The Indus continued to run rough and wild, with dodgy looking rope bridges and even a flying fox or two. The KKH that ran alongside this stretch seemed thus inspired, rutted and crumbling far more than it had up until here. It was closer to how I'd imagined the road to be, which I first saw in a handful of travel programs made in the 1990s, the last decade when travel used to be an adventure.
Though the town where we stopped for lunch had some lingering traces of it, mainly in the faces of the locals who didn't look too happy that we were here. This town (whose name I can't seem to recall, nor find) and Gilgit were the only places in Pakistan where I didn't feel welcome. Little wonder, for it was from here that the Taliban had launched their fatal attack on Nanga Purbat base camp in 2013. I was projecting perhaps, but I was certain that some of these scowling men may have had a hand in the event and had gotten away clean. I wouldn't say that I ever felt unsafe, finding comfort in the fact that there had been no kidnappings nor slaying of foreigners since that same year, 2013, though when I expressed this very point to one of the Englishmen in our group, he replied that this was because foreigners no longer come.
It did feel pretty wild west out here. A jeep rolled by, unsafely loaded high, with a rough looking character clinging to the back. We passed through an abandoned village (which might be a tourist site in five hundred years), then pulled into a military checkpoint. We'd be leaving the KKH here, to follow a road up to the Babusar Pass. This road had always been somewhat unsecure and prone to violence. Rather than Taliban it was more village vs. village, as vendettas ran high here. We were warned to be careful what we photographed. Then an armed guard climbed into a literal shotgun seat, and off we went, curling through the turns that passed between farms and hamlets, their fields long bare since winter comes early up here. The steady climb took its toll on the engine, and our driver stopped awhile to cool it down, spraying water into the bonnet. This seems to be common practice here, as a number of other drivers followed suit. We disembarked to stretch our legs in a small walled compound with a few food stalls, under the constant stare of some hard looking locals. They in turn were under the gaze of an M60 mounted onto the back of a small SUV, its turret pointing between the shoulders of two soldiers, the gunman asleep in the back.
After a few more twists, we reached the pass, as the wind kicked up into gusts that carried with them frozen rain. We arrived just as it broke, and the peddlers selling from under tarps and upon blankets rushed for shelter. Low-land tourists seemed to relish a weather unique to them, and as ever, called out to us to be photographed. The road on the opposite side was broader, thankfully, with the harvested land in the valley below striated white. We cruised along this high plateau, passing a number of high altitude lakes. Finally, the Kaghan Valley appeared.
Unlike the deep river cut V of the Hunza, the valley was carved broad and round, with the steady precision of ancient glaciers. It was lush and green in natural way, unlike the man-made irrigated paradise of the Hunza. Life here too seemed less sedentary, with sheep and motorbikes and the tell-tale yurt. Boys stood beside the road selling eggs, and one, in an act of poor business acumen, actually chucked one at us as we raced by. At the other end of the scale, an entire town seemed to be sprouting up beside a bend in the river, as workmen built a series of hotels into existence, brick by brick.
Nowhere was more beautiful than at Naran, where we pulled up for the night. The grounds of our hotel were open and spacious, tucked into the confluence where a glacial fed stream met the Kunhar river. In the morning I watched an assemblage of people toting firewood, piled inconceivably high upon their heads. We had a quick wander through Naran itself, which served as a staging area for trekkers heading further on. Young men in jeeps called out with rides up to the glaciers, and and the town's far end, Kochi nomads were in the act of breaking their summer camps, prior to heading south.
It was a bucolic ride, the scenery never short of breathtaking. We felt the building up of heat at a lunch stop, and by the time we arrived in Abbottabad it was in full roar. During a petrol stop I got out to have a pee, and as such I may have been the first American boots on the ground since Osama bin Laden's killing here in 2011. The town hosts a handful of military camps, which makes bin Laden's choice of hideout even more brazen, under the very eyes of those looking for him. It was stated that no Pakistani officials knew beforehand of the raid that killed him, but the proximity to the military bases made this hard to believe, as the helicopters flying in and out would have certainly been detected. As it is, the Pakistan government was wise to destroy his compound soon afterward, to prevent it from becoming an Islamic shrine.
The land was flattening, and for the first time in weeks, no mountains could be seen on the horizon. As the sun was settling in to the west, a long line of lorries were parked in a river, waiting their turn to lose the day's dust. Not much further on, we rounded a turn into a snarl of screaming machinery that was the Grand Trunk Road. We had arrived in the Punjab and the KKH was no more.
On the turntable: "Rushmore (Sdtk)"
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