Where the Indus is Young (12 page)

We left Byicha at 9 a.m., as early as is practical in this climate, and had covered eighteen miles by 4.30 p.m. Hallam was much more sprightly today, after his few good feeds, and we brought a picnic lunch for him. The truss of aromatic hay strapped to the top of my rucksack was not planned to act as a spur but it had that effect: whenever I slowed down or paused for a moment he broke into a trot to snatch a snack. Then we discovered that he is hooked on wild thyme, however hard and dry the clumps may be, so we let him have a few mouthfuls whenever the opportunity arose. After two miles it arose quite often for at last the Gorge widened. On our side the mountains withdrew, so that we were crossing a long, wide ledge at their base, and for much of the time the river was out of sight though
never out of hearing. As we climbed gradually the snow and ice became thicker underfoot and the dramatically broken landscape became whiter. A few tiny hamlets lay on our way but all morning we saw nobody.

We stopped for lunch where thyme was plentiful, so that Hallam could have a two-course meal while Rachel ate her cheese and I ate my apricots. Now the sky was a deep blue and towards the
north-west
a dazzling peak – one of the true giants – was visible. To Rachel’s great annoyance I could not identify it from the map; when actually in the middle of all these legendary mountains it is impossible to recognise them individually. Nor is it always wise to listen to the locals: in Ronda many people insist that K2 may be seen from Gomu.

As I chewed my apricots and looked at that proud pure peak, rising solitary and brilliant above the nearer mountains, I despaired of ever being able to convey in words any adequate picture of this region. Everything is so
extreme
here that language loses its power. Today each furlong offered a variation on the Karakoram theme; I could walk forever on such a path without any risk of boredom. Every feature contributes to the wonder and the glory of these mountains – their scale, texture, colouring, shapes, arrangements – and the clarity of the light is itself unique. Then when clouds come it seems that all the gloom of the world has been concentrated in this one profound chasm.

By three o’clock the wind had risen and new snow lay a foot deep all around us. Hallam now proved how sure-footed and sensible he is and I let him show me the least treacherous route. (For most of today it was unnecessary for me to lead him as we were not
overhanging
the Indus.) Our level ledge was about two miles wide at this point, from the edge of the Gorge to the precipitous slopes on our left.

Here the Indus displays adolescent moodiness, turning and twisting unexpectedly between the mountains, and when it again came into view we saw a long, new suspension footbridge leading to a comparatively large village. By that time the wind was blowing cruelly against us and Rachel, who needed to restore her circulation, was unable to keep her footing on a track that had become like a
skating-rink. I, too, was feeling cold, despite my exertions: this was the sort of searching wind that conquers all. Yet I was afraid to take Hallam across a long, swaying bridge over a noisy stretch of Indus. He might have accepted it, but he seems not too happy while crossing the many short bridges over nullahs on this track. So we pressed on, hoping our US Army map was correct (it often isn’t) when it showed a hamlet some three miles further upstream on the right bank.

After a fortnight in the narrowest part of the Gorge the world here seemed very wide and bright, with the sun shining until four o’clock. The mountains on either side were about 16,000 feet and between us and them the snowy waste was scattered with huge dark boulders in white cloaks. Underfoot conditions slowed our progress and we became colder by the minute. Then we got the incense-like smell of a burning thyme-bush and came in sight of four men warming their hands: to ignite a bush gives instant though
short-lived
heat and is a popular device among shepherds and
coolie-gangs
. These coolies had been half-heartedly throwing shovelfuls of sand across the track; they live in this hamlet and accompanied us over the last few gruelling miles.

Every moment the cold became more intense but here the Gorge is so dramatic that discomfort seemed unimportant. Where the river again curves abruptly we had to ascend steeply and descend slightly before climbing at a sensational angle around a towering complex of dark, rocky precipices overhanging a boisterous Indus – roaring, raving and churning. These manoeuvrings of the track also brought into view the opening out of the Gorge into the Skardu Valley, some eight or ten miles away. Then suddenly the late
afternoon
light acquired a strange blue tinge such as I have never seen before, and over all that desolation of mountain, river, rock and snow lay this unearthly radiance. It may not have been magic but to us it seemed so.

One could easily pass this hamlet without noticing its few hovels high above the track. Unusually, the minute terraced fields go down almost to river-level, forming an amphitheatre which is wonderfully beautiful under thick snow as it leads up and up and
up, for thousands of feet, to the vertical black crags of this summit – or rather, series of summits, each bejewelled by immensely long icicles hanging from ledges and glittering in the setting sun. (Earlier today we saw cliffs festooned with gold and green icicles as thick and long as telegraph poles – quite fantastic. I am so sleepy now that I can’t remember details in the right order.)

Our kindly companions were so bewildered by the mere fact of our existence that it was impossible even to attempt a conversation with them. However, when we were about halfway across the
amphitheatre
they suddenly gestured towards the crags and indicated that Rachel should dismount. The youngest man gave her a pick-a-back while I led Hallam up from terrace to terrace, on paths that only a native pony would consider tackling. The load was repeatedly threatened as we passed between trees or jagged rocks and eventually our friends removed it and divided it between themselves. Then at last we were directly beneath the crags of the summit – coal-black in the brief twilight, against a faintly green sky – and some way ahead I saw Rachel’s red snow-suit disappearing into a stone rectangle a good deal smaller than most of the boulders around it. She had arrived at the headman’s home.

A dark, narrow hallway runs through this dwelling and on one side is a kitchen, unfurnished apart from the central fireplace, and two stables for goats and cattle. On the other side is the large living/ sleeping room, where we are being entertained, and three small storerooms, for firewood, food and fodder, and another stable for sheep and hens. The inner walls are of woven willow-wands and the outer of thick stone neatly plastered with mud.

On first entering this room I could see nothing – the two tiny unglazed windows are blocked against the cold – but soon my eyes got used to the gloom, and to the swirling smoke from the
wood-stove
’s leaking pipe, and I saw Rachel sitting on the floor facing an astounded semicircle of family on whom she was fruitlessly practising her Urdu. I also saw that half the floor-space, furthest from the stove, is occupied by several wickerwork coops covered with bits of blanket and containing delicate new-born kids and lambs who frequently emit plaintive cries and, as I write, are being fed
maize gruel off spoons by two children. At the humans’ end of the room the floor is covered with goat-hair matting which seems not to have been cleaned since the place was built. On this we have spread our flea-bags, beside an apparently old couple (who may be no older than myself), their son and daughter-in-law, two unmarried daughters, and a filth-encrusted baby with an ominous cough. The whole family is coughing dreadfully and I fear our host is dying. He lies propped against a sheepskin full of straw and is horribly emaciated, with enormous bright eyes and hot dry hands. In Balti he begged for some medicine, but nodded understandingly when I unhappily explained that I had none. Then he asked his daughter-in-law to take one large white pill from a little wall
cupboard
and showed it to me, anxiously enquiring if it was any good; I could only say I didn’t know, while feeling hopeless and helpless. Our hostess is not in much better condition. She seems to have bronchial asthma and is now moaning and gasping on the floor beside me, after an exhausting bout of coughing.

Yet this wretched family welcomed us most warmly, though naturally a little timidly. Food was offered, but everybody seemed relieved to see that we have our own; for supper they had only one thin chapatti each with a sauce of weak dahl gruel. They watched, fascinated, while I opened a tin of tuna fish for Rachel and made myself a mug of Complan and glucose with mouth-numbing glacial water. No meal has ever tasted better to me, I felt so ravenous.

The loo arrangements are as in Tibet: a flat mud roof just outside the ‘hall-door’ has four holes in it and when one squats the result falls into a little house from which it is taken in the spring – having been mixed with wood ash – and spread on the fields.

On arrival here Hallam was at once undressed, except for his
namdah
, and led off to a cosy stable. But he took agin it, though his sweet-smelling supper was already within, and refused to ascend the three rounded boulders that serve as steps. It seemed unlikely that he would heed me, when he was ignoring the sort of Balti urging he is used to, but I felt bound to make an effort. At the scene of the deadlock I found him with ears laid back and eyes rolling, yet the moment he heard my voice his ears came forward. I took the halter
and waved all the cursing, kicking men away and he followed me up those boulders like a lamb. He has been with us only three days but a little love goes a long way.

We had a disturbed night, there was so much coughing and groaning, and for hours on end the baby was crying weakly. Luckily Rachel slept soundly through everything while I read by torchlight from 4 a.m. until the family rose at 6.30. Then we breakfasted: tinned corned beef for Rachel, more Complan and glucose for me, futile guilt for both of us because we are being so well-fed.

At nine o’clock we ventured out into a world that seemed to have been throttled overnight by the violence of the cold. It took thirty minutes to slither and scramble down to the jeep-track on
precipitous
pathlets of solid ice. A boy went first to show us the least hazardous route, I followed with Hallam, two men carried Hallam’s load and Rachel brought up the rear, helped by our host’s son. I shall always remember that hamlet with a mixture of gratitude and despair – the welcome so warm and the destitution so extreme.

It was an intoxicating morning – the sun dazzling on new snow, the sky half-veiled by milky, wispy clouds, the Indus sparkling like a cascade of emeralds. The track was so icy that it took us over three hours to cover six miles and Rachel grew rather impatient. I could see her point: it’s not much fun riding at less than 2 m.p.h. For much of the way we were on another sheer rock-wall directly above the river, and as Hallam gingerly picked his way along Rachel caused me to reflect on the perversity of human nature. When I was six I used to lie in bed secretly dreaming about galloping across unspecified steppes on fiery steeds, or riding undaunted through lonely, frowning mountains infested with cougars. And now my daughter, aged six, while riding along perilous paths hundreds of feet above a roaring torrent, through the most spectacular mountain gorge in the world, says – ‘Let’s have a pretend game! Let’s pretend I’m grown up and married to a doctor in Lismore and we have two children and now we’re moving to a new bungalow and I’m going shopping to choose all the colours for wallpapers and carpets …’

This village is near the beginning of the Gorge and below it we crossed the Indus by a 300-foot-long suspension bridge built
twenty-four
years ago, in three months, by the Pakistani Army. At first it felt quite odd to have the river on our left instead of on our right. And it was even odder to look ahead and see a flat, snow-covered plain, some five miles wide, with a solid wall of soaring mountains rising abruptly from the far side. This is the western end of the Skardu valley and after a slow journey through the Gorge it creates an impression of endless spaciousness.

From the bridge the track climbs steeply, leaving the river, and because it was already noon we had to cope with fast-melting slush on sticky, red-brown mud. This new handicap, combined with the fearsome gradient, made me sweat as though in the tropics. Neither of us could make out what route the track was about to take – whether it was going over the next mountain or around the one we were on or down to the valley floor. Eventually we saw that it was going to the top of the one we were on – a sunny, dazzling world covered in two feet of new snow. From this point we could see both the length of Gorge we had just travelled and the Skardu plain, very far below. The broad Indus looked lazy and tame as it meandered slowly across that plain towards the narrow mouth of the Gorge, so directly below us that we could not see it. Here we were at last beyond earshot of the river’s powerful roar and that silence made us lonely.

Katchura straggles over a low mountain-top, riven by deep clefts and overlooked by snowy, rock-tipped higher mountains. Two ‘hotels’, two hucksters’ shops and a police-station line the
jeep-track
; so perhaps, being equipped with police, it is technically a town. At the more awake-looking hotel we asked the way to the Rest House; but it is closed, we were told, and the chowkidar has gone to Skardu for the Muharram ceremonies. Constable Hamad Hussain then took charge of us, saying we must on no account stay in an hotel run by thieving Pathans. He installed us in an annexe to the police-station and Hallam was stabled nearby. Hamad has a hectoring manner and I don’t care for him. Nor, understandably, does the friendly Pathan from whose establishment we were
‘rescued’. This windowless cell, eight feet by eight, has the usual tin wood-stove in the centre of the earth floor and two broken-legged charpoys.