Where the Indus is Young (27 page)

For at least 3,000 feet our path zig-zagged towards the sky and we soon had iced snow underfoot. At every other ‘hairpin bend’ I called a halt and we gazed down at a splendour that I cannot attempt to describe. Then we would gaze up instead, to where the cleverly packed stones that reinforced our path could be seen winding on and on, like some giant grey serpent. We wondered where it went over and down; it was impossible to guess because above us, filling the sky, was an apparently endless complex of peaks and spurs and snow-slopes. After a time we could see – far below us on the left, beyond the invisible river – that jeep-track over the Khardung La which had seemed so high when we were on it.

Underfoot conditions became trickier as we climbed and there was only one set of footprints for Hallam to follow. On either side of these the snow was two feet deep and it was impossible to distinguish between the true edge of the track and the beautiful but menacing cornice. Then a very steep stretch confronted us, apparently leading to The Top, and Rachel dismounted as Hallam had begun to blow. I led him slowly up and we were all three ‘panted out’ by the time we reached level ground. But ‘The Top’ proved to be no such thing; we
were merely standing on the uneven rim of a shallowish bowl about a mile in diameter and full of snow. It also contained gigantic
time-smoothed
boulders, looking like a herd of prehistoric monsters, and on the far side, where the rim was much higher, we could see our track resuming its climb.

From the next pseudo-top we were overlooking another, similar bowl – and also the magnificent Ladak Range, lying south of the Shyok, which we had been unable to see as we crawled along its base towards Khapalu. Now the sun was shining on the highest slopes – graceful sweeps of snow below the triangular rigidity of grey and white peaks – and on our side of the valley the immense cliffs above us glowed golden-brown against a violently blue sky.

Having climbed strenuously out of this second bowl, we paused on its rim to rest. Thirty yards ahead another track joined ours, descending from who-knows-where along the ultra-precipitous slope of the mountain on our right. Off that track had just come a laden yak who could be seen in the distance – on
our
track – traversing a completely snow-covered and obviously avalancheprone mountain. I thanked Allah then for not having allowed the sun to shine this morning. And I was grateful, too, for that yak, whose owner presumably knew enough about local conditions to be followed confidently.

Rachel remounted for the next stage, a gentle descent to the flank of a rocky mountain too sheer to be snowy. On reaching that flank, we found ourselves looking into a ravine so profound that one’s first reaction was incredulity. The shadowy chasm was very narrow and perhaps half a mile long. It lay between the brown mountain we now stood on and the white mountain ahead and at a
conservative
estimate it was 1,500 feet deep, with absolutely sheer sides. This scene was the very quintessence of Himalayan drama – vast, beautiful, cruel – belonging to a landscape that has no time for the paltry endeavours of men.

Our narrow path was in a state of considerable disrepair where it rounded the ravine. Having ordered Rachel to dismount I
remembered
her propensity for achieving the impossible and added firmly, ‘We’ll go first.’ I then roped the load high and hoped for the best. As
we moved into the shadow of the white mountain the ravine seemed suddenly sinister – seeing it as a threat to Rachel I could not simply revel in its grandeur. The psychological effect of height is
extraordinary
. If she fell 150 feet she would be killed as surely as here, yet that awesome drop, added to the friability of the neglected path (our passage sent bits of it into the ravine every few yards), was noticeably unsoothing.

I led Hallam at his own pace – he prefers to deal with such paths fairly quickly – and in places the rock overhang was so low that I had to bend my head. I never looked behind, having once warned Rachel to keep close to the cliff. (She has a perverse tendency to walk along the edge of precipices, no doubt the better to savour the depths below.) At the head of the ravine, where the path did a
V-turn
on to the snowy mountain, it was blocked by a small landslide. But the slope below the V-turn was of course not sheer and a dozen careful steps took us on to a path no longer crumbling but
hair-raisingly
slippy with frozen snow. Here I began to have nasty feelings in the pit of my stomach and these did not abate when we turned a corner to find a forty-yard avalanche sprawled across the path. By now the drop was again sheer but the yak’s deep, definite prints were our salvation. Actually the sloping mass of snow was quite firm and safe, though it looked as if it were about to go thundering down into that unbelievable chasm. Soon we were climbing steeply and another hundred yards took us away from the ravine on to a plateau so high that it seemed almost level with the lonely peaks of the Ladak Range.

Here, Hallam and I waited for Rachel – a tiny red figure toiling gallantly up the steep white slope, with frequent pauses to lean on my
dula
and regain breath, for the air was exhaustingly thin. At that moment I felt very proud of my daughter. She may talk too much at all the wrong times, but she’ll do …

We walked on across a billowing snowfield, to which slanting rays of pale golden light gave a magical sheen. Ahead we could see no end to it, but it was scarcely half a mile wide. On our right rose the rocky lower slopes of an invisible snow-peak and on our left was a long, rounded, snowy ridge, cutting off our view of the valley – but not of
the Ladak peaks. These were so beautiful, against the paling blue of the evening sky, that I could scarcely bear to look at them. And the configuration of this landscape, with its long enclosing walls of brown cliff and white ridge, reinforced that unique sense of isolation and tranquillity felt only on such heights.

Rachel, again in the saddle, suddenly exclaimed, ‘Doesn’t Hallam look like a fiery steed!’ – which he did, with the golden radiance of that hour on his light chestnut coat. Then we saw a black dot ahead and had soon overtaken the yak, a superb specimen with a tremendous spread of horn. His elderly companion, who had
hidebound
feet and wore only a ragged homespun
shalwar-kameez,
stared at us as though we were ghosts and was too startled to return our greeting.

I had been worrying slightly lest we might find ourselves on some lethal precipice as darkness fell but the descent was comparatively short because Kuru is only halfway to river level. I scarcely noticed our surroundings as we struggled downwards; my whole attention had to be given to the narrow path. When not wriggling between high, jagged rocks that threatened to catch the load it was winding around slopes where an ill-judged step might well be one’s last. The final stretch was so steep that the load slipped on to Hallam’s neck: this is becoming a familiar crisis. As I was dismantling it on the outskirts of the village a marvellous old character appeared on the roof of his house and a moment later was beside me, offering help and hospitality.

While the family conferred about their unprecedented guests Rachel and I sat in a little yard, on a flight of steps that led up to the latrine, and watched Hallam munching vigorously. I could see that we were exactly opposite, but much higher than, our Gwali hotel, which was invisible because of an intervening foothill. The sun had just set and the whole south-western sky was a strange dusty pink, through which Venus glowed golden. As Orion appeared overhead our host opened a low wooden door in an otherwise blank stone wall and beckoned us into a pitch-dark stable from which an even lower door led to this windowless room. It is about ten feet by eight and strips of woven goats’ hair cover half the floor space. The other half is bare mud and
under a hole in the roof is a ‘fireplace’ of three stones on which a
dechi
can be balanced. One wall is lined with handsomely-carved wooden cupboards – the only furniture, apart from a pile of filthy bedding. These are the living quarters of our ancient but sprightly host and his endearing old wife; the younger generations live upstairs. On arrival we found another old man squatting in the dark by a tiny fire of twigs, meditatively smoking a hookah. But we have been spared the usual throng of curious locals and I had just room to get our own ‘kitchen’ organised by candlelight and cook a
dechi
of rice on our oil-stove. This was transformed into rice pudding by the addition of a little sugar and our last tin of Dutch condensed milk; and no meal ever tasted better.

It is wonderfully convenient to have a child with a small appetite; this evening was the first time I have ever heard Rachel saying, ‘I’m hungry!’ Despite her big frame and formidable expenditure of energy she seems to flourish on about two hard-boiled eggs every thirty-six hours. She was already in her flea-bag as we ate and the instant she had put down her empty bowl she turned on her side and went out like a light. I envied her then: diary-writing at the end of a strenuous day severely tests one’s will-power. As Alexander Cunningham noted, while exploring Baltistan some 125 years ago: ‘The generality of travellers get too much fatigued with their exertions by day to be able to make any observations at night.’ But having brewed myself a kettle of strong black tea I came to and now I feel quite lively.

This is a very Tibetan-looking family and our host has a splendidly benign face, wrinkled and browned by wind and weather, with a wispy grey beard, bright humorous eyes and a big smile that shows a mouthful of sound, even teeth. His wife – who has borne
twenty-two
children, of whom sixteen survive – suffers greatly from
rheumatism
but is nonetheless a cheerful character and full of concern for our welfare. We have been given the carpeted half of the floor and two hours ago the old couple spread tattered goat-hides on the mud half, laid their wretched bits of bedding over these and went to sleep. Just now another elderly couple and three adolescent girls came in and took their bedding from the pile in the corner. So we have a full house and are not likely to feel cold – as we might have
done, during the small hours, had there been only four (or three and a half) people sleeping in a room of this size.

My night was mildly disturbed; sandflies are not the only Balti insects to have come out of hibernation and we were both bitten all over.

I woke at 5.45 to hear a familiar sound which I could not immediately identify. Then I poked my head out of my aptly named flea-bag to see by firelight our host churning Tibetan tea in a hollowed-out tree-trunk. The Baltis add a little milk as well as rancid butter, salt and bicarbonate of soda, but the result is much the same. Although we had enough rice left over for breakfast, the old couple insisted on my sharing their tea and
tsampa
. For
themselves
they poured four cups of tea, two for mixing with their
satu
and two to be taken straight. As an Instant Food
tsampa
wins; apart from its convenience it is much more palatable and very much more sustaining than rice. The despised (by conservative foreigners) butter-tea is also sustaining on its own, and extraordinarily warming; it has an almost whiskey-like effect on one’s inside. But unfortunately Rachel’s adaptability breaks down when it comes to food. She is one of the conservative foreigners who won’t touch Tibetan tea or
tsampa
, bored as she is by the monotony of our diet.

It would not have done to tip our host so I tried to think of some suitable gift and was inspired to give him my gloves, which I am unlikely to need again, and one of our two hideous orange plastic mugs, which his wife much admired last night. Then off we went at 7.30, when the sun was already warm and the sky cloudless.

The first hour was tricky as the steep narrow track wound between dwellings or five-foot stone walls, neither of which left an adequate margin for Hallam. In our host’s house, on the periphery of the settlement, I had not grasped Kuru’s size; when he told us that in British days it offered a one-room Rest House (now demolished) I had diagnosed delusions of grandeur. But this morning I reckoned the whole settlement – scattered over many high ledges, separated by narrow gullies – probably supports five or six thousand people. It is a savagely beautiful place, with its bewildering network of
ravines, dark overhanging crags and loudly leaping torrents. As in Saling, I had the impression that it was once a good deal more prosperous. These right bank villages must have been much livelier when on the main trade route; now they rarely see even a Balti outsider.

Platoons of men, women and children were briskly carrying manure to the fields and I find that as the sun gains strength the aroma of human manure becomes less and less romantic, even on a fine spring morning. When at last the track began to level out – going towards the next mountain-flank instead of towards the
invisible
river – I sighed with relief to have Rachel and baggage still
in situ
on Hallam. (Despite the gradient Rachel had not dismounted because then the load might have again come forward on to Hallam’s neck; if she sits on the connecting rope across the saddle this helps to keep it where it should be.) But my relief was premature. Just beyond Kuru the track has to traverse a horrifying bulge at the base of a 20,000-foot mountain. It overhangs the Shyok for a quarter of a mile about 700 feet above the water and is worse than anything else we have met in Baltistan; I remember looking at it from the left bank and deducing that it could only be a goat-track. On a good day it would be demoralising and today was
not
a good day; during the night two landslips about fifty yards apart had blocked the path. Luckily there were plenty of people around to warn us and we were taken under the wing of a kindly mullah, who was also going to Kiris and spoke a few unexpected words of English. He beckoned to two of the many youths who had accumulated behind us and told them to unload Hallam and carry the load across the slips, which were about half a mile further on. I followed with Hallam, leaving Rachel in the care of the mullah and his party. This consisted of another mullah, who was (oddly) a deaf-mute, his veiled
sixteen-year
-old daughter, a wiry little Mail-Runner with ginger hair and two gloomy elderly peasants entirely lacking in oriental fatalism. They were convinced that Allah had it in for us and that we would all be pulverised by falling rocks long before we reached Kiris. Personally I have stopped worrying: once embarked on a trek in Baltistan one becomes either a fatalist or a nervous wreck. Towing
the faithful Hallam I strode across the two slithery new slips as though in an Irish field, and then looked back to see Rachel standing in the middle of one gazing earnestly up at the mullah and saying, ‘No, not Holland – it’s Ireland – a small island called
Ireland
.’ If being rescued from a blazing building she would hold up the
firemen
to have a chat.