Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers: On the 8000 Metre Peak Circus in Pakistan's Karakoram Mountains (19 page)

A day of slow torture commences at 6.30am, as we conclude the trek back to the roadhead at Askole. This is not the way to enjoy trekking. The soles of my feet are already hurting after yesterday's extended boulder hopping, and I know that the 12 hour day that I have ahead of me is going to be sheer hell, but it's just a question of putting one foot in front of the other and getting on with it.

The first hour out of Paiyu is comfortable enough in the shade of a rocky mountainside towering above me to the right. The path drops to follow the very edge of the Braldu River at the bottom of a wide river bed, before climbing up a cliff face on a broad path high above the river, then dropping down to cross a sandy plain on a bend in the river. At the end of this the sun rises above the hillside, and I stop to put on sun cream. At this point the ordeal begins. This is a rare day on our Concordia trek when the weather isn't cloudy. In fact, the sky is completely clear and the heat is about to become intense – and it's still only 7.30 in the morning. For the next four hours I struggle on as the trail alternately rises to become a high cliff path, then drops to meander alongside the river or cross a sandy beach. The terrain is a vast improvement on yesterday, but the balls of my feet are so bruised from yesterday's boulder hopping that every step is painful as they take a pounding, and my feet expand in the heat to become uncomfortably tight inside my new walking boots which I bought just before I came out to Pakistan.

The scenery is less impressive than the higher end of the trail, but still has a rugged beauty on a grand scale. The sides of the valley consist of high, harsh red rock, incredibly dry, while the floor of the valley is wide and flat, and although the Braldu River rarely fills its width, it contains immense rapids that look like they could toss a truck around like a cork.

The heat soon becomes intense, and to keep my momentum going and to nurse my two litres of water which I have to last the whole day, I ration myself to stopping for two minutes every hour to put down my pack and take a couple of swigs. At midday I reach Jhola camp, our first main comfort stop, and the halfway point on today's walk. This is where we camped on our first night out of Askole, and is marked by a hillside of grey portaloos. Pasang, who has also been suffering with uncomfortable footwear, is lying on a roll mat in the shade of a hut. I stop for some lunch, but my chocolate is completely melted, and the bread so dry that I can hardly eat it with my parched mouth. Gordon arrives five minutes after me. We three are the three stragglers of the group, and we leave Jhola at 12.30 together, but soon we stretch out on our own again.

Just six hours to go. I look at my watch and tell myself I can have another swig of water at 2pm. This takes me along another cliff path which climbs high above the river. It's very dramatic, but I'm completely unable to enjoy the scenery as my feet ache in the afternoon sun. By 2pm my mouth and lips are so dry that I can barely swallow. My few mouthfuls of water are like nectar and I inch further along the trail, very slowly now, leaning into my trekking pole. At 3pm I reach an oasis in the desert which I remember from the trek out. Pasang is lying on his roll mat beside a small stream watered by a rock cascade, in the shade of a thorn tree. I stop for a rest and some water, and Gordon joins us. It's peaceful, relaxing, and above all, pleasantly cool. It would be easy to rest here a long time, but after fifteen minutes I lift my pack back on my shoulders and press on along a sandy boulder-strewn trail beside the river, then across a huge flat plain which takes me an hour to cross. Halfway across, at 4.15, I stop for more water. Then I round a corner thinking it will be the last one before Askole. The path climbs on rough steps hewn into a cliff, then back down again to a beach. The sand is thick, and hard work to wade through. At 5.15 I stop and finish my water with the green terraces of Askole visible on a hillside in the distance. It takes me another hour to get there, on a path which climbs relentlessly. I pass some porters lapping up water from a waterfall coming down from the cliff to our right, and envy them – they have immunity, but if I were to drink the water I would probably be sick for days. Finally the path reaches Askole and climbs through the village. Small children try to talk to me, but I'm only focussed on my destination – all I want to do is reach the end of the trail, and plod past with my head down, ignoring them.

I walk into our campsite in a walled compound at 6.15. I hear a subdued cheer, and Tarke immediately thrusts a bottle of coke into my hand, which is heaven – I don't think my throat has ever felt so dry before. I take my pack off, remove my boots, and flop down in the grass. The ordeal is over.

After two months at 5000m, where dinner times meant down jackets, thick socks and two pairs of fleece trousers, here in Askole, beneath the trees at 3000m, it feels positively balmy. We eat
al fresco
this evening, erecting our dining table underneath the trees in the warm air, and even as darkness falls we're still in shirt sleeves. Everyone is relieved and pleasantly tired as we eat the final meal cooked by Ashad, Ehshan and Shezad, who have been our cooks since June. It's a magical evening, and the flitter of moths around our head torches and the propane lamp in the middle of the table is a reminder that we're back at habitable altitudes again, and for once I'm not irritated by them. I'm looking forward to going home again, but this has been an evening to enjoy, when everything feels good with the world. The only thing missing is beer.

As we lie in the tent this evening, Michael tells me about his own experience of the trail today, how at one point he and Tarke rounded a corner to see Gombu down on all fours sucking water from a puddle no bigger than the palm of his hand; and of how Tarke gave his water bottle to Phil, who had forgotten to pack one, then found himself licking a rock in an effort to get moisture onto his tongue. It was a day for resting in the intense heat, but somehow we've managed to walk 40 kilometres.

Today is a day of mixed impressions of Pakistan and its people. We leave Askole by jeep at 7am for the hair-raising ride back to Skardu, mercifully less stressful this time because we meet hardly any traffic coming the other way on the single lane track clinging high to the hillside. As the valley widens closer to Skardu, we pass through villages, and our driver keeps stopping to get us handfuls of apricots from people gathering them by the side of the road.

We reach hot and dusty Skardu at 1pm, and I'm looking forward to a shower and shave for the first time in two months, and to get into some clean clothes. But here the problem begins. I'm taken down to a storage vault in the basement of the Masherbrum Hotel to identify my bag from storage, but it's not there. Not to worry, though. I recall the man in reception writing “ATP” in chalk on my bag and putting it under the counter when I handed it over in June, so it's probably been given to our expedition agent, Adventure Tours Pakistan, to put into storage.

After lunch Phil, Michael and I wander down the high street to find a barber's shop where Arian told us he got a haircut and shave for just 50 rupees. Their pricing seems somewhat erratic, however. I relieve myself of my beard, have a no.1 cut all over, and an unrequested head massage, and am charged 300 rupees for it. Michael has pretty much the same service but is then charged 500 rupees, which we account for by the fact that he has more hair than I do and chooses to keep most of it. Phil also has a shave, haircut and head massage, but then his barber gets over-exuberant, and starts bending his arms behind his back and punching him in the back of the shoulders. While Phil endures this treatment patiently, Michael and I are laughing, which only encourages the barber, who now has a big grin on his face, to make the treatment more extreme. I suspect it's done more for my and Michael's benefit than Phil's, however, and when the time comes for him to pay, the mickey taking is complete when they ask for 600 rupees.

“Six hundred – but you only charged him five,” says Phil, pointing at Michael.

“But you have full massage, sir.”

Phil shakes his head with a smile. “I didn't ask for the beating!” He pays 500, and unsurprisingly, the staff seem happy enough.

But the rest of my day is less enjoyable. I spend several hours trying to track my missing bag down, as the realisation starts sinking in that the hotel staff have either lost it or, more likely, stolen it. Ashad takes me to ATP's main storehouse across town to meet their storekeeper, but we can't find it there. I then spend an hour in their main office eating apricots with a lady called Gerlinde [Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner] who is aiming to become the first woman to climb all the 8000 metre peaks, and has already climbed twelve. She had some tents stolen by porters while attempting K2 last year, and the tents later turned up in a shop in Skardu. She is here chasing up on the issue, and seen alongside her need I suspect my little rucksack is a much lower priority. Eventually Ashad stands up and tells me we're leaving. We take a taxi back to the Masherbrum Hotel, and I don't really understand why I was taken to the office.

Everyone seems to be blaming each other for my bag going missing, but nobody seems too concerned about finding it, though ATP's staff are certainly more helpful than the hotel's. I wouldn't really mind, but besides my clean clothes and mobile phone, the bag also contains my house keys, so the first thing I will have to do when I arrive home after more than two months away is call out an emergency locksmith to break into my flat and change the locks, a pain in the neck which is also likely to be quite expensive.

Then when our liaison officer Major Kiani, who has come up from Islamabad to meet us, hears about my bag that evening things start to happen again. He tells me our friend Ian also lost the bag he put in storage at the Masherbrum Hotel when he returned a few weeks ago. Suddenly everyone jumps into action, and again we go off to the various storerooms – this time with the Major accompanying us – but the reality is that the contents of my bag have probably been sold weeks ago, and any one of the people running round looking for it, aside from the Major, could have done it. Major Kiani is the only person I find wholeheartedly trustworthy, which is probably unfair on most of the people who are helping us. I remember seeing him resting at Concordia during our trek into base camp, sitting outside the tents of the K2 Clean-up Expedition, and lamenting the fact that the army seem to be the biggest polluters in the Karakoram. He seems to be the only person who genuinely cares about things.

Ashad may have been unsuccessful in his expedition to find my bag, but it seems he may have been more successful in tracking down some of the local “Hunza Water” for the rest of the team. He and the Sherpas are sitting in Gordon and Arian's room letting their hair down for the first time in a while. Despite not drinking any booze for over two months, I'm not in the mood to join them. Although I know I will look back upon these days with fondness, for the moment my over-riding feeling is that I've had enough of Pakistan and am looking forward to going home. It's a shame. The country has such a lot going for it; all it needs is a little more effort. Friendliness there is in abundance, but impressions are coloured by experience, and mine today has been too weighted down by people on the make. The absence of any sort of restaurant or bar culture in places like Skardu, and the fact that women are hardly ever seen, also makes the country seem very strait-laced and serious - almost as though there is a ban on having fun. This seems strange, because the people here - of whom Ashad, with his perpetually cheerful disposition, is a good example - certainly don't lack a sense of humour.

But in between the frustration and the boredom, I've rested for long periods surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery on earth, and for that I feel very lucky and wouldn't swap it for anything. It's been a long two months, and I'm glad to be going home again. If nothing else, I'm overjoyed that I won't have to play another game of cards for quite some time.