaison
officer, installed we were soon off again, back West towards Peshawar,
then North to Chitral. He was in fact an altogether pleasant character,
barely older than us but already well started in his military career,
unlike us! He spoke perfect English as well as Urdu and other dialects
and proved to be invaluable in negotiating with the locals on numerous
occasions. The
frontier area was still very wild, much more so than the Afghanistan
that I had known – everyone seemed to be armed and Ickbal told us that
the zone was very dangerous because of the smuggling that went on
between Afghanistan and Pakistan. I remember very clearly our first
night on the road to Chitral, eating in a restaurant under the steady
gaze of a group of locals at a nearby table, black turbans, long black
hair and beards and bright, piercing dark eyes, belts of cartridges
across the breast and rifles propped up against the wall. From time to
time they would turn there heads and whisper together before resuming
their curiosity. It was more impressive than frightening, they were a
fine group that would have made a superb portrait, Pathan warriors
straight out of a Boys Own story. When we left Ickbal guided us to the
nearby police compound where we slept safely behind the thick walls with
sheet steel turrets at each corner. He said not to worry, he thought it
was advisable, that’s all! The
road leads up over a high pass, until recently a cable car was used in
winter but they were building a new, all weather road. At one point we
had to stop while dynamite was used just ahead; boulders could be seen
falling quite nearby as we all hid behind the truck. Ours was higher and
wider than most of the other lorries and at one point I had to break off
a few overhanging rocky spikes with a peg hammer as we crawled along
with the offside wheels visibly squeezing out the retaining wall above
the river gorge below, splendid memories. The end of the road for us was
an old suspension bridge just before Chitral which was too narrow for
traffic. Chitral
was picturesque, Tirich Mir making a perfect backdrop, narrow earth
streets and low houses with thick mud walls. The bazaar was like so many
others, with the inevitable cafés packed with stoned Europeans, trying
to look local. Generally the latter laughed when they pointed them out,
with that finger to the temple sign which is understood throughout the
world. One
little event that has stuck in my mind, whereas so much hasn’t,
concerns a strange encounter one evening. I don’t know if it was Colin
or Ickbal, but somehow we went to meet a local personage of some
importance who had invited us to his house for the evening. I have a
dream-like recollection of driving high up on a hillside behind Chitral
and spending the evening chatting with this mysterious character. He
wore the typical clothes, hat with rolled brim, baggy trousers and
waist-coat, but was clearly someone of much education. He spoke to us
without pretension, and listened politely to our naïve remarks,
inscrutably, and with a slightly amused twinkle in his dark eyes. One
point I recall was when he explained how he admired the Chinese, not so
much for any simple political reasons but because they got the people to
work; the problem with Pakistan and India, he said, was that hard work
wasn’t in their culture and what poor countries desperately needed was
governments that got their peoples down to work. It seemed a good point. The
evening was a long pleasant one with food and drink and much
conversation, who he really was I never knew, only that Ickbal referred
to him as an important man, a prince.* Was it a dream, or did it really
happen? He was perhaps in his thirties or forties then, so by now he
would be quite an old man; I often wonder if he managed to realise any
of his plans, was he one of the clan leaders involved in the latest
Afghan wars – Chitral is just over the border from Nuristan, a short
walk down the river? Whatever he did or didn’t do, he still lives on
in my memory at least. Our
brief tourist interlude was now over and as the road beyond was too
narrow for our lorry, we hired two jeeps to take us and our baggage to
the road head. Ours were very old Willys Jeeps that looked like they
were straight out of a D-day landing, after the battle, and probably
were old enough. This didn’t stop them being loaded up with all our
food and gear, with us on top. To keep the front wheels on the road they
had to tie a few tri-wall boxes on the front bumpers, and then we were
off. The track was more and more precipitous, fording the side rivers
was the most interesting bit, the force of the water sometimes pushing
them sideways as they bounced over the boulders in the bed of the
torrents. There were also a number of stops for mechanical problems
which the drivers always seemed to repair with bits of wire and a bang
or two. They were a nice enough crew, stopping for a smoke of distinctly
aromatic home rolls whenever things got too steep. When
the jeeps could go no further, we hired a mixture of donkeys, horses and
porters, Ickbal’s presence was invaluable but even he lost his
patience occasionally. We had more than 100 kms to walk, along the same
Kunar river which joins the Kabul river near Peshawar. The valley was
still wide but at this time of year the river was fairly low and we
often walked along wide mud plains, baked white by the sun. Other times
we were on narrow paths which climbed up the valley sides to avoid rocky
bluffs but always with tantalising views of snowy mountains beyond the
arid stony flanks near the river. Every few kilometres there would be a
village with its patchwork
of little fields and fine old trees, all kept alive by a myriad of
narrow irrigation channels, rain being rare for much of the year. All in
all it was very similar to the countryside of North East Afghanistan, or
Nuristan, the culture is similar too and there have been numerous
exchanges of population over the centuries. One of the last was when, at
the end of the nineteenth century Nuristan was bloodily converted to
Islam by the rulers of Kabul. To escape the massacre many crossed the
border from Nuristan to Chitral. There are still remnants of these
cultures in a few isolated valleys, they have even become a tourist
attraction, but most of the people here were at least nominally Muslim. The
standard greeting, repeated dozens of time per day on the path was
"Salaam alaikum", with the standard reply of "Alaikum
salaam" (speakers of Arabic will please excuse the approximate
'phonetic' transcription!). The
walk was not generally hard, and the environment splendid, the altitude
made us puff a bit and the endless haggling with the porters was tedious
– it always seems to be the case that the people from lower down are
more trouble than those from higher up. The best were a pair of
professional donkey drivers who just got on with the job. We had an
enormous stock of cigarettes, kindly given to us by the Pakistan Tobacco
Company which generally could be counted on to sort out the problem and
get the caravan moving again. When we were near Pecchus, the site chosen
for our base camp, the view was blocked by heavy
cloud. As we discovered on the walk out, this was really a bit of bad
luck as we wasted a lot of time exploring the various glaciers leading
up to Koyo Zom – in good weather the approach can be seen fairly
clearly from the path which follows the North side of the valley. The
river now disappeared under the snout of the Chatiboi glacier, which
provides a convenient bridge for men and beasts to cross to a flat stony
spot on the true left moraine, just outside of the small village of
Pecchus. The latter is an interesting spot, there are hot springs nearby
which have been known since antiquity, and the people themselves are
fairer than most of the inhabitants of the Kunar valley and speak a
different language. It is said that they descend from Greeks who
deserted from Alexander the Great’s army over two thousand years
ago… this is a fairly frequent claim in these parts, and perhaps one
day an ADN specialist will be able to discover if there is any truth in
it. The
main valley carries on East to a pass which leads to China, just a few
miles away, but we were to go no further for the next five weeks and our
main concern was paying off the porters, putting up the tents and
building a bit of a stone shelter as a communal living area. We decided
to split up into three groups, two pairs and a threesome as although
Ickbal was not equipped for high altitude work, he was keen to take part
in the initial climbing at least. The three groups would then explore
the three glaciers which come down from the highest point of the area,
Koyo Zom. From East to West these are the Chatiboi, the Pecchus and the
Koyo glaciers. This would enable us to get acclimatized, have a bit of
fun climbing then decide on how to approach and climb Koyo Zom itself as
a joint effort. * I have since had confirmation from Rob Wild that this evening did take place, I hadn't imagined it, and the man's name was Prince Burhan-ud-Din of Chitral and he would have been 59 when we met him. For details see : burhan.htm.
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