Taking the high road home

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That's right, we're in Pakistan - or rather were, having just left after the thick end of three weeks travelling down the spine of the country. And before you start to panic Mum and Dad, don't worry: this was not the land of mujaheddin and fundamentalist madrassas that the English media makes it out to be (not the bits we were in, at any rate). I'd go as far as to say that northern Pakistan is right up there in terms of the countries we've visited, with perhaps the most spectacular scenery of them all. And the journey down the Karakoram Highway, which snakes a tortuous course between the world's three highest mountain ranges, was the perfect way to conclude our year of hoofing it around the world. Whoever said that travelling is not about your destination but how you get there has definitely spent some time on this road.

We started out down the Karakoram (henceforth to be known as the KKH to save me from RSI) from Kashgar in north-west China, a place famed for being the crossroads of the ancient Silk Road trading routes that ran from China's east coast all the way to edge of continental Europe. Nowadays Kashgar is pretty much like any other big Chinese city, with two crucial exceptions. The population is mostly Uighur (pronounced wee-ghur) folk from Central Asia, so they are more Russian rather than Chinese in the way they look, dress and act; in fact, it's all very Borat around these parts. And secondly, every weekend Kashgar plays host to the world's biggest Sunday market, as hordes of traders flock into the city from the countryside to bargain over everything from evil-sounding musical instruments to impotency remedies made from snake guts.

It's an incredible spectacle, particularly the livestock market, at which pretty much anything that can be ridden, milked, sheared or eaten is haggled over by groups of badly-dressed man who frequently seem to be on the verge of a godawful tear-up in the moments before a deal is struck - at which point its laughter and cups of tea all round. A bit like the London Metals Exchange without all the old Etonians, I guess.

We had a ball arguing tooth and nail over various culinary and millinery items - I got a discount at one point because a dodgy looking man said he liked my beard - even though we'd originally come to town intending to explore the lesser-travelled lower Silk Route, which ploughs through the fearsome Taklamakan Desert on its way to Kashgar. A largely unhabited wildernes dotted with tiny trading villages, this stretch used to take weeks to cross and killed plenty of those who tried. But, wouldn't you know it, an aggressive programme of Chinesation has more or less erased any trace of the old road. It's all two-lane blacktop now, so our intended Hidalgo-style adventure ultimately morphed into a taxi ride to the edge of the desert followed by a one hour camel-ride into the dunes. The shifting sands are gorgeous to look at, but it's no wonder the journey killed so many people: even 60 minutes aboard a camel is murder on your arse.

After that, it was time to hit the KKH, which originates in Kashgar and doesn't run out until the edge of the Pakistan capital Islamabad, several hundred miles later. It's still a reasonably intrepid trip despite the decrepit buses and fabulously garish trucks that ply the route each day. For one thing, the highway snakes its way through a jaw-dropping mountain landscape where five countries - China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and India - converge. And for another, building a road that runs between 4000 and 5500 metres for big sections, in a climate so hostile that it's only open for six months of the year, posed one of the world's great civil engineering challenges. Thousands of labourers are reputed to have died during the 18 years it took to hack, crush and dynamite the pass through the mountains, and the process was so violent that the mountains have not 'settled' again in several places. Rockfall, landslides and more besides are a daily occurence, as we were to discover first-hand.

It takes two days on the bus to get from Kashgar and into Pakistan: seven hours on day one followed by an overnight stop in a town called Tashkurgan at the Chinese border, which is pretty much exclusively occupied by Tajik people. Then it's 50-odd miles through a mountain no-man's-land before you reach Pakistani immigration. There's never a dull moment on this stretch, though. The scenery is just mind-blowing, with everything from saw-tooth peaks to rivers of ice to take your mind off the nutter at the wheel of the bus. You can also see yurts belonging to nomads from nearby Kyrgyzstan who farm the surrounding pasture during the summer. And it's also the only road I've ever been on where you suddenly change the side on which you drive: by a small sign planted apropos of nothing on top of a hill. God knows what happens if you don't spot it.

It's pretty clear where you enter Pakistan, however. Not only does the view get even more impossibly spectacular, but the road quality deteriorates to Christ-I-think-my-lunch-is-coming-back levels. And this is where the fun and games began. One minute our bus was screaming down a rutted single-track road between jagged cliffs of sandstone, the next we were at the back of a huge traffic jam in the middle of nowhere. Our driver, not to be defeated, barely feathered the throttle and ploughed past the queue of trucks, cars and coaches, only to get to the head of it to find that the road had disappeared. The only bit left was a solitary guardrail that led down into a gigantic river the stretched as far as the eye could see ahead of us. If, like us, you didn't have a boat, this was not good news.

It transpired that there had been an unusually heavy snowfall in northern Pakistan this year. When it started to melt, the resulting water quickly overwhelmed the road and turned it into Thorpe Park. Hilariously, although it had been like this for about a week, a lone digger had been despatched to half-heartedly attempt to staunch the flow - about as useful as turning up to the Great Fire of London with a watering can. There was nothing for it but for everybody on our bus to grab their bags and hike about two kilometres up one of the surrounding mountainsides to skirt around the water in the hope of finding a lift on the other side. We secretly enjoyed this, but there were plenty of people who didn't, including a poor group of English ladies in their mid-70s.

But only on the other side did all hell break loose. The bus which our company had promised to send for us wasn't there. In its place was another company's vehicle, complete with driver and conductor - a pair of officious little pricks, if you don't mind me saying so Dad - who attempted to sting us for a fiver each for the privilege of finishing the journey we'd paid handsomely for back in Kashgar. Now, a fiver's a lot of money around these parts, and these demands did not go down at all well, neither with us nor the group of fellow tight-fisted travellers who were on our us, and especially when the price was quickly discounted when it was clear we weren't about to roll over. Pretty soon there were frenzied arguments breaking out left, right and centre: Pakistani businessmen giving their compatriots what-for at top volume; a lone policeman dismissing our driver as a 'lazy bastard' for clearly not giving a monkey's; and us, part of a six-strong committee of passive resistance who decided to sit on the new bus in silence until it took us to our destination. This strategy was working fine until the driver got on the bus, took the keys and buggered off home in a nearby jeep. But eventually, after over two hours of bile and recrimination, the bus set off for Pakistani immigration at Sost. (We didn't pay either, thanks to the age-old tactic of doing a runner when it pulled up in the depot.)

This had not been the accommodating welcome to Pakistan we'd hoped for, but all that changed during our first night at the border town, Sost. The people were smiley and friendly, the food was good and everything was cheap as chips. But the real star of the show was the scenery. In this area, known as the Hunza Valley after the river that roars through it, there's a breathtaking vista at every corner: towering rock massifs, plunging canyons and mighty glaciers all over the shop. And somehow it got better the further down the KKH we went.

We'd made friends with a crazy Spanish couple on The Bus From Hell whose exploits made ours look like a day-trip to Marwell Zoo: they've been away for two and a half years driving their self-built camper van through the middle east and into Pakistan, and they're not planning on going home for at least another two years. We cadged a lift with them down the KKH to Passu, a village perched so close to the edge of the Hunza that the water has washed away half of the place over the last 50 years or so. Inspired by the Spaniards' example, we ended up borrowing a tent and camping on the edge of the Passu Glacier, which meant (a) an incredible view when we poked our heads out in the morning but (b) howling winds at night. We had no trouble sleeping, however, given that we spent our days doing the most epic day treks of our whole trip. We hiked 1000 metres up to the top of a giant rock for cloth-touching views of the town and the 40-mile-long Batura Glacier which runs down to it; crossed the most dangerous suspension bridges I hope we ever meet; and, on two occasions, got sufficiently lost that we blithely followed 'paths' that led us to the edge of clifftops 100 metres above our intended routes. The first time this happened it was in the process of getting dark, which really wasn't funny at all.

So when we actually attempted a 'serious' five-day trek in the region, 20 miles down the road in the impossibly lovely town of Karimabad, we opted to hire a guide and porter. This was just as well, as our route to a remote spot called Rush Peak involved no fewer than four different glacier crossings. To both save on hiring a second porter and prove how hard I am, I volunteered to carry a 20kg load (including our tent) on my back. As a result, I was so completely knackered that I fell asleep the second we finished walking each day. But this trek was worth any suffering. Not only were we so cut off from civilisation that we saw only a handful of shepherds for five days, but the views from the top of Rush Peak were just gob-smacking. Even though it's 100 kilometres away, you could see K2, the world's second-highest mountain, from the summit, while a 360-degree panorama of 7000-metre peaks crowd in around you. Rather touchingly, our guide Karim was almost moved to tears by the spectacle, although it's fair to say that he coped a bit better than we did with the rest of the trek. This included a vertical mile descent to camp, during which Adele's knees were so painful I feared she might have a crack at self-amputation, and our final crossing of a glacier that was melting in the afternoon sun while a group of complete knobbers tried to distract us by yelling from a nearby clifftop. It's fair to say we slept well that night.

Equally, it's fair to say that this was probably the high point of our travels in Pakistan. We ended up staying in Karimabad for another three nights, enraptured by the view, the laid-back pace of life and the super-obliging locals there. I don't think I've ever been anywhere where I would rather have a holiday home. But our travels would not have been complete without one more really horrid bus journey - the day-long final leg of the KKH down to Islamabad. Once again, stunning scenery all round, but there were so many sheer drops that it felt like we were in the closing credits of The Italian Job - for 14 bloody hours! And when we finally got to Islamabad, or rather its evil-twin sister city Rawalpindi, around midnight, we were spectacularly unimpressed. Sweaty, unbelievably polluted and so conservative that we played 'Spot The Woman' every time we went out on the street, we stayed there less than 24 hours before heading for Lahore in the heart of the Punjab.

By now fatigue was setting in, and even Lahore didn't do it for us. If you had more time than the weekend we had and weren't a year into your travels I daresay you would find it both visually and culturally stimulating, but we found that the dirt, smog and people constantly staring at us got to us in the end. It didn't help that monsoon season was setting in, which means you spend quite a lot of time both boiling hot AND soaking wet - not a winning combination. And the streets literally turn to knee-high rivers when the skies let go, although I suppose that will be good preparation for heading back to Blighty.

Our time there was not without its highlights, though. We spent a bum-breakingly uncomfortable afternoon at a shrine listening to qawwali devotional singing - huge groups of men with simple instruments and belting voices. Later that night, we witnessed an even more amazing spectacle: a group of Sufis going absolutely bananas for a couple of hours as they were lured into a head-shaking, spinning trance by the incredible drumming of two brothers, one of whom was actually deaf. I'm not sure what was more remarkable: the other-worldly stamina of the Sufis, or the amount of ganga the packed crowd got through watching them.

We left Lahore two days later and crossed the border back into India, where we watched the justifiably celebrated daily military parade that accompanies the closing of the border. This is a 50-year-old ritual involving ferociously partisan crowds on both sides of the fence, who cheer on the ridiculously Pythonesque but amazingly well-choreographed moves of their respective armies. For us, the Pakistanis bettered the Indians for uniforms, but lost out hands-down when it came to silly walking.

And after a brief stopover to visit the Sikh Golden Temple at Amritsar - during which we got caught in the middle of a monsoon shower and ended up wetter than we would have if we'd cut out the middleman and leapt into the ornamental lake - we wound up back here in Delhi, the end of the line. In less than 24 hours, give or take the time difference, we'll be back home and it will all be over, something that I don't think has sunk in for either of us yet. For the last few weeks both of us have intermittently felt ready to go home, but now that we actually have to it's the last thing we want to do (even though the prospect of actually having my own bathroom will be considerable compensation).

Over the last 379 days we've been to 18 different countries; journeyed tens of thousands of miles on cars, planes, boats, trains, buses, bicycles and indeed our own feet; and spent a total of... frankly, I don't even want to think about it, but equally we couldn't care less because it's been worth every last penny.

And before you ask, I don't think either of us has any idea what the highlight has been. The north of Pakistan is pretty special, it's true, but better than hacking up the Cerro Torre glacier in Patagonia or camping out with kangaroos thumping around our tent in the middle of the outback? Impossible to say. The whole thing has been simply unforgettable, and it hasn't really made our wanderlust go away, either. The problem with long-term travelling is that you find out about all sorts of other places that you'd never heard of before but want to visit in future.

This, however, is going to have to wait. As of this weekend, it's a return to more mundane pursuits - most likely honking on endlessly about football (me) and a world-record-breaking EastEnders telethon (Adele). And as of Monday, we're available for weddings, bar mitzvahs, favours for sailors... pretty much anything that pays cold, hard cash in a hurry.

So that's it. If you've made it this far, thank you very much for sharing our highs, lows, bad language and even poorer jokes. We're really, really looking forward to seeing you soon.

Take care,
Rob and Adele xxx

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Comments

[John Parsons]

Back?
Back? What do you mean you are back? What am I going to do for on-screen entertainment when I should be working now? Many thanks for sharing you adventures with us - we are glad to see you safely back but share your sorrow at the end of it all. Love John and Pat