In Xanadu (42 page)

The back of the truck had something of the all-male atmosphere of a Yorkshire pub. At one end, amid a divan of quilts,
kilim
and sheepskins, sat a sanctimonious old man and his two silent sons. They wore white skullcaps and shared their father's long, basset-hound jowls. They did not look happy about the two strangers joining them, and at first studiously ignored us. The others were three brothers, and were more of a rowdy nature. They made room for us by dangling their legs over the side, quite a hazardous undertaking considering our speed, the narrowness of the road and the recklessness of drivers heading in the opposite direction. They were bareheaded and far removed from the noble Afghan of travel books. They did not talk of gardening or Persian poetry; instead they questioned us closely about the West:

'Is Inglistan better than Pakistan?'

'In some ways.'

Pakistan is a country of dogs.'

I painted a very romanticized picture of Cambridge, and they promised to come and visit me. Is it far to drive?' 'Very far.'

I thought how they would look driving down King's Parade in their truck; we could take them punting. Then the eldest of the brothers brought his head close to mine and whispered something. I missed it and he repeated it louder.

"When I come to Inglistan will you take me to a club?'

'What sort of club would you like to go to?'

There are many kinds of club?'

'Very many: sports clubs, dining clubs, nightclubs.'

'I mean the club where a man....'

He made a small but graphic gesture with the index finger of his right hand.

'Oh. I see. You want a brothel.'

The Afghan nodded enthusiastically.

'Brothel, brothel.'

The old man was less appreciative company. When Louisa took out her Sony Walkman he glared at us both, then, using his son as interpreter, he said:

That is not good.'

'I'm sorry?' said Louisa.

That is not good. Your gramophone is not allowed.' 'What do you mean?'

'Your gramophone is not allowed in the Law of Islam. You must put it away.' The old man was not yet finished. Was our trip for religious purposes? Not exactly, I replied. What did I mean? I was hoping to write a book, I said. A book of the Christian religion, he supposed. No? Of what religion then? Not a religious book? What other kind of book was there? I showed him
Lolita.
He studied the cover photograph, and flicked through the book from the back forwards. Then he informed us that the Prophet had also forbidden the works of Vladimir Nabokov. This seemed more reasonable, but equally unlikely.

Despite this, we were in high spirits. It was exhilarating to be moving again. We stopped occasionally, to pray or pick flowers, and at Chilas we ate some lunch. While we waited for the old man to return from the mosque, the Afghans broke into a chorus of contented flatulence. After that the landscape changed rapidly, and the mountains closed in around us. The cultivation began to recede, and the grey hillsides were now covered in jagged scree. The tops of the mountains were dusted with snow. The Afghans were happy:

'When the
Shuravi
invade Pakistan we will fight in these mountains too.'

To pass the time the three brothers tried to teach me Dari. The old man and his sons snoozed or mumbled their prayers. When the father was asleep one of the boys plucked up the courage to ask to listen to the Walkman. He tapped his feet through one Prince song, then glanced at his father and returned to his devotions. We drove on, higher into the Karakorams. We passed a broken-down bus full of Uigurs from Chinese Turkestan. They were on their way back from the annual
Hajj
to Mecca. The men had narrow eyes and long, silky beards. They wore khaki frock coats and green and black embroidered skullcaps. These were the first Uigurs we saw.

Towards evening we rounded a corner and saw in front of us a roadblock. Two guards stood beside it holding Lee-Enfields. The guards signalled that Louisa and I should get out. My heart sank. It had been too easy up to now. We had failed to get our special permits and now we would have to retrace our steps to Islamabad and try again. The guards took our passports and led us inside. The more senior of the two grunted something in Urdu. He was presumably forbidding us to continue. If only Laura were here, I thought, she would get us through. Then something in me snapped. I was not going to be sent back without a fight. No, I said. Certainly not. We were not going back. No way.

I was just getting into the swing of things when
I
noticed that Louisa was giggling. We were about to be sent back, the whole expedition put in jeopardy and all Louisa could do was giggle. I glared at her,

'He only wants you to sign the register,' she whispered.

I looked around and noticed for the first time that the guard was pointing to a ledger. His other hand held a pen.

Louisa sat down and filled in the details.

Thank you,' said the guard. 'Gilgit welcomes you.'

The guards raised the barrier, and we drove on. Mr Muneeradin had not lied. The highway was indeed open for its full length. We drove past Gilgit and made camp in an orchard in the Hunza valley.

Never sleep with an Afghan. They snore, and they rise indecently early. It was still dark the following morning when I heard the old man intoning his prayers. Someone rebuilt the fire, and a kettle was fetched from the truck. It dawned dull and overcast. Before long it began to drizzle. Hunza, a hanging valley of orchards and asphodels, looked that morning a little like the Scots Borders in February. Only the old man spoke. He seemed to find comfort in everyone else's gloom, announcing, 'It
is
man's destiny to be wet,' and The Prophet commanded rain.'

The people of Hunza are Isma'ilis. For generations they lived by robbery and slave trading and they are still supposed to practise infanticide. They are renowned for their longevity and their taste for butter buried in the ground for one hundred years. Huddled miserably in the back of the truck we left the valley and entered a harsh landscape that reminded me of the wastelands of Arthurian romances. We crossed a wide deserted plateau, flat-bottomed and covered in sand dunes. White outcrops rose from the granite slopes, riddled with holes like diseased teeth. Then we turned into the valley of the Gilgit River and the road became lost in the pebbles of the alluvial plain. The truck skidded on the rocks and splashed through tributary streams. Twice we passed side valleys blocked with the white mass of unmelted glaciers. It grew increasingly cold, and the drizzle changed to half-hearted gusts of snow.

The Pakistani border post was as desolate as the landscape around it: a group of windswept huts and a few miserable-looking tribesmen, shivering under
their
patou
blankets. There was no colour. The scene was entirely monochrome.

We said goodbye to the Afghans and had our passports stamped. Lou found a post office hut to post a letter to Edward, then we hiked eight miles over the Kunjerab Pass to the Chinese border. We crossed a mountainous no-man's-land: high, wild, dreich country, all rock and ice.

The Chinese immigration officials were dressed in green military uniforms. They grunted at us in an incomprehensible Chinese version of Urdu. We sat on a bench with a dozen Punjabi businessmen and filled out in triplicate the forms handed to us. The official copied the details into a set of huge ledgers, and stored the forms away in separate files. We were made to line up and come forward individually. Our visas were checked for irregularities. The details of our health certificates were scrutinized. They carefully studied our passport photographs and when it came to changing travellers cheques, they resolutely denied the existence of the National Westminster Bank. Never have I seen men who derived so much enjoyment from the administration of bureaucracy. When they had finished we were marched outside into the blizzard. There was no bus, and we had no option but to sit and shiver until one came. We were not the only ones who were stranded. A party of
Hajji,
all octogenarians or older, sat beside piles of their belongings, wrapped up in blankets, overcoats and quilts. Some were obviously very ill. They had been waiting two days.

A 'bus' did turn up, sometime towards evening. It was a preposterous vehicle, a mere skeleton of a charabanc, with torn seats, shattered floor and gaping, glassless windows. A yak skin acted as a windshield over half the front window. The officials demanded that we, as foreigners, use it in preference to the poor
Hajji.
We bumped off along the road. The much vaunted Karakoram Highway, built by the Chinese at huge cost as a symbolic as well as physical link between the two countries, came to an end at the border post To reach Tashkurgan, the first town in China, we had to travel along an unmetalled track riddled with potholes.

To our surprise the bus only broke down twice on the way to Tashkurgan. The engine overheated and the driver had to pull to a halt, stop the engine, fetch some cold water from a distant farmstead, then douse the radiator. It delayed us for as little as four hours. There were no punctures, the chassis did not give wav, and occasionally the headlights worked. We were less lucky on arriving at Tashkurgan. The hotel had closed up for the night and refused to admit us. The driver took us to a disused caravanserai and there we fought for floorspace. There waj no water, no food, no loo and no beds. But we had crossed the border and were now in Chinese Turkestan. Kashgar was
only
a day's journey away.

Or so we thought. The next morning we awoke to find that our bus had disappeared. The Pakistani businessmen were milling around in a state of profound depression. No transport was expected for four days. We were stranded.

Anyone who has studied the Silk Road might expect Tashkurgan to be a rather exciting place. It was the ancient gateway town to China, the junction point of the Silk Roads leading north from India and east from Afghanistan. All merchants travelling overland to China would have had to pass through it. It is the easternmost place marked on Ptolemy's map of the world and he describes it as the entrance to Seres, the Land of Silk. Traders from the classical West came here to exchange their goods for the mysterious 'down' that they genuinely believed grew on trees. Pliny was typical. The Seres are famous for the wool of their forests,' he wrote authoritatively. They remove the down from leaves with the help of water....' This was at least one step nearer the truth than the other contemporary theory that silk was really a vegetable, possibly a distant cousin of the cabbage family.