16th October, 2008 - Gilgit, Northern Pakistan

First - so sorry folks - I'm afraid that, wonderful though Northern Pakistan is, the internet is .... leisurely....so we have not been able to load any photos since Kashgar! We tried in Karimabad, but a rather pink-faced andrew emerged, dehydrated from the internet cafe with no result. We have toured Gilgit today in search of a rumoured faster internet connection and seen some wonderful sights along the way and had a great fun ride in a 'Suzuki' (tiny truck with lovely canopy over the top - 10p wherever you go) but failed to find anything better - so you're all going to have to wait until we reach Islamabad/Rawalpindi in around 1.5 weeks time (roughly) where we are sure we will get broadband and be able to load up the huge backlog (which we've managed to save onto memory stick, all filed, ready to go). So - in the interim, I shall have to wax lyrical to describe the stunning scenery, colours, sounds and flavours of Northern Pakistan for you.

So - we arrived, as you know, by bus into Pakistan, much to our disappointment that we couldn't cycle. No matter - the next day we had a gentle cycle to the completely charming town of Passu. Here, little dusty paths wind between the houses and tiny fields and beautiful orchards that accompany each home. Little ditches with running water for irrigation wind alongside grassy banks and lovely stone walls made of round rocks that make it feel like the Flintstones. Women are occasionally seen flitting about like colourful butterflies, but it's a very quiet village and we stayed in a nice little place called Passu Inn, run by a charming old gentleman. We immediately felt the gentleness of the people in this area - hand shakes are SO gentle that they barely press onto your hand at all. The stunning 'Cathedral Peaks' dominate the horizon here, and we made a day trek up to Yunz Glacier which made a pleasant change from the bikes.

Through Pakistan's Northern Areas and the KKH we have decided to slow things down a bit for this wonderful and dramatic mountainous area. Once we get further south we'll be doing some big distances and going through some areas that we don't want to hang around in too long. So after a couple of nights in Passu, we continued down the Karakorum Highway, dodging rocks that were being sent down by Chinese road builders (a car just ahead of us wasn't so lucky and the left side of his car was completely crushed by a massive boulder - photos will follow!) and wound our way past the potatoe harvesters to the Hunza town of Karimabad. Here, masses of school children swarmed the streets in the morning and we watched them doing their morning marching and exercises before class in the school yard - impressed, and convinced that a bit of discipline like that wouldn't go amiss in our schools back at home! The children here all smile and say either 'rupee rupee rupee' or 'one pen one pen one pen'. Karimabad had a cafe selling divine local walnut cake and......lattes!!!!!! I was so horrified by the price that I couldn't bring myself to buy a latte - then Andrew arrived and bought one - boy do I regret not having one now! However, the tipple of choice in these parts is milk tea - the milk boiled in with the tea and often, shovels of sugar too - not sure how I'll kick the sugar habit on my return! Tea is always served in cups and saucers - one of the benefits of British colonialism!! Ha ha

Karimabad attracts quite a few tourists and so has the little luxuries that go with that, and I'm not ashamed to say that it's quite a comfort from time to time. As you know, we were able to load our last blog from there, but the system couldn't quite cope with downloading photos too. BUT we had a very clean room AND HOT WATER SHOWER!!! (always cause for celebration and a special 'Tracy in the shower song'!). We saw some tv here - Al jazeera - so we gather you are all in midst of a complete financial meltdown - as we are currently surviving on an average of 15 pounds a day between the 2 of us, we think we might just keep going a bit longer until there are jobs for us to come back to and fuel we can afford! It's quite nice to be in blissful ignorance for a while.

Karimabad was the seat of the Royal Mir (king) of Hunza, and the Baltit Fort here was expertly restored during the 1990s by a British-Pakistani team - I did a great tour here before we headed on our way once more - destination Minapin on the excellent recommendation of Sam and Pete, to explore the colossal mountain Rakaposhi. From this point we started to become more aware of the religious differences in these valleys....it is immediately obvious when you are in a Ismaili village - the people are warm and friendly, smiling and waving. The women look confused at first, but respond to my over-enthusiastically wide grin and wave by breaking into a smile, or a shy giggle themselves. The men are happy to say hello to both Andrew and I, and if there is a handshake (everso gently), then I am included also. LITERALLY the other side of the river, you can hear the prayers from the tiny mosques, there are black flags flying at the entrance to the villages (slightly macabre if you ask me - can't we have a jolly orange colour or something less intimidating??), the men scowl, the women hide their faces. We pedal through with Andrew cautiously aknowledging the presence of men while I stare fixedly at the road ahead, and Andrew contorts himself not to be caught looking in the general direction of any women. It's all very uncomfortable. We made the fatal error of Andrew taking a photo of me struggling up a rocky track towards Minapin when there were some women ahead up the track - they had one man with them, who stopped me and asked why I would photograph my sisters? He was holding 4 hand scythes and clearly very unhappy.....as andrew approached, I explained the problem and Andrew showed him the photo he had taken and offered to delete it - we were told to both delete it and to be very careful in future.....message received! This didn't help us feel any less uncomfortable here.

Thankfully, the Diran Guest House in Minapin is a wonderful haven of tranquility and friendly friendly people and we immediately felt happier here. The guest house is much nicer than most, with good bathrooms and a restaurant - but the real pleasure is the rose garden and orchard in which is sits. We drank milk tea from cups and saucers on the lawn and felt like we had been transported back in time.

Minapin is the access village to Rakaposhi base camp so the next day we set off on a big yomp up to the glacier, and on to the base camp (usually done in a couple of easy days, but we couldn't hire rucksacks as hoped for our tent and kit, so with just a small pannier bag each to carry, it was easier to make a day of it). We were rewarded with wonderful views and good weather and we loved every minute of it - both Diran Peak, Rakaposhi Peak and the glacier that runs between them were fantastic and beautiful.

Back in the guest house we hooked up with the excellent Quinn family from Australia - Mum, and Dad and 3 kids (12, 11 and 6) - and we spent the next day lazing all day in the garden, mucking about, and planning a special show for that evening in which everyone took part (Andrew did a card trick and I did a 'rock star' dance with Zoe (6). It was all excellent fun and a total change from our lives on the road.

Reluctantly moving on from Minapin lead us through villages that changed back and forth between Ismaili and non-Ismaili, ending in Chalt where we had been invited to visit a local family - again a contact from Pete and Sam. This was a fascinating visit and on Andrew's request, I'll include that day below from our diary.

Finally - yesterday we cycled on to Gilgit (Where Ismali, Sunni and Shiite converge) - this is a major crossroads in Northern Pakistan and pretty much any traveller coming North passes through here - so we are currently in the Madina guest house where at least 4 other groups we have met along the way have also rocked up - making for a very sociable and fun time. Today we have scoured the town, as you know, looking for faster internet, but we have also bought material and taken it to a tailour to make up a shalwar kameeze for me, and an extra kameeze as the only long sleeved top I have is an icebreaker and too warm for most cycling (certainly when we head further south). We've also had lots of cheap eats from the street cafes (hold onto your bottoms!), found the post office, booked our accommodation for tomorrow down the road, found the polo ground etc etc - so a good admin day!

So - the plan from here......we will be heading further south, which means we'll be donning our new shalwar kameeze (photos to follow) in an attempt to minimise offense in the more orthodox areas. We are hoping to be able to visit Fairy Meadows which is the place to go for Nanga Parbat (8,000+m peak) views ( a further walk of 2 hours to base camp) . Fiary Meadows is 2 days from here - around 60km on the bike and an overnight, then just a few more kilometres to Raikot Bridge from where we understand we have to hire a jeep to go up a private road (built by loggers - apparently a terrifying road, so I intend to keep my eyes shut the whole way - by all accounts, most people do....hopefully not the drivers though - or maybe that's the problem!?). We will spend at least one night up there - possibly 2 - but the weather is a bit changeable now, so there could well be snow - we shall see.

After that, we will make a final decision depending on weather - if the Barbusa Pass (over 4,000m) is clear of snow (it changes day to day), we will probably take another vehicle up and over this to be dropped off with our bikes on the other side - this avoids the 40km climb - not because we don't want the climb, but because the villages on this side of the pass are 'unfriendly' (read: stone throwing kids, no women, scowling men) and as we are slow moving targets heading up hill and the stones are often rather large and accurately thrown, this doesn't sound like much fun to us!!

The alternative is to continue on the KKH - but again, this most definitely goes a long way through unfriendly fundamentalist territory, so we would do this by bus. Of course, all of this is very disappointing as we really want to cycle as much as we possibly can - but we don't need to be heroes about it and we're not interested in actively seeking out negative experiences - we want to have a GOOD time! So - a decision will be made further down the road in 2 or 3 days time - but you can all rest assured that we'll be doing the safe, fun option and will report back once in Rawalpindi/Islamabad in what we think will be about 1.5 weeks from now, give or take!

These 2 cities are adjacent - the first old, the second new. We will stay in 'Pindi' as this is less likely to be a juicy target for the 'unfriendlies' and won't particularly hang about here (other than to collect our package which I can confirm, arrived today from Kashgar!!! HURRAYYY!! New saddle and shorts for Andrew!), and to download all photos. Then we'll scoot off once more towards Lahore where we really want to arrive 2 weeks from today in time for the Thursday, as this is when there is lots of celebrated musical performances each week that we really want to go and see (including 'whirling dirvishes'.....gotta be done!!). So that's the plan! If anyone gets concerned at all during this time, just send a text to Andrew's phone (don't leave a voice message - we can't pick them up) - we will check from time to time and can easily put minds at ease (assuming we have reception of course!!).

We have had one real sadness though - yesterday we received an email letting us know that Andrew's Grandpa passed away peacefully a couple of days earlier. He was a lovely gentleman who had reached a ripe old age and will be very sadly missed by all his family. We are thinking of you all and have been so pleased to hear that right up until the end, he was thoroughly enjoying reading our blogs.

More happily, we are delighted to hear that Andrew's Aunty Betty is also really enjoying hearing about our adventures - so whether it is a fax machine that she gets so that copies can easily sent, or whether a simple mini-computer turns her into a silver surfer (you're NEVER too old!), we hope you continue to get pleasure from our antics Aunty Betty!

As ever, below are a couple of diary extracts for you to read - we hope you enjoy and we look forward to being back in touch very soon. Our love to one and all.

Tracy

10.10.08
Fantastic weather has made todayt the most perfect day of cycle touring. Bright blue skies and little or no cloud meant that we could see the incredible mountain peaks and glaciers. WE passed through many charming villages with small terraced fields divided by Flintstones-type stone walls and orchards everywhere - you can even smell the apples! We stopped for milk tea (sweet - the tea and milk are all heated together - tastes almost like condensed milk has been added) in Gulmit which looked like a lovely village with a little collection of shops, a restaurant and several quite nice-looking guest houses.

We had a lunch of chapattis and mango jam sat on a rock, looking down the Hunza Valley and later passed wonderful petroglyphs on a huge rock beside the road that showed the same stylised ibex (?) that I saw in photos taken by the Aussie girls in a National Park in Kyrgyzstan! Surely this illustrates exchange of people, ideas, commerce, way back when? Right over 2 colossal mountain ranges - the Karakorum and the Pamir - quite astonishing!

Our excitement for the day was provided by a chinese road team - they had a digger working high above the road on a scree slope, inexplicably digging up shovels of rock and scree and tipping them down the slope onto the road. We arrived just after a car had been all but written off by a boulder - the driver incredibly escaped unharmed, but only becuase he drove a right hand drive car - lucky he had no passengers! They had no one there to control traffic and no radio contact with the differ operator. It was a pretty alarming scenario!

Our journey ended with a steep climb into Karimabad where we have cheked into Old Hunza Inn. It's great! Less than 3 pounds per night for our room and less than 1 pound each for dinner. It's clean and has boiling hot water - who could ask for more? There are 2 amazing Spanish women here - just arrived from China - they travel several months a year buying jewellery, then go home and sell it from their shops. Lovely exciteable, animated, bonkers Spaniards (aren't they all??).

....we've weighed ourselves on scales used for weighing carpets - shocking weight loss - I'm down from 64.9 kilos to 59.7. But Andrew is down from 109 kilos to 96! Wafer thin and competing with Elliot and Peregrine for skinny leg status!

14.10.08
we made an unhurried start and put a call in to Saeed to tell him we are on our way. A couple of hours later we wound our way up a dirt road towards the village of Chalt. En route, we had passed a tourist shop at a cafe with a viewpoint of Rakaphosi and here bought a slightly garish and over-priced red shalwar kameeze for me to wear tonight (ed note - trying to sell it in Gilgit was very depressing as all 2nd hand dealers laughed their heads off at how much I paid for it and offered me 1/9 the price in return - I've refused and donated it to the guest house for the next female traveller who rocks up needing one - it's too heavy for further south and I really dislike it - so a mistake in many ways, but probably the correct thing to wear it in Chalt, so not all bad) and a pot of local honey as a gift.

Saeed's son, Adam, was in Chalt to meet us and sent his cook on foot with us to lead the way to his family house. Here Saeed welcomed us warmly and we were served a delicious lunch. In the afternoon Adam and his cousin Ali took us walking around the village, then by jeep high up the valley to some very old villages - I was glad I had changed into my new shalwar kameeze! The village is Nagyr, so again, the women hide their faces mostly. We saw the old polo ground and even met one of the Gilgit team players (a regional hero).

Saeed's family history is quite extraordinary - I confess I finally got lost along the way, but the family now is a unification of the Mir of Nagyr (an old state) and the Mir of Hunza (a neighbouring old state) - so in relative terms, we are dining with royalty!

We have very kindly been invited to stay a night and the great thrill is that they have a friend visiting who is a celebrated local singer-poet in the old tradition. He will perform tonight for us so I'm really looking forward to that (ed note: he was wonderful - and we're trying to buy his only album here in Gilgit - he sang by a camp fire while playing a rhythm on a jerry can!).

From here we can still see the peak of Rakaposhi but it looks completely different from here - a steep peak that looks like a fearsome climb! (only summited 3 times) and one of the highest vertical ascents from basecamp in the world. From our highpoint this afternoon we could also see Diran Peak once more. The mountains are breathtaking and wonderful!