Where the Indus is Young (29 page)

This morning we called on the Chief Superintendent, who told us that throughout Baltistan a tragic amount of fertile land is destroyed by erosion every year, which partly explains why many villages give an impression of having once enjoyed greater prosperity. If the Baltis were trained in methods of do-it-yourself flood-control enormous tracts of land could be saved. Obviously peasants who are capable of
farming these mountainsides would profit by such training, though now they fatalistically accept the destruction of their most fruitful (literally) lowlands as the ‘will of Allah’.

During our conversation several jeep-owners, the majority Pathans, came into the office to plead for an issue of petrol, but all had to be refused. It was not clear to me why the Chief Superintendent of Police was responsible for petrol-rationing, rather than the Civil Supply Officer in the next room. But such is life in Skardu. Then it occurred to me to mention that I could find no kerosene, though the CSO had given me a chit. At once Raja Karim Khan attempted to solve our problem by despatching a young recruit to search for the precious fluid – complete with our jerrycan, chit and Rs.9. It is now bedtime and the youth has not reappeared: but undoubtedly he will, one day.

Tomorrow we are going to Satpara for a day-trip, weather
permitting
.

When we set off after breakfast there was some cloud on the peaks but much blue overhead, yet by 2 p.m. it was snowing again steadily. The whole Satpara Valley is still snowbound and the lake is completely covered in thick ice which supports a blanket of snow, so that one could pass it without even suspecting its existence. The jeep-track has long since been obliterated and the locals have tramped out for themselves an independent footpath which became so uncomfortable – and eventually dangerous – for Hallam that we had to turn back a mile short of the hamlet. By then a steady
pre-snow
wind was blowing and the clouds were down; I am fated not to see the head of the Satpara Valley on a clear day.

The regular habits of avalanches astonish me. As we were walking around the invisible lake we heard today’s first ‘gunshot’, followed after the usual moment of tense silence by a terrific rumbling boom – the loudest we have heard – seeming to come from the far side of a mountain on the west shore of the lake. I looked at my watch: it was 11.58. It is quite extraordinary how the first avalanche each day is heard between 11.55 and 12.05.

Deep grooves and long brown earth-stains were visible on the steeper snowy slopes and while coming from Skardu we had noticed fresh blood stains on the white path – a curiously melodramatic combination of colours. After about two miles we came to the scene of the accident, where the stains continued up a snowy slope to an expanse of bare scree. At one point high on the snow there was a wide patch of crimson, from which the victim had rolled down to the path, bringing a small rock-fall with him. Later we heard that he had been traversing the scree, searching for a lost sheep, when a rock hit him on the head. But like a true Balti he picked himself up, tied his shirt around the wound and walked four miles to the hospital – where he found no one on duty, because this is Sunday. So he tightened the tourniquet and walked another eight miles home. A few months among the Baltis make one realise how perilously effete we Westerners have become. After a few more generations of pampering and motor-transport our bodies will no longer be capable of normal functioning.

This morning saw an historic event of enormous interest: the removal by the Misses Murphy of their clothes, after almost three months. Rachel was disappointed – ‘Our
bodies
don’t look dirty! It’s all on our vests!’ Apparently one does not get progressively dirtier in a very cold climate. That protective coating of oil which establishes itself on the skin seems to repulse dirt. There was of course nothing to be done with our underclothes but drop them on the midden outside, from where they will soon be retrieved by some fuel-hunter. I decided against washing before putting on clean garments. Who knows what temperatures we may encounter up the Shigar Valley?

Today’s weather has been vile. It snowed wetly and continuously, the low sky was almost black and the icy damp seemed to chill one’s very marrow. Walking around the town was neat hell, with deep sticky mud trying to drag one’s boots off, or skiddy mud making it impossible to keep upright even with a stick.

This evening I am seriously worried about the kerosene crisis. For days we have been desperately borrowing from friends – a pint
here, two pints there – and the young policeman was unable after all to find any. At this rate we shall have to go to Shigar without our stove and depend on the precarious local supply of firewood.

Today’s weather was fractionally less dismal than yesterday’s; and our horizons were brightened by the discovery of four gallons of kerosene, which means that we can return what we borrowed and leave for Shigar as soon as the sun comes out. I also found a few potatoes in the Old Bazaar – expensive at Rs.2 a seer but they made the best meal we have had for months.

Satu
was available in the Kiris bazaar at Rs.1 a seer and I bought four seers for our Shigar trek; mixed with thermos-hot tea it provides a warm picnic lunch, instead of our usual hard-boiled eggs on a good day and dried apricots when times are hard.

A blissful day, weather-wise and every-otherwise. By 8.45 we were on the road, looking and sounding like tinkers as we jogged along with kettle, pan and
dechi
rattling in their tattered sack. This cheerful cacophony has become our Karakoram signature tune.

For seven miles we followed the Khapalu track, which has just been reconstructed with gravel and sand. (The local PWD employs one coolie to every mile.) Then we crossed the Indus by an oldish suspension bridge, where the river is about one hundred yards wide. Its smooth green flow is broken only by a few colossal, weirdly-shaped boulders; other gigantic lumps of granite lie tumbled along the banks and the bridge’s steel cables are anchored to some of these. On the right bank the thaw is almost complete and our track at once climbed to a long, wide shelf of silver sand, dotted with low clumps of a tough desert plant not relished even by goats. Towards Skardu this plain becomes a series of elegantly curved sand-dunes, and ahead of us a long wall of dark rock was lavishly veined with white marble. At its western end rose a solitary, sharp, red-brown mountain and our track squeezed through a gap between this and the dark wall. Beyond the
gap we were looking into a shallow valley where a distant goatherd was taking his animals away from us towards some invisible pasture.

After crossing a level semi-desert the track swung north to wriggle steeply up between arid, shattered mountains that looked as though some giant vandal had been venting his ill-temper on them. Higher and still higher we went, on to a long, narrow saddle where snow still lay deep and the air had a crispness I welcomed after the hot climb. Ahead were unfamiliar snow-peaks, wearing ribbons of pale vapour, and on either side rose gaunt black cliffs curiously pitted with round holes. We took it easy here, ambling along under a dark blue sky amidst the sort of fierce beauty and infinite silence that make me feel I never want to leave Baltistan.

Then we were looking up the tranquil Shigar Valley to its junction, some thirty miles away, with the much narrower Braldu and Basna valleys; and on our left Skardu’s Rock was again visible, presiding over the confluence of the Shigar and the Indus. The long descent ended on a wide ledge scarcely eighty feet above river level. This flat land, at the base of dark, barren precipices, was covered with rocks, boulders, stones and pebbles of every size, shape and colour; we recklessly collected until my parka pockets were bulging. Next came orchards and dwellings, with women weaving on roofs and yak standing around looking imperious. I noticed here some unusual shades of grey-blue and cinnamon-brown among the cross-bred cattle. When the track became too muddy we followed footpaths across fields and passed through a string of hamlets before skidding and squelching into the centre of the town. I at once recognised the conspicuous mosque, and all the tiny houses and giant trees around it, from the photographs taken by the Duke of Abruzzi’s expedition sixty-six years ago. Where else have the chief towns changed so little since 1909? No wonder my reactionary heart throbs with love for Baltistan.

In the main bazaar I glimpsed some fine wood-carvings on the balconies of several houses. I say ‘glimpsed’ because had I taken my eyes off the mud-slippy track for more than an instant I might have broken the ten eggs I had just bought. Beyond this bazaar a pompous new notice points disconcertingly to ‘Government Servants Colony: Civil Hospital and PWD Rest House’. Looking past the pleasant little
Rest House, we saw the ‘colony’ – a row of abandoned half-built bungalows. Such aborted projects are characteristic of modern Baltistan: this ‘colony’ was probably conceived by some Islamabad bureaucrat who has never been further north than Murree. But happily it is behind the Rest House and from the verandah we look towards a radiant semicircle of snow-peaks.

One of the many small boys in our entourage was sent to fetch the chowkidar by Ghulam Nabi, the dispenser at the Civil Hospital. Ghulam in fact runs the hospital, aided by an elderly nurse who comes, most improbably, from Rangoon. To serve a population of about 30,000 there are six beds and doctors rarely visit Shigar. But some 200 patients attend the clinic daily, the majority suffering from goitre complications, tuberculosis, bronchitis, eye diseases and worms.

It is hoped, by the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation, that this valley will soon become Baltistan’s Costa Brava. The
British-built
Rest House has recently been redecorated, lavishly furnished and fitted with electric switches and modern plumbing, neither of which seem likely to work in the foreseeable future. There is only one (very superior) charpoy in our room, but the thickly carpeted floor may be counted as a second bed. When the chowkidar appeared Ghulam told him to bring tea, which arrived half an hour after I had supplied it to the company. By now it takes me hardly fifteen minutes to unload Hallam, unpack, assemble and fill the stove and brew a kettle of
chai
. Practice indeed makes perfect.

During our morning’s exploration up the Shigar I had an unpleasant experience with quicksand: fortunately Rachel was being geological just then and failed to notice. To avoid this hazard we had to go far out of our way, until the sand allowed us to dash across it to the safety of a cliff-face – which promptly proved to be not-so-safe, for a hunk of earth the size of a cottage fell across our path fifty yards ahead. There’s never a dull moment, when you go for a short walk in the Karakoram.

At the top of this cliff we passed a group of houses amidst muddy
fields and three young women, with tense, pleading expressions, insistently beckoned us. Following them, we were led through stables into a cramped, filthy, twilit, smoke-filled room in which an old woman lay on a heap of straw, naked but for a tattered quilt and coughing painfully. Her forehead was fever-hot and her hands, when she clutched mine gratefully, were wasted and trembling. Yet as she lay there, amidst the sort of squalid poverty our affluent society can scarcely imagine, she had an air of indestructible dignity. I sat beside her for half an hour, while Rachel was fed with
dirt-encrusted
apricots. Almost certainly this much-loved granny was dying, but I asked a grandson to accompany us to the Rest House and gave him a dozen antibiotic capsules, hoping he understood my instructions for their use.

After lunch we crossed the mountain torrent that races past the Rest House and followed narrow pathlets above irrigation channels, stopping often to gaze on the ferocious, jagged, glistening beauty of the Karakorams, with just an occasional plume of cloud floating near their summits. We returned through a huddle of ancient houses and saw many diminutive donkeys, and also quite a few dogs – collie-sized but more heavily-built – with short, off-white coats, blunt muzzles and cropped ears.

Shigar has always been the most prosperous of Baltistan’s major valleys and some of its domestic architecture is slightly more
sophisticated
than the average – influenced perhaps by those Kashmiris who came to work on the town’s main mosque. This was built ‘a few hundred years ago’ and the delicate open-work of the cornices is unexpected in a region where crude improvisation is the architectural norm. The pyramidal three-tiered roof looks incongruously
pagoda-like
and I am told the interior is impressive. As the locals are strict Shiahs we females were not allowed even to peep through the doorway.

Overlooking the bazaar are three rock-peaks – named ‘The Three Bears’ by Rachel – and the tributary that passes the Rest House comes tumbling through a cleft between the small bear and the middle bear.
We took off early to explore this narrow side-valley and near the edge of the town came on a novel (to me) anti-erosion device. Where the summer floods are at their most violent, scores of giant wicker baskets – about eight feet high and five or six feet in diameter – have been placed against the substantial embankment and filled with stones to break the force of the water. Immediately above these is a small pagoda-type mosque, very decrepit and seemingly inhabited by large numbers of quarrelsome poultry. Nearby, on higher ground, stands the Raja’s old palace, a grey, four-storey, fortress-like building, overshadowing the impeccably traditional new palace – a two-storey, whitewashed structure with an outside wooden ladder-stairs and a simply-carved balcony facing south. Nobody can accuse Balti potentates of pampering themselves.

When our path entered the cold, shadowed cleft between the ‘bears’ we were amidst an intimidating conglomeration of boulders. Looking up, one could often see from where, exactly, a certain chunk of rock had fallen. The summit of the small bear seemed to overhang the path and I said, ‘Doesn’t it look like a bear’s head sticking out!’

‘It doesn’t to me,’ replied Rachel. ‘It looks like a bit of mountain that’s going to fall down any minute now.’ And we both instinctively quickened our pace, though that ‘bit of mountain’ may not fall for another 500 years.

Beyond this short gorge the path climbed gradually towards a towering glitter of snow-peaks. On our right, across the torrent, smooth white slopes led up to a long line of rugged rock summits; and on our left were gentler, boulder-strewn slopes, already
snow-free
and flowing with thaw-water. This valley cannot be one of Shigar’s summer pastures for only a few patches of land promise to be grassy. Yet the path is surprisingly good for much of the way, which puzzled me until we came to the remains of many little terraced fields, far below us. This evening I was told vaguely, ‘There used to be a village there – we don’t know what happened to it.’ The Baltis’ lack of interest in the past, either recent or distant, can be maddening. That village must have existed within living memory, as here neither paths nor fields survive very long unattended. Of course the path is not consistently good; in several places it has
dwindled almost to nothing where it overhangs the deep gorge carved out by this nameless (on my map) torrent.

For five hours we saw no other creature, though beyond the nullah many animal tracks were visible in the snow. We often looked back to where the mighty peaks beyond the Shigar rose shining above the darkness of ‘the three bears’; but luckily I was not looking over my shoulder when the track ended abruptly on the edge of a profound chasm, evidently recently created by some slight shudder of these restless mountains. Here we seemed very close to the snows at the head of the valley. Judging by the wind’s keenness – despite the hot noon sun – and by our sense of intimacy with the surrounding heights, I would say we were at about 11,000 feet. It is unusual to find a completely unpeopled nullah, so doggedly do the Baltis make habitable the most unlikely places, and I relished the vast solitude. Yet those tiny deserted fields were rather poignant, as was a grove of gnarled fruit-trees opposite our enforced resting-place, where the vanished village most probably stood.

I should of course have said ‘
my
resting place’. Even after a
six-mile
uphill walk Rachel is not prone to immobility and while I sat she pursued stones; by now the Rest House looks like a badly-run geological museum. On the way up we had passed many expanses of multi-coloured, shattered rock – great chunks of red, green, white, pink, orange, black, purple, and huge blocks with several colours in layers. Large lumps of white marble lay beside the path, as though some Renaissance palace had collapsed nearby, and mica glittered everywhere like gold dust. We paused by one of the many soft, rust-red rocks and literally took a boulder to pieces with our bare hands.

Truly that lonely valley was perfection, with its long, graceful snow slopes, and its arid sweeps of grey-brown scree beneath soaring buttresses of tawny rock, and its all-dominating snow-giants. What an incomparable place Baltistan is! And how futile are all one’s attempts to describe it! A pen can no more than hint at its glory.

Today was rather disjointed, in a very pleasant way. After breakfast
Ghulam Nabi begged me to inspect the hospital and as we had been invited to lunch by the Tahsildar there was time then for only a short wander around muddy fields. We saw the first ploughing of the season, on an exceptionally sunny terrace that had been spread with manure by women. Two yak-cow cross-breds were pulling the crudest possible wooden plough, without even an iron tip; leather thongs held it to the bamboo yoke and the ploughman had to exert considerable force to make any impression on the new-thawed earth. As each strip was ploughed, four men, wielding wide,
clumsily-made
wooden rakes, broke up the large lumps. Then the women reappeared and used bare hands to blend the manure with the rich brown soil, as though kneading some gigantic cake. Meanwhile the rakers had joined a small group of men at the edge of the field and were enjoying a few drags on a hookah and keeping their hands warm over a tiny fire of twigs and grassroots.

To enter the Tahsildar’s house we had to climb a steep ladder and struggle through a flock of dark brown mini-sheep who were lunching on the sun-warm roof. Then, in the entrance-hall, our way was blocked by two billy-goats fighting and a cock and hen mating. We were conducted out of the hot sun into a dark, chilly,
low-ceilinged
room, furnished only with a charpoy and a goat-hair carpet; it is a local status symbol to sit by a stove, burning scarce and expensive wood, instead of depending on the sun for warmth.