Published some time ago in Mountain Bike Pro magazine this is a story of epic adventure, and characteristic disaster while riding along the roof of the world.
I'm not really sure exactly how I ended up in Pakistan last summer, but sure enough in typically unprepared style I found myself in the land of reckless driving, "chuck it all in tea" and great big mountains. The plot went something like this; Mountain god Doug Scott and a group of other renown mountaineers were off to climb Nanga Parbat, one of the 8000 meter peaks in the Karakoram region of the Himalayas, to get to the mountains base camp meant traversing the Deosai plain, a 4000 meter high, 100 miles plus, mountain plateau, the highest in the Himalayas, and the highest of any such length on the planet. And for fun and acclimatisation the expedition had decided to do this on mountain bikes. Some of the group hadn't ridden bikes since they last had a school bag on their backs, so they turned to Raleigh for help, thus I was sent along to " look after things, " a kind of bike sherpa I suppose.
Off to a good start
I knew absolutely nothing about Pakistan the
afternoon I set out on my adventure, in a mad rush after a Karrimor race had
run late. The first thing I learned was that you don't wear shorts in public,
as I stood bare legged at Manchester airport, which was a bit of a pain considering
that was about all I had with me. The second thing I found out was that the
iodine that you put on cuts isn't the same as the drinking kind, three days
too late.
Then on arival in Islamabad; Thirdly I found out that you don't just take
somebodys picture without asking, as a street barber chased me down the road
with a cut throat razor; you could say I was as green as a shamrock, and I
had to wise up quickly!
Our trek started in Islamabad, (which was a real culture shock to me, but
was to seem like a state of the art space town three weeks later.) We were
to travel some 500 miles north to a small town called Skardu, which was at
the base of the plain. The idea was to fly there, but after two days of waiting
for good flying weather we gave up and took a bus north along the legendary
Karakoram Highway, which was an amazing, even if somewhat gruelling experience,
being as I'd already contracted a nasty stomach bug.
Skardu scree
By the time we arrived in Skardu I was learning fast, "never take yes for
an answer" being paramount in this process, the locals tend to answer yes
to everything and anything in hope of pleasing you, especially if they don't
understand you.
On the day that we set off bikes were built, riding lessons given, jeeps were
haggled over and the back up crew were assembled; these being Mohammed the
cook, Jaffir the jeep man and Quadrir the liaison officer ( man who talks
nicely to locals).
Skardu was at some 2300 meters altitude, and for acclimatisation reasons (avoiding
altitude sickness) we had decided to take two days to reach the top of the
Ali Malik pass, which lead to the Deosai.
Back in the saddle
Riding
out of Skardu was a strange experience, it was the first time for days I'd
been on my bike, and I somehow felt more at ease and in control of things,
I was actually in control and doing what I knew best. The whole group had
decided to brave shorts and flaunt our bear flesh, which drew a few strange
looks from the towns folk, but within a few minutes we were out of it and
on the first proper leg of our adventure. There are very few mettled roads
in Pakistan, and not too many road signs, so as we rode out of town it was
somewhat hit and miss, but with the aid of a few local porters we found the
right track. The first part of the climb was pretty steady and along a dusty
dirt track. The mountains were both imposingly daunting and appealing at the
same time, and the track just drew you further and further into them, with
it's dusty and rocky lunar type appearence, climbing higher and higher, and
further and further away from "real life". It was unlike anywhere I'd ever
been before, and a sense of adventure and fear prevailed, or at least for
me it did. For the other guys it was the first leg of a supreme "mission",
to conquer the mountain.
We'd only been going for a couple of hours when we arrived at the Satpara
lake, which was a real treat for my heat weary eyes. This was the end of the
gentle introduction, and things were becoming decidedly tougher and more rugged
with rocks, steep climbs and stream crossings being thrown at us very few
minutes, the adventure was entering yet another dimension, and the magnetic
energy exuded by the mountains was drawing us further and closer to them.
Along one of these stretches we encountered our first real gang attack; As
if from nowhere we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by kids, for some reason
the rest of the guys ignored them, but I started teaching them English, thus
it was that 5 miles later we were still being hotly pursued by the fitter
members of the gang chanting " yo dude ", and I begun to realise why the others
had ignored them.
Camp site
We pitched our first overnight camp on a
small rocky clearing 32 km and 8 hours riding from Skardu. Mohammed who was
once proclaimed a " genius, ...but not at cooking" prepared the evening roti
and dahl, Quadrir chanted the evening prayer, with an echoy eariness that
lingered deep within the ravine bellow. This was about as far removed from
my world as I'd ever been, but at the same time kind of natural, we were in
the "real world" not in a man made one, no roads, no phones, nothing but us
and.... well. I don't really know and what, but it was something.
Summiting
Day
two dawned with a chill, something else I hadn't bargained on, after the 45
c of the flat lands. The first two hours of riding took us up and along the
final few rocky ravine edged kilometres of the pass. Then right on to the
summit and the Deosai it's self, which was marked by the Ali Malik tea house,
basically a hole in the ground with a carpet for a roof, and a wooden box
containing a few bits and pieces hailed as a shop, it was chai all around
and then push on.
High riding
The Deosai was quite prairie like in appearence;
undulating, both green and desolate, marmot running free and pretty flowers
dotted all around, really calming. But what set it apart from any other prairie
was it's border; it was as if we'd fallen into a secret garden, guarded by
a ring of the worlds highest mountains, all blue and wonderfully snow capped,
with a deep blue sky positioned above netting everything all together.
You somehow had the feeling of being high, higher than high in fact. But I
was higher than I'd ever been, higher than most mortals would ever go, weird
....
The first day of the traverse was undulating but not too extreme, neither
technically or physically. The only chai stop on the way was at the Deosai
hotel, another carpet topped shack serving chai and dahl. Our second overnight
stop was constructed within an eiry stone built ruin next to the Kalapani
river, which we had crossed a couple of times by now, both by wading it and
by bridges.
By now a strange unspoken but increadibly deep comraderie had developed amongst
the "members" of the expedition, even though all remained independent and
increadibly strong individuals
The big swing
When we set off on day three the weather
had changed to say the least, gone was the 40 c plus extreme heat of the plains,
and in exchange came the rain, or the start of the monsoons to be precise.
The track became something of a quagmire in places, so bad that the jeep couldn't
get down the descent from the plateau.
The rain made the final days riding tough and entertaining. We passed the
Shaucer lake on the way to the summit of the Chakor pass, at 4280 meters the
rides high spot. The descent from the pass was rocky, foggy and wet, and we
were all pretty cold and smashed by then.
Shortly after we passed through a small mountain village, the only one on
the plain, Doug decided it was a good place to ask for some chai, which left
the local women running for cover and the kids stoning us out of town (a familiar
experience for me). Luckily a few kilometres later we reached the small town
of Chillum, at the end of the plateau, and dived into the town chai house
to thaw out and sup creamy sweet chai, before buying up the village shops
entire stock of barley sugar.
The big downer
By the time we left Chillum the monsoon was
in full swing, and roads were beginning to get washed away. The final section
of the ride was almost 60 kilometres, and practically all down hill, which
made for one awesome ride, every few minutes we'd round a bend to find the
road subsiding, or that a stream had turned into a river.
Next came a missing bridge, removed during a financial dispute between vilagers
and the army, after several hours of negociations with the town head honcho
we we were allowed to put it back, and then had to take it away again once
we'd crossed it, which averted a near certain multi day delay.
Luckilly we all made it in one piece,(despite wearing out all of our brake
blocks on the way) including the jeep which had almosed gone with a couple
of road subsidances.
End of the road
When we finally reached the end of the road
we'd ridden 152 kilometres in total, and it was almost nightfall and the rains
were getting alarmingly heavy. We'd achieved what we's set out to do, all
be it just in the nick of time, each and everyone of us were totally smashed,
but content. The whole thing had been an adventure as much as a ride, and
I'd experienced things that never believed I would ( including Mohammeds dahl
). So it was that we duly tied the bikes to Jaffirs jeep and clung on to the
jeeps side and traversed the final 20km to Tarashing, the roads final end.
We arrived in the small mountain village at 9:30 pm, three days after leaving
Skardu, and what were we greeted by in this electricity free, running waterless
village ? As we sat there in the dark a generator roared, then on came the
Christmas tree lights and beneath the leaking wooden roof emerged a velour
three piece suite ........
The great escape
Really and truly the adventure was only just
about to start when we arrived at the small mountain retreat of Tarashing.
The monsoons had set in with a vengeance, the worse that there had been in
the area for years. We didn't know it at the time but the whole of Pakistan
was being monsooned and even roads of the importance of the Karakoram were
washing away.
I had contracted Guardias, a very nasty stomach bug, on top of all of this,
and when the rest of the guys left to start the walk in to Nanga Parbat, being
in a bad way and not having eaten for several days, I was left behind to make
my way back to Islamabad.
The village had no communication what so ever with the outside world, all
that was known was that the road we came in on, and the bridges on route were
no longer there, swept away by land slides and floods. No one knew what was
really going on outside of Tarashing, and they didn't really care, after all
we were paying to be there - the biggest boost for years in the local economy
. The estimates on how long it would take to put the roads back hovered around
the 2 month mark, and when the monsoons would stop, well that was anybodies
guess; "Imsh Allah", it's the will of god, came the all too familiar reply
!
I hadn't eaten for well over a week, and wasn't prepared to hang around for
two months or more to see what developed. So I waited for a few days, just
until the rain eased, reducing the risks of landslides and made my escape,
the cabin fever was becoming insessent.
I took a porter, a stranded Belgian trekker and Gullum, the cook boy, with
me, as we all had reason to be elsewhere. We took a jeep along the first decaying
road, which was subsiding as we drove along it, but then we could go no further,
the track simply dissapeared.
But by then I was into full escape mode, and despite the warnings I was in
no mood to spend any more time stranded out there. So with bike and full gear
on our backs we climbed up into the hills, where we had to cross raging torrents
by shuffling along fallen trees, often with massive ravines bellow us and
rocks falling around us, the bridges had gone sure enough !
The entire process took me about five days before I finally reached Islamabad,
during that time I encountered all sorts of things; these included a trip
with a one armed jeep driver and his one eyed one armed assistant, who's job
was to swing from the front bumper to keep the jeep from falling off the mountain
track. Another driver who kept crashing into trees, tractor rides. A nightmare
trip along a decaying mountain track that hadn't been used for 8 years, because
the jeeps kept falling off the side of it (which a following jeep duly did
so, falling off 3000 meter ravine never to be seen again.)
We even had to rebuild roads that were impassable. Then at one check point
I was summoned at gun point in the middle of the night and interigated, then
force fed medicine before I was permitted to leave. Then when one jeep died,
well, I had to guide it through the night with a Petzl head torch. Then on
the Karakoram I was alone with two dubious looking locals, who took a mid
night detour into the bush, fearing I was the next Kashmiri hostage victim
I was just about to make a brake when they explained that the road had dissapeared
again, so we had to cross the river on a military pipe line.
At times it was to say the least scarey. I don't know whether I ever believed
that I'd get home, there were even times that I sat down and wrote out things,
well lets just say things you write when you honestly believe " The end is
nighe". And I sure was glad to get back to Islamabad, but what an experience,
life enhancingly valuable is probably the best word for my learnings. But
I wouldn't have missed a moment of it for the world ... on reflection.
The Crew
The "members" were; Mr Steve (me) Dustcart,
as the locals say.(Doug Scott) Who was the first man to scale the SW face
of Everest amongst other things. Voytek Kurtyka, legendary Polish mountaineer
and dress seller. Andrew Lock, Australian climber, Sandy Allan, Scottish mountaineer,
Rick Allen, British mountain man. Support came from Mohammed and Gullum in
the kitchen, Jaffir the jeep man, Quadrir, the liaison officer and about 50
porters for the walk in. And I would personally like to thank Ibrahime for
helping, unsuccessfully, to bribe my way on to a plane at Gilgit.
The mountains
Nanga Parbat is one of the 8000 meter peaks,
the aim was to climb the mountain by the Mozeno ridge, which had not been
done before. Doug had attempted the ridge three times, and had suffered broken
limbs and lost companions amongst other things on it's slopes. Once again
the full ascent was not possible due to extreme weather caused by the monsoons,
the same weather that claimed so many lives in the region that month, including
Alison Hargreaves who died on the nearby K2.
Fact file
Transport
To get to the Karakoram
you need to take a flight to Islamabad, which is about 5/6 hours direct from
the U.K and costs between 4-500. From there the best bet is to get an internal
flight to either Gilgit or Skardu, which lie around 500 miles north of Islamabad,
these can be booked with P.I.A from the U.K and cost around 18 each way. But
what you have top be aware of is that the flights only operate when the weather
is perfect because there is no radar system in operation. This also means
a massive backlog occurs, which could mean you going back and forth to the
airport for up to a week trying to get on a plane, and may result in you having
to pay a nice gentleman several times the ticket price to assure your seat.
The other north bound option is a bus or mini bus, but on such the Karakoram
24 hour voyage is really gruelling, and it's so busy that riding it is not
really that much fun. If you do go by this route try to avoid open buses,
the dust could make you very ill.
For travelling in the mountains you can either hire of just hail a passing
jeep, these are reasonably priced, on a cargo jeep you could travel all day
for around 8, but you will have to be prepared to barter to extreme lengths,
as with anything in Pakistan, you don't just go and buy something, the whole
process takes around half an hour and often involves the entire village.
Food and drink and accommodation
Avoid anything that's not cooked, well cooked
dahl, rice and roti are always available at road sides and chai houses and
are usually pretty safe. Never drink water without purifying it first, either
with a pump or with iodine, don't even wash your teeth with it.
You can eat a meal at a roadside shack for around 1-2, and for not much more
in a small hotel.
A decent hotel will cost you around 15 per night, a mountain hotel without
water etc. around 6 per night, but once again you must barter, and firmly.
Hygiene and customs etc.
