Full Tilt (19 page)

Walking slowly upwards through the hamlet and across the fertile strip of land at the base of the mountain I was again reminded of the Aran Islands. Here too the fields are ‘made’ and enclosed within high stone walls, grassy lane-ways run between the walls, little donkeys carry big loads, the sense of remoteness is strong and the tiny cottages are built of stone – though instead of thatch they have flat stone and mud roofs, laid on wooden beams. At one stage the similarity was so great that if I lowered my eyes from the mountains I could almost hear the music of the Atlantic on the shores of Inishere.

Less than two miles from Gilgit the cultivated land ends abruptly and the steepening slope is covered with large loose stones. Now all around me were jagged brown-grey rocks, and stretches of barren scree, and devastated dry water courses, revealing the savage velocity of melted snows. The only vegetation was a splendid shrub, about five feet high, which at intervals flared up spectacularly in the midst of a
wide desolation of grey stones and was so laden with deep pink flowers that from a distance it looked like some mysterious bonfire burning untended.

It was quite a stiff climb to the top and at times I had to go very cautiously indeed. Once I was so ‘trapped’ that the only way up was through a waterfall, where the secure stones offered safer hand- and foot-holds than the loose scree on either side. It was a ‘thin’ waterfall, yet the power of even that comparatively low volume of water astonished me. (By this time the sun was so hot that my clothes were dry in half an hour.)

Just before this I found the corpse of a young man – dead eight or ten days I should think. His skull had been bashed in so I’ve officially ‘forgotten’ the discovery as I wish to remain on good terms with
all
the local factions while trekking here. My nose led me to the poor devil, who was pushed into a crevice between two big boulders. I notice that rifles are not carried in this part of the Agency but they evidently manage to liquidate each other without them. After investigating I was quite glad to immerse myself in the waterfall!

From the summit I had a magnificent view of a tumult of rough white peaks in every direction – including Nanga Parbat again, triumphantly conspicuous above the rest. On the way down I saw a couple of caveman types, with long, tangled hair and beards, carrying ice from the glaciers to Gilgit Town. By following them my return route was shorter – but much more hair-raising – and I got back at 5.20 p.m. utterly exhausted and ravenously hungry.

After a nameless but very satisfying meal I went for a stroll around the town. In some stalls of the bazaar goods from down-country – films, biscuits, toothpaste and the like – are on sale, but they all look excessively fly-blown and cost the earth because of air-freight charges. The townspeople strike me as a surly lot – not impolite or in any way unpleasant, but lacking the frank friendliness which so impressed me in Afghanistan and Pakistan proper. In fact, from the human society point of view it’s rather like being back in Persia, except that these people are more uncouth than the Persians – and by uncouth I don’t mean spitting on the street or squatting in public, but something deeper
inside that governs a man’s attitude to others. The actual town has nothing to distinguish it and but for its surroundings would be slightly depressing. Now (10 p.m.) I’m going to bed early in preparation for tomorrow’s trek up the valley.

My ‘military advisers’ had laughed at the idea of anyone cycling up the valley, but I couldn’t bear the thought of abandoning Roz now so we left Gilgit at 4.45 a.m., soon after sunrise, to attempt the first stage of the trek together, and for a few miles it was possible to cycle – though at little more than walking pace, over a track covered with several inches of sand.

Already, taking advantage of the morning coolness, peasants were harvesting barley, reaping and binding by hand with leisurely movements. The women wear gay, ankle-length petticoats of imported cotton, but the men have homespun trousers and jackets, again recalling the Aran Islands. Gilgit’s entire population is Muslim – different sects predominating in different regions – but the turban is here replaced by a soft cloth cap, turned up around the edges, which gives the men an oddly European appearance.

Today’s landscape was a series of dramatic contrasts. The valley floor around Gilgit Town showed the fragrant abundance of early summer – fields of trembling, silver-green wheat and richly golden barley, bushes of unfamiliar, lovely blossoms and, most beautiful of all, a rock-plant with tiny, golden-pink flowers, growing so lavishly in the crevices of the walls that it was like a sunset cloud draped over the grey stones. Then the valley narrowed to exclude the early sun until there was room only for the river between the opposing precipices and we were alone in a barren, rough, shadowy world, where nothing moved but the brown flood-waters.

Next the track soared upwards, overhanging the river-bed, and it became so rocky underfoot that I was often carrying, rather than pushing, Roz. At one stage I couldn’t get her up an impossibly steep gradient with kit ‘on board’, so I unloaded, carried Roz up, slithered down to retrieve the kit and, as I dragged myself up for the second time,
admitted defeat. By now Roz has gallantly carried me through quite a variety of improbable terrains, but clearly she can not carry me through the Karakoram Mountains – nor can I carry her through them …

After some miles of this daredevil upward spiralling the track wriggled around a jutting thousand-foot cliff and I saw, far below, on the other side of the river, a fertile semicircle of land, hidden and tranquil at the base of a snow-capped mountain. A few of the hamlet’s farmhouses were visible between willow, plane, sinjit and mulberry trees, growing tall and strong among neat little patches of corn and shimmering young meadows. Sunlight was brilliant on the dark green waters and white foam of a nullah leaping down the mountainside to join the mud-stained river, and through the still, clear air I could hear the faint shouts of men directing the donkeys which were walking round and round on mud threshing-floors.

After this the track descended to river level, before again climbing steeply, and it was almost as difficult to manoeuvre Roz down such a gradient as it had been to haul her up. My wrists ached from the strain of holding the brakes while I stumbled against rocks and slipped on the deep sand: I wished then that I’d had the good sense to heed my ‘military advisers’.

Beyond the next pass the mountains receded slightly on our left and for a few miles I was able to cycle across the boulder-strewn moor, though a surface littered with sharp flints kept my speed down. Then, at 10 a.m., trees ahead showed that we were approaching the first hamlet on this side of the river, where the reaction to my appearance was rather disconcerting. Only a few old people and children were about, and the children, after one horrified look, either screamed loudly and buried their faces in their elders’ laps, or bounded over the low walls and vanished. The adults, though more restrained, looked no less alarmed, and obviously didn’t wish to improve the acquaintance, so I realised that apart from the physical difficulties of cycling here an approach on wheels is psychologically unsound.

Soon after midday I met the problem of finding shade – something uncommonly scarce at noon on a bare mountainside. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to find a patch for myself but here again poor Roz
complicated things as it was unthinkable that she should be left exposed to such a ferocious sun. So for her sake I had to walk further than was prudent, until an overhanging rock offered protection to us both.

Having slept soundly for two hours I woke to find it even hotter than before, though fortunately the track was now partly in shadow. Today’s highest pass lay immediately ahead and to prepare for it I had a swim – one of the coldest of my life – at a spot where high, projecting rocks gave protection from the current and where there was a nice little ‘strand’ of soft silver sand between the water and the track.

From the top of this pass I could see the orchards and fields of another village about eight miles up the valley. The descent here was more gradual than most and we free-wheeled slowly down – if ‘
freewheeled
’ is the
mot juste
for zig-zagging between boulders! Then, when the track ran level with the river, there was no space left for zig-zagging so Roz and I again exchanged rôles. Near the village a man came riding towards us – the first person we’d met since leaving Gilgit.

Colonel Shah had given me a map which shows that this village is twenty-one miles from Gilgit Town and as I reckon that I cycled no more than one-third of the way it’s obvious that the time has come to be disloyal to Roz and temporarily acquire a more adaptable mount.

The food situation here is very grim – an acute scarcity of flour and no tea, sugar or salt left after the winter. Most people are living on goats’ milk, eggs and mulberries – not my favourite diet when served simultaneously but this evening I was too starved to fuss. I wolfed five eggs and about two pounds of white mulberries – but stuck at the milk. This is odd as I’ve so often taken it in my stride before: yet I suppose five eggs do make an insecure foundation for goats’ milk, which so undeniably tastes exactly as a billy-goat smells! Of course, in a few weeks’ time, when the maize harvest has been saved and ground, there will be no shortage of flour and by then too the camel-caravans will have crossed the Babusar Pass with this year’s supply of tea, sugar, salt and cotton.

I find that the people here are much easier to get on with than the folk of Gilgit Town – who make me wonder if they have not already lost something through their comparatively close contacts with
down-country.
This village has one tiny shop, in which a tubercular-looking young man sits on the floor chatting with a few friends and surrounded by almost empty shelves: after eight long months of commercial isolation only a half-bale of cotton and a few boot-laces and
pocket-combs
remain of the winter’s stock. Yet to my surprise cigarettes are available, at 6
d
. for twenty, and I’m told that these are flown up regularly, though few other goods are imported by plane – air-freight charges would put them beyond the reach of most Gilgitis. But again I’m experiencing the dignified generosity of the very poor: when I produced money for forty cigarettes the young man looked quite hurt and firmly refused to accept it.

My arrival here caused no less of a sensation than in that other hamlet down the valley. However, this community is better prepared to meet an invasion by bicycle, as some of the older men have served in the Indian Army under the British and two have even been to Italy, so the peculiarities of European women are vaguely comprehended.

The village has a school as well as a shop and within minutes of my arrival the young teacher came hurrying to the rescue. He speaks Urdu, which is of no assistance whatever, and a very few words of English, which is of the greatest assistance. Supplementing these few words with scores of complicated signs, I explained my position and was assured that a suitable horse will be awaiting me at dawn tomorrow and that Roz will be respectfully cherished until I rejoin her.

I’m often astounded by the complicated explanations, discussions and arrangements which can be conducted through signs, even without a single mutually comprehensible word. Admittedly the usefulness of signs varies according to the intelligence of the local population; I found the superbly quick-witted Afghans the easiest of all in this respect. A language barrier does inevitably impede the collection of concrete information and the exchange of ideas, but it really is surprisingly flimsy when one wishes to arrange practical details and in unsophisticated societies it ceases to count where personal relationships are concerned. What can be an embarrassment when visiting Europeans, to whom elaborate signs may seem undignified, actually helps to overcome shyness and awe in primitive homes. When
you ask for fried eggs by making noises like a hen after laying, followed by noises like something sizzling in fat, the whole household is convulsed with laughter and not only are fried eggs served, but you are unanimously elected as one of the family.

A local detail which absolutely astounds me is that the women knit heavy unbleached woollen sweaters for their menfolk
on an Aran pattern.
It’s unmistakable – and they certainly didn’t get it from women’s magazines!

During the summer, in river-level villages, everyone here sleeps out of doors – either on the flat roofs of their little houses, or in their compounds, if they have them, or simply in village streets or in orchards; my bed for tonight is a charpoy under an apricot tree in the teacher’s compound.

When we started our trek today at 5.30 a.m. the sun was up, but not yet over the mountains, and the valley looked very beautiful in the cool light, with the air soft and fresh, like spring grass. I was so happy that I burst into what it pleases me to call ‘song’, but the result obviously unnerved my mount and I had to desist abruptly. Apart from this lack of appreciation, she’s a splendid pony – a sturdy, agile eight-year-old of about fourteen hands, with a curious pale golden coat, not uncommon in this region. I’ve rechristened her ‘Rob’ for the duration of our trek because her real name is so tongue-eluding, not to say unspellable. At first I found her nonchalant treatment of precipices quite terrifying; then I realised that if she avoided the edge of today’s track she’d very successfully concuss me against
overhanging
chunks of cliff and by midday I’d become quite reconciled to the way she tripped along the very verge of the track, frequently dislodging stones which took a long, long time to reach the river. And by evening I’d become so trustful that I positively enjoyed looking down to see nothing whatever between me and the torrent, 1,500 feet below. Following the example of local horsemen I walked up the steepest gradients and rode down, so I’d the worst of both worlds, since it’s far more tiring to ride down than up such sharp inclines. On some of the level stretches I had to dismount again, where the track was too narrow to take a rider, or was strewn with massive boulders which it seemed wisest for us to negotiate separately.

Over the first two or three miles beyond Gakuch the valley floor was very fertile. Then the track began to go up and up, winding round and
round mountain after mountain, and the many other fertile patches which appeared below were all on the opposite side of the river. I often stopped to look down on those little hamlets – one could never tire of their beauty. In this part of the valley the river seethes along, a mass of white foam, with thin waterfalls from glaciers twinkling down cliffs to meet it, and today fields of unripe barley and wheat were being played on by a strong west wind until they too looked like rivers flowing east. A lovely shrub, with feathery, pale green branches which shade off to pink about twelve inches from the end, grows abundantly amidst the stones and sand by the riverside; usually it’s a few feet high but some of the bushes were almost trees.

We met one other traveller today – a frail and half-starved-looking young man who was carrying a colossal wooden crate on his back and could barely stagger along the rough track under its weight. I gave him my lunch of four hard-boiled eggs and he ate them so fast I was quite alarmed, fearing he’d die of indigestion and that I’d have done more harm than good. Now I basely and bitterly regret my generosity, as I myself am almost dying of starvation and this village can’t even produce an egg. At the moment I’m waiting while clover is being cut in a nearby field to be stewed for my supper. It’s the very same as clover at home and I suppose (and hope) it’s nourishing; they eat it often in Afghanistan, too, and when it was served there with grilled mutton I mistook it for spinach. I’ll know now what to do next summer with the clover on my lawn!

We covered thirty-four miles today, arriving here at 6.45 p.m., and I had one delicious swim where the track dived right down to river level. Watering Rob is the big problem (I carry fodder for her behind the saddle) but we were lucky enough today with springs en route.

The filth in these villages is beyond all, the poverty is the most extreme, I’ve met since leaving home and the skin-diseases are too dreadful to be described. Everyone stinks to high heaven – even in the open air it’s overpowering and inside the little stone huts it’s almost lethal. Now two grinning boys of about twelve have just appeared beside me, carrying a hideous-looking cloth full of mulberries. The method is to lay a cloth under a tree, climb into the lower branches
and shake the fruit down. I’m too hungry to resist their juicy sweetness so, in spite of the cloth, will devour them. They are, of course, the chief source of sugar for the Gilgitis – and I badly need sugar this evening after those thirty-four miles.

We arrived here at 7.45 p.m. – half an hour ago – and so far there’s no sign of any food appearing. I’ve had nothing to eat since a tiny bowl of stewed clover at 5.30 a.m.; this would be passable with salt, but without it it merely tastes like a slimy mess and anyway is
not
sustaining. Rob did much better than I today – we came to several grassy patches where she grazed contentedly while I wished that I was a horse too! The situation is maddening because in Pindi I asked those who are supposed to be authorities on this area if I should bring stores and they said that if I was prepared to eat local foods this would not be necessary: which just shows how little central authorities know about outlying areas. Though I must admit that this village is
very
outlying – if the path and my permit hadn’t petered out here we’d soon be in China!

I was also told that there are no snakes in Gilgit and consequently I have been happily sleeping on the ground all over the place – yet this afternoon I met two thin, black-and-yellow eighteen inchers within an hour; they hissed at us from beside the track and Rob got very jittery. I killed them both with heavy stones, having a vague feeling that it’s one’s duty as a citizen to do so; then afterwards I got scruples about taking life without provocation and regretted my savagery. But now the scribe of this village, who most improbably speaks English (As She Should Not Be Spoken), has soothed my conscience by telling me that these snakes are a menace to the kids grazing on the mountainsides. He added that the adult goats never get bitten, which seems unlikely – if goats had a built-in anti-snake device it would surely operate as efficiently for kids as for adults. Possibly the answer is that this poison is not strong enough seriously to worry the adults. Incidentally, the same kids are besieging me at the moment, having discovered that I’m good at scratching between their incipient horns – evidently
horn-growing 
is their version of teething troubles. They’re the most charming little creatures imaginable and come in all colours from jet-black to snow-white, through nigger-brown, russet and beige with many wildly mixed piebalds. When stroked or scratched they wag their little tails frantically. A few moments ago I discovered that one of them has just consumed the entire five pages of Daphne’s last, and as yet unanswered, letter but I suppose he’ll survive. If some food doesn’t soon appear I’ll be following his example and consuming Patsy’s six pages! Yet it’s odd how much easier it is to bear extreme hunger than extreme thirst, which almost drives one mad. By this stage my stomach must be lined with mud, I’ve drunk so much of the flooded river – but though it looks like mutton broth it tastes delicious. As I wrote the last sentence the tiniest kid was getting himself on to my lap where he is now curled up happily sucking my left thumb!

We covered about thirty-five miles today through the wildest landscape I’ve ever seen. This Gilgit region really does something quite extraordinary to one’s mind. The completely unbroken solitude and the absence of anything recalling the rest of humanity produce a unique feeling of liberation as one moves slowly through these tremendous gorges. Today the outside world and my own life – past and future – as part of that world seemed so utterly unreal that for a time I ceased to be aware of it and existed only in the present, acutely conscious of my surroundings and of physical sensation, but removed, in a dreamlike way, from myself as a person. It was a strangely relaxing experience – though in retrospect slightly eerie.

About five miles from here I got quite a scare when we came round a sharp angle of the mountainside to see, right in front of us, what looked like an impassable torrent raging down across the ‘road’ between huge boulders. I was about to dismount and contemplate the crisis when I realised that Rob was all set to cope. She turned left, went downstream about fifteen yards and then plunged in. The water was some twenty-five yards wide and at one stage she was actually swimming. (I’m soaked to the waist now and have nothing to change into.) Then she came out on the other side and climbed up through boulders and loose stones that I would have considered dicey even for
a goat. After that she halted for a moment of her own accord and looked round as though to say ‘Who’s a smart horse?’ so I lavished the appropriate praises and pats on her and off she jogged again. The joke is that if I’d had time to
think
about it I wouldn’t have dared cross, yet we’d no alternative as it’s out of the question to remain in the open after dark here because of snow-leopards and bears. (Apparently the bears are much the more dangerous of the two.) I’ve had my share of these nullahs ever since leaving Gilgit Town but this was by far the deepest. They begin to flow about twelve midday, when the sun has been beating for hours on the glaciers, are in full spate by 6 p.m., down to a trickle by midnight and dried up by 4 a.m. After the next few weeks they’ll be finally dried up for the season, when all but the permanent glaciers have melted. It was very hot today – I should think at least 80°.

There has just been a pause to eat maize gruel out of an iron dish and drink tea with salt in it. They get salt and tea here from China (unofficially) and when one comes to think of it, it’s a matter of taste and custom whether one adds sugar or salt or neither to tea. Having by choice acquired the salt habit in Pindi and district I was undismayed by this evening’s brew – but I do feel guilty at eating their gruel and I can’t pay them as they simply won’t accept money.

Despite their filth, the people in all these little villages are truly delightful and are contributing as much as Rob and the scenery to the success of this trek. They have a simple, but easily aroused, sense of humour and I’ve discovered that imitating animal noises is the surest way to send a whole village into convulsions of laughter. Another way is solemnly to put my solar topee on the oldest and most respected member of the community – at this point they almost roll on the ground with mirth. They wear very distinctive and highly coloured costumes in this village and the women have quite lovely bead and silver necklaces and bracelets. As they are all Ismaili Muslims the women go unveiled. There are few traces of Mongolian blood and the majority are very fair like northern rather than southern Europeans. Their biggest worry is the colour of my face and arms: they cannot understand why I don’t pull down my shirt-sleeves and shade my face from the sun!

I had expected a painful reaction to follow my sudden transference from Roz to Rob but there’s a most convenient custom throughout Pakistan which has helped my muscles enormously. Since crossing the Khyber Pass I’ve found myself being thoroughly massaged from head to foot almost every evening, either by one of the servants of the families with whom I’ve stayed or, in villages, by kindly women who appear out of nowhere, knead me efficiently and disappear. I haven’t yet established whether this is common form for all travellers, or is reserved for those who are self-propelled, but whatever the basis of the custom it’s making my life here much less sore than it would otherwise be.

This village is at an altitude of over 10,000 feet and after dark the temperature drops sharply, so tonight I’m sleeping indoors – i.e. sharing a stinking mound of blankets with six no less stinking children. But the use of that adjective is not to be interpreted as a mark of ingratitude – I appreciate these people’s hospitality even more than I do that of my wealthy hosts down-country.

If anyone ever asks you to drive three donkeys and a foal for
twenty-four
miles through the Karakoram Mountains, be
very
firm and refuse to do so – it really
is
more than flesh and blood was ever meant to endure. The position, as explained to me this morning, was that the four were being exchanged for a pony mare and foal from Gupis, but the latter was too young to travel for another fortnight whereas the donkeys were urgently required in Gupis, and a donkey foal, although looking so much frailer, is presumed tougher – therefore, would I please take the donkeys with me and save a villager the journey to Gupis? Green as I am I foresaw some of the complications and said, ‘Couldn’t a villager come with me, riding half the way on Rob, and when the pony foal was able to make it, couldn’t a Gupis villager bring them up?’ But no – it was in the bargain that the donkey village was responsible for herding both lots. So off I went at 5.45 a.m., armed with a long switch which would, in theory, enable me to steer my charges without difficulty.
Well, maybe a local on horseback could do it, but those donkeys knew they were on to a soft thing. Everyone remained happy while there was, on one side, a sheer drop of hundreds of feet into the river and, on the other side, an equally sheer wall of rock – then the brutes had no alternative but to go in a straight line. The fun started when the mountains receded in places, or the track dropped to river level and there came level stretches between river and track. Then the quartet merrily gambolled off at about ten times the rate they’d go on the road, in divers directions, through deep, yielding sand and thorny bushes, and between boulders and over streams and behind trees and around cliffs. (It’s all right for you to sit back and laugh, but if
you
were galloping under a blazing sun trying to reassemble
in one place
a herd of apparently demented donkeys, you mightn’t think it so amusing.) Rob was again wonderful – this is obviously a frequently recurring crisis in her life. She went after them like a sheep-dog and on the track kept reinforcing my rather half-hearted use of the switch by pushing the last donkey’s rump with her nose; twenty-four miles at the pace of ambling donkeys is decidedly wearing. I passed a lovely pool, but did not dare to swim because the caravan would have been halfway to Peking by the time I came out. After twelve miles I saw that the foal couldn’t possibly be driven any further without positive cruelty: from his point of view the whole idea was cruel anyway. (He was the smallest foal I’ve ever seen, with a mother hardly bigger than an Irish donkey foal.) So then I did what they do in Afghanistan with tiny foals and calves – tied his forefeet and hind-feet and put him across Rob in front of the saddle. I had to climb on to a rock to get him in place – he seemed amazingly heavy despite his dwarfishness – and he took a very dim view of the performance, as did his mother. (Rob was the only one to accept the situation philosophically.) By the time this was accomplished the two donkeys not involved had vanished and as I didn’t feel like going into the unknown with the foal
in situ
I pursued them on foot, leaving Rob tied to a bush, the foal tied to Rob and the mother psychologically tied to the foal. A twenty-minute chase followed over burning sand and loose rocks (my biggest fear was that one of the wretches would break a leg) and
then we were off again. We arrived here at 7.45 p.m., having had several pauses to dismantle the foal for feeding.