Trying to get to Gilgit

Information and misinformation

Last night our hotel had advised that there were buses to Gilgit at 0600, 1000 and midnight. We decided against 0600 and opted for 1000. We checked with him at breakfast and the 1000 (now revised to 1030) was now unavailable but he could get us on at 1500. It’s apparently a service originating from Besham so hopefully there’ll be no issues with seats and uncertain timing.

We went out for a brief walk around town to make photocopies of our passports and visas (in case anyone requires them). Despite being a one-street town (make that a one muddy street due to last night’s thunderstorm) we had difficulty locating the bus ticketing agent located inside the Hotel Karachi as the hotel was totally unmarked (not even in Urdu). Their timings for the alternate bus was 2100 and 0300; much less appealing.

We decided to entrust our onward travel to the hotel. Our hosts’ overly relaxed and fluid communication style did not give us much confidence but I think it is a reflection of a fluid situation rather than a lack of effort.

Likewise we couldn’t find the internet cafe, again despite looking hard and asking for directions. A gentleman at a small grocer offered his wifi just so Marie could check her emails briefly. People here are friendly like everywhere else in Pakistan.

Generally I have a standard line when people ask me how I like Pakistan: I say that people are extremely friendly, the food is good but the weather in the lowlands is far too hot especially when there is no power supply at times. One guy said: Yes, we have nuclear weapons but we don’t have reliable power for the people.

Here are some scenes from Besham while we attended to essentials and waited for our bus.

Text continues after this gallery.

Finally … on the Karakoram Highway

We walked down to the Swat Hotel around 1430 for an anticipated departure of 1500. The cafe operator asked me to take a seat and introduced me to the driver; I tried to buy the driver a cuppa tea to help ensure a seat! We waited till before 1600 before a minibus (Toyota Coaster) arrived. As we weren’t sure about the number of people vs seats I said to Marie: “You wait by bus, I wait by driver”. I’m very good at these terse commands while on the road as time is precious and with the commotion of background noise, niceties tend to confuse things.

A crowd gathered by the bus door eventually and the cafe owner opened the bus door and told me to choose a seat; Pakistanis are great hosts! So I told Marie, “You sit inside, I do the bags” with some reservation as I was a bit worried about being able to lift our luggage to the high roofline of the Coaster for the attendant on the roof to grab. I normally do this without any issues when travelling on vans.

After waiting inside the minibus for a while we set off at 1630 on an utterly amazing journey lasting 11h45 and arriving at 0415 next morning. I nodded off a little during the long journey from time to time. We picked up some passengers and dropped some off which required me to say to Marie “We do man-woman thing”. Fortunately we’re both seasoned in the culture of the region and she didn’t proceed to make babies but simply swapped seats with me so she wouldn’t be seated to a male stranger.

I managed to practice my Arabic conversation with a religious teacher who sat next to me for part of the journey. We had a couple of prayer breaks and a meal break just before midnight. Our local fellow-passengers were very hospitable and paid for our tea and meals despite my making every attempt to pay our own way.

Oh, did I mention the police checks? There were quite a few of them too and each one required us to register our details in a book. So we held up everyone on the bus quite frequently.

The Scenery

The journey took us by the banks of the Indus river for a lot of the time. This seems to be the first dramatic part of the Karakoram Highway (KKH) for us. The grey waters were very vicious perhaps due to the gradient and last night’s rain. In places, mini-rivers and waterfalls were flowing down the hillsides and water had collected at various points on the road. One can definitely see the potential for the road getting washed away in heavy rain. Also, it’s quite common to see vertical trails on the mountain side where rockslides and rockfalls have occurred.

The mountain landscape looks much like any other except for the massive size. I was in awe for much of the time when I see the landscape dwarfing or swallowing a travelling truck or bus on the other side of the ravine. Such vehicles only show as a dot. Marie and I looked at each other; we semi-permanent smiles on our faces. We did a hi-five every now and then when we look at each other; it’s not a gesture I’ve ever taken up (I see it as a young American thing) but we were on such a high.

There were villages and lone houses dotted here and there. Zig-zag trails led from the roads to these settlements seemingly in the middle of nowhere for some unknown reason. Parts of the road were subject to overhanging rock (which can and do fall) and there were bridges of various sizes too. One appeared Chinese and was decorated with lions; all their faces had been hacked off probably by more religious locals who resented the depiction of animals.We saw some snowy peaks before the sun set and night fell. In retrospect, we should have tried harder with an 0600 departure (if it existed) for various reasons:

• continuous view of the KKH
• safer driving conditions in daylight as it is a treacherous road
• a more decent arrival time (and as we found out, our ungodly arrival did present some issues).