Up and down the Karakoram Highway - because it was there.
6th July 2006

Evidence of the earthquake and a poor welcome
The views make up for it
Backpackerville
VSO in action
One of those Shangrila type places
Restaurant at the end of the highway
Back to the body of Pakistan

Karakoram Highway, here we come

We headed north on the old route north of Islamabad through some pretty scenery and simple villages. As we rose and crested the summit of a range of hills, beautiful scarves hung flapping in the wind like giant bunting down the edges of the road. As they danced in the breeze, the colour caught the light. I was tempted but i also knew that we had a long way to go, and it was too early in the day to be taking a time out.

Dotted along the road north were clusters of tents sporting the names of donors who had contributed to the relief of suffering for the Pakistan earthquake sufferers. Chinese characters predominated which I guess has exactly the effect intended; one starts to think of China as a wonderful gregarious nation, forgetting for a split second Tianamen and Tibet. Much of the Karakoram Highway (including all the structures, apparently) was built by the Chinese. What generous people they are. No question of them simply wanting to get access to an Indian ocean port.

We’d been advised to take this route by Neil who suggested that it would by-pass lots of the towns at the south end of the Karakoram Highway (KKH). Judging by how slow our progress seemed to be, these few towns must be a nightmare worth avoiding. When we did eventually hit the main road, it was something of a disappointment. There is something about the name that had me thinking of a road clinging to a cliff face high above a raging torrent. At this southern end of the through route it follows the Indus which, by this stage, is quite mature; a cappuccino carpet 30 metres wide undulating powerfully through a massive river-cut valley, beautifully clear blue tributaries that join from side valleys mingle within 10 metres of joining, their limpidity lost to the silt laden holy river.

The towns on the way up the valley had seemed somewhat uninviting. Mansehra, for example, was unique in our experience that it hosted only men - we must have passed at least 2000 blokes and seen not a single post-pubescent female. Rather intimidating for poor Hippy. She claims, and I have no reason to doubt it, that she noted 150 km without the sight of a single woman. This wouldn’t be such an extraordinary statistic in a desert but there were actually quite large numbers of people about it was just that they were all short of a rib and, chromosonally, an X. There were some pretty splendid beards about though.

Much of the world that we have visited has been male dominated but this was very different, there were no women at all, even doing the shopping. I began trying to peer into buses and cars to see if any were hiding out in vehicles and saw only a handful through this stretch. We felt that it would be inappropriate to stop even for a drink.

Although now in the centre of a building site, we opted for a night at the Pakistan Tourist Development Corporation Hotel, Besham. It didn’t really have the ring of say The Hilton, Grosvenor or Raffles but it did allow camping and had a car park full of UN vehicles which suggested it may be a haven of liberality in this hardline Islamic enclave. The residents of the hotel indeed turned out to be varied and fascinating; a Gambian doctor working for the UN in the quake-damaged villages, an young Afghan UN driver who vigourously shook plum trees for us and a couple of charming young ladies (from the same Mansehra, strangely) who had shed the shackles of their hometown and even went so far as to walk around in the hotel with their heads uncovered - risqué or what? A group of students from Karachi had been on a field trip further north and were resting for the night. The lads were mad keen to watch the opening match of the world cup and, when they discovered that the telly in the hotel could not deliver the goods, set off down the village. A couple of girls arrived a minute or so after the lads had gone and bemoaned the fact that they were left behind and so unable to watch the game. It seemed really weird that young ladies who were interested to watch football could be restrained by the culture of this region, in not being able to venture beyond the front door without an escort. ‘Bend it like Beckham’ still has a way to go in changing world attitudes.

It was nice to be able to have a bit of a chat with the very well spoken ladies from Mansehra. They claimed that the ladies of the area generally don’t like to go out. But quite frankly, I hardly blame them, the atmosphere on the streets was hardly welcoming for the female kind. It turns into one of those vicious circles that there are no women going out so that even those that which to go feel out of place. We later found out that it also considered inappropriate for a woman to leave the house without a male escort, which can lead to the rather demeaning situation that a mature women is being escorted by some 12 year old nephew that she must walk behind. If women never have had the opportunity to wander about by themselves then it is understandable that they would be unconfident about doing so.
Many of the women are also kept busy with very large families of 12 or 13 children. In this case they probably don’t have the time to nip out to the shops.

We did end up talking of other things. I was hard to explain of justify why so many young people in the west have lost respect for others and their family. Respect for your elders’ wishes is inherent, it seems, within Pakistani families, as it once was in the West, where did it go? Is it possible to question your elders and still follow their wishes. Is blind respect a good thing?
We got onto the repated question about ‘How many children do you have?’ We had planned to lie and metaphorically adopt our friend’s child Daniel, to save difficulties. but generally we are terrible liars and a causing problems with our honesty. To be married for 14 years without children, is anathema to Pakistanis, I broached the point that there must be some couples that try to have children but are unable to, and what do they do. They will all have brothers and sisters that have large families so it easy to adopt a few from within the family. a simple half hour process to change the legal parents at the police station. I thought of all the months of rigmarole that childless couples go through trying to adopt in the West or the messy business of surrogate mothers and the tortuous road of fertility treatment, and the solution here seemed so logical and compassionate. It does rather rely on family members having enough children that they have ‘spares’ to share around though.

Karakoram Highway continued....

Oh, what a glorious day. Riding was frustrating and the road rough but when you get your first sight of Nanga Parbat it’s all worthwhile. Watson family and friends will know that the head of the clan, Big Al, has devoted quite some time to strolling on the higher surfaces of the planet. He used occasionally to share his travels with us in the time honoured fashion, slideshows. I have to confess that although I rather enjoyed the pictures of these wild places and the journeys to them, there is no way to completely convey the emotion of awe one experiences by actually being there. Restricted by our timetable, having only a month in Pakistan and plenty of places to see, and our lack of appropriate equipment, trekking is off the menu but I made a promise to myself to return to these parts to get a closer relationship with the white bits. There is something truly magnetic about these peaks.

Regrettably, the unwelcoming attitude of the denizens continued. I wondered if they were pissed off by the fact that foreigners were always passing by heading for the trekking meccas and they got nothing out of it but curious stares from bus windows. But no, it is something deeper than that, there is something completely unwelcoming about them; their natural expression is of distrust or even active aggression. We found a hotel with half welcoming folk in Chilas, a town noted for its petroglyphs which have been fashioned by generations of travellers passing through the valley, so we could rest for the night, see the artwork and bail out before lunchtime the next day before a decent lynch mob could gather. It all sounds a bit of an over dramatisation but as we were guided round the rocks to see the motifs on the following morning by the son of our hotelier, a woman spotted us and began to hurl abuse of some sort. The hotelier had by no accident referred to our guide as our body guard. I was primly head covered and in my Cyril Smith tent of an outfit. It seemed that our mere existence was seen as a threat. “A threat to what?” I wondered, did they really believe that 2 tourists clambering over rocks to look at ancient carvings would disrupt their culture? I was deliberately careful to not make any eye contact with the males of the town and the only female we espied shouted abuse at us. Thereafter, the children that had been “Pen, pen”ing us and simply been curious all picked up stones and started wazzing them at us. I wasn’t actually aware as, once again, poor Hippy bore the brunt of it being the hindmost. Had she called out to me I would probably have caused a diplomatic incident by chucking rocks back and injuring someone. Actually, no, as everyone knows I can’t throw for toffee.

They left us alone once we were out of eyesight of the haranguing harridan so we could enjoy the artwork chased into the ‘varnish’ on the rocks. I always find these things a bit hard to accept, cynic that I am - how can one say what is original and ancient and what may be a modern copy. Certainly there was enough petroglyph graffiti about to raise suspicions. Our guide was happy to point out the contributions of his dad and uncles. There is something more attractive about graffitti using arabic lettering that our own alphabet. I wondered whether in essense there was anything wrong with the locals adding their own mark to the carvings of the past, as long as it did not damage the previous ones and the was plenty of rock to go at to keep future generations with enough canvas space for the next couple of millenia. And thankfully no-one had yet been crass enough to get the spray can out. Elsewhere there was a crudely drawn Pakistan flag alongside a half completed Malaysian one. So, in a nutshell, I think it is fair to say that the original figures can be discerned from the modern tat by their imagination and vastly superior quality. It would have been pretty much impossible to find most of the best figures without a guide and we felt our money was well spent. It would have been better to be in the company of someone whose knowledge of english adjectives extended beyond the word ‘normal’ and who understood the difference between a shortcut that saves on distance and one that saves on both time and effort. Having walked for a good 6 km in the baking heat and being a bit petroglyphed out, we passed on the opportunity of visiting another set further up the valley. If we felt the urge we could always see them on our way back south.

And so to Gilgit. People started to wave back at us almost immediately north of Chilas - this is our gauge of public feeling towards tourists. Even smiles started to break out a little later. It was a huge relief to be beyond the twilight zone.

Gilgit - where the tourists are

Entry to Gilgit is via a huge ‘cantonment’ - a popular word in India and Pakistan which must have slipped out of common usage in England or at least failed to register in my vocabulary up until now - miles of barracks which don’t inspire great affection. Being overcast and really pretty gloomy, Gilgit didn’t leap out at me as I would have expected. I’d imagined a quaint old town inhabited by jacketed and behatted mountain folk. There were plenty of the latter but they were housed in generic blockwork housing and roller-shutter fronted shops. Our recommended hotel was, seemingly in keeping with the military atmosphere, inaccessible due to having had a trench dug in front of it. The manager seemed chilled even though he was losing customers, “It will be filled in in a couple of days if it doesn’t rain”. We looked up to the sky together and guessed that it would not be filled in in a couple of days after all.

Plan B was the ‘ever-popular with travellers’ guest house, the Madina. The promise of a welcome tea was sufficient to draw us in. The only downside of it being such a popular place was that as we hadn’t booked like usual, there were no superior rooms left and we found ourselves in the back wing that was not connected to the emergency power circuit. Of course we didn’t know that until the power went down. The management were good enough to dig us out a candle though so we really can’t grumble. The fact that the battery on our computer is now entirely useless and so will not stay on even long enough to save and shut down in the event of blackout is not something that we can beef about to the management of a hotel in northern Pakistan.

There was an interesting selection of folk in residence including local guides, foreign tour leaders, trekkers, general travellers (count us in this category) through to the pot-smoking fraternity. It made for interest at the very least. It was the first time we’d been in the same establishment with so many tourists since Bangkok and it certainly felt strange.

The people running the place were delightful and it was a blessed relief to finally have males in Pakistan treat me neither as a non-person, as a threat to their conservatism nor as an object of leering. I was so, so pleased that despite the unfriendly reception we had had we decided to continue. The place deserves it’s popularity with the staff remembering the little details such as just how I like my tea. I was beginning to realise that Pakistan although mostly Islamic there were huge regional differences in attitude. With the people of this area being almost ashamed of their fundamentalist, inhospitable cousins to the South, who they referred to as the Taliban. It is testament as to just how oppression the atmosphere had been through the ‘Taliban’ area that it felt ‘liberal’ to see women on the streets at all unaccompanied even if some were still in full burka

We met up with an Irish lad again although I couldn’t place him right away. He bailed me out by introducing himself as having met us in the queue for visas at the Pakistan embassy in Delhi. He seemed a little worse for wear, calming his hyperactivity with regular doses of inhaled herbs. Another couple of Irish were in residence waiting for a verdict on the lasses malaria-like illness. Criostoir was obviously feeling a bit helpless in coming to Eva’s aid. He did his best to educate the kitchen staff on how to produce mashed potatoes to no avail. She was a very ill chicken and they eventually resorted to medical evacuation to Ireland via Islamabad. How very frustrating. When we went back to England to investigate Helen’s wobbliness, we had at least been travelling for two years and had arrived at a natural break point.

HERP, an NGO run by a VSO

One of the email addresses we’d got for the VSOs in the north of Pakistan was for a certain Ali. Hippy had a vague recollection of Afaq having dropped a ‘she’ or a ‘her’ when he was giving us the addresses but we couldn’t be absolutely certain of whether this was Alison, Alistair or even just plain Ali. We’d sent him/her a brief message to say we were on the way and the reply we got was not too revealing; we had no telephone number to call to say when we would arrive and Ali was just about to take some leave to meet his/her family in Islamabad. I mentioned to the manager at the hotel that we were heading up to Aliabad to meet someone who was working there. It was immediately obvious that he knew Alison quite well!

Having the address of her workplace in hand, we set off to see if we could catch her on the day before she left for pints south. North of Gilgit, the towns are really not very large and we figured that finding the Hunza Education Resource Project would be a cinch. Sure enough, as we entered the village of Aliabad there was a brightly painted sign pointing to the right, labeled ‘HERP’. So we turned right and descended a narrowing, gravely dirt road. It disappeared around a corner and I pulled up before passing the point of no return. Best to investigate on foot before making a prat of myself. A couple of hundred yards later I came across a cheery bunch of girls of a bout 15 years old. They greeted me with cordial “Hello, what’s your name?”s and so I presumed they were a welcoming party and simply responded appropriately and then asked where Ali was. They excitedly pointed further down the lane. I continued. The path now deteriorated into a mire. This did not seem right. Could Pat really have been quite so naive, as to ask for someone called Ali in an Islamic country where Ali or Mohammed must be the most common names. Back with Berthette, Hippy had attracted the usual gaggle of youths. We pondered what to try next. It occurred to us that maybe the sign was not actually pointing down the lane but at the building at the end of the lane. Curiously, the building itself did not sport any kind of logo but I thought maybe they could point us in the right direction anyway. When we got to the door we could hear the unmistakable clear tones of a VSO engaging in meaningful discourse with attendees of an education workshop.

Alison has been in this placement for around 18 months after her original, planned post became untenable following the notorious earthquake that hit just before her arrival. Before coming up to the Hunza valley she had a couple of ‘fill-in’ posts that didn’t quite work out. Her first in the ‘Taliban’ Area where she had worked for 3 months not being allowed to even nip to the shop across the road without a male escourt. The fact that official tribal leaders were dolatory in organising clearance for her to work in the area was the icing on the cake for her to request a different posting. Now she was in a much more conducive posting, but was trying to do two jobs, as they were struggling to find a replacement for the project manager, she was filling in as well as doing her peripatetic teacher training post. The project in theory is a wonderful idea; all the schools in the area contribute some of their funds to the teacher training resource centre which then provides training for the teachers in the area. But as is the case in England only a minority of schools actively make the effort to support the scheme monetarily or in persons, but are happy to take full advantage of the training and resources available. She suffered from the same frustrations of all professional trainers that most people make all the right noises in their workshops and may honestly intend to implemented their new skills but when back in the workplace it is all too easy to carry on as before.

She clearly worked hard and was respected by her colleagues, and the truth is that her influence may be more subtle and long lasting than she is aware of. As a guest in the meeting I was requested to hand out certificates for the completion of the course. I was hardly dressed for such ceremonial activities, road weary and in motorcycle trousers I felt very scruffy in fornt of smartly dressed professionals, but it was an honour that I was asked. Mispronouncing half their names, managing to marry a number of single females by titling them as Mrs., my errors were met with affectionate laughter.

Hunza Valley, land of fruit and honey

The attitutde of the people of the Hunza valley was a refreshing change from the cold unwelcoming reception of the people south of here. They were no women in full burka and the ladies in the workshop chose to be bare headed, the men related to me in a normal, unleery manner. I suddenly became aware of just how stifling the general atmosphere had been for a women in some areas. Here, they are Ismailis, a gentle open branch of Islam, following their leader the, Aga Khan, who is thought to abe a direct descent of one of the original followers of Mohammed. The area is littered with social programs funded by the Aga Khan himself, the Aga Khan Health Centre, the Aga Khan School etc. They call themselves Ismailis first and, a little reluctantly, Pakistanis second. Urdu is as much a second language as English is to them, with all the local villages speaking their own distinct languages. The Hunza valley is an oasis in all senses. Orchards of apricots and cherries, fields of carrots and pumpkins, make the valley floor glossy and green with their produce. The lower reches of the KKH had been barren and bleak, along with the attitude of the people. In the Hunza valley, I felt that we were welcomed, not treated with suspicion, people smiled and waved at us, it felt as if we had landed in another country. Clearly the mentality of folk here is simply a product of their surroundings. If that is true, how can the people of the desert in Sudan be so wonderfully hospitable in complete contrast to their environment?

Pakistan does not feel like a cohesive country. There are the tribal areas that the British never controlled and the Pakistani military government is only having a slight influence over. In these areas country law is irrelevant and tribal leader is the force to reckon with, guns and ammunitions are produced in shedloads and owned. There is the fundamentalist state of Kohistan that is reknowned for being suspicious and unfriendly to Westerners and the Ismailis of the Hunza province, who are warm and liberal in their interpretation of Islamic law. Not to mention the Kalashi people out in the north west who due to centuries of isolation because of the impenetrable Hindu Kush mountain range are an enclave of non-Islamic ethnic monority. Then there is modern Islamabad, that is positively cosmopolitan compared to the rest of the country.

We stayed in Karimabad in a simple place with a view of Rakaposhi, a mountain a couple of 100m short of the famous K2 a 100km away near the chinese border. It was complemented by two other dramatic snowcapped mountains that rose 4000m from the green lush valley floor. I could have looked at these mountains all day long, they were mesmerisingly beautiful. The light was bright and made the glaciers glisten and demand attention.

There were wholesome, generous, vegetarian meals served up by our host, Lal. Sensibly, traditionally in the Hunza valley meals are all vegetarian through the growing season, drying all the surplus fruit for the lean early winter when the goats, and yaks supplement the food source. Around a cherry tree in the back garden where ‘the fruit is for everyone’ nightly, locals and guests gathered to harvest the day’s ripenings. (Warning: Beware of sumptious cherries:- from personal experience eating a kg of cherries can seriously loosen your bowels) It was a gluttonous experience. It was a healthy change from the meat dominated Pakistani food.

At one time, National Geographic and like publications abounded with articles on the longevity of the folk that lived in this region. After a bit of rather more scientific research, a lot of the claims have been dismissed but it is still true that for an area that has not always had the dubious benefits of a modern medical service, some fantastic ages are racked up. It really is not at all incredible when you sample the beautiful pure air that they breathe and the simple healthy diet. Healthy living is not rocket science.

We bumped into an old guy who fitted into the moderately impressively aged category. Very spry and communicative was Mr Bagh and he filled us in on his long career as an artillery officer. The remarkable thing about his story was the number of different ‘sides’ he’d been on; from his childhood of being something of a montaine guerilla taking pot-shots at the Brits, he graduated to some division of the British colonial forces followed by, at partition, the Pakistan army. He’d even been in the Congo as part of the UN forces. I’d been drawn to him by his Bergkamp-era Holland scarf and was wondering whether he was following the Dutch in the World Cup, but he told me that it had just been a random gift from some Dutch visitor. I was inclined to give him the magic Trotters scarf to start the most irrelevant and unknown collections of football memorabilia anywhere in the world.

The uplifting scenery, pleasant people, and do-able day hikes, made this a point to rest up for a few days and enjoy Pakistan at its best. I was indescribably delighted that we had decided to make this almost 2000km diversion to the route back home to visit this area. We made a mental note that it was a place that we should must return to one day, next time flying to Gilgit to avoid inhospitable Kohistan. I discovered that the mountains I was looking at were technically the Karakorum range not the Himalayas, so I still have yet to see the most lofty of mountains, but I did not care, this lesser known sister range was beautiful enough for me.
There was a complacency, about the locals appreciation for what they have. When asking the name of a mountain, I was told, “I don’t know its name, it’s nothing just 6500m” - akin to the highest mountains in the Americas and 4x the size of our poultry specimens in Britain. The scale of their size was incomprehensible and truly awe-inspiring.

In the town was an old palace, former home of the feudal landlord ousted by democracy. The place was simple and built for the harsh winters and needs to store food in mind. It had commanding views down the valley, perched on top of a rock high above the village. We were guided around by a very eloquent young man, whose English was so English that it had adopted a dryness that took us by surprise. When asked whether the tour would be in English he said, “Sorry we only do them in Russian”. (ha-ha) There was a boom that went off as we were being guided around, we suspected a possible avalanche in the nearby mountains it being summer and all but he gayly informed us, “Shooting Indians, we are very near the border you know”. He grinned. No, it was something far more mundane - blasting for a new water channel.

These water channels are in some cases 800 years old and marshal glacial melt water along the near-vertical sides of the main valley to be released onto the narrow terraces below. For much of the KKH they follow the contours of the mountains like fault lines giving life to the soil. The melt water is also utilised by the locals to make power free fridges, as food is stored in vessels with a continual flow of icy water to preserve the provisions.

We took a stroll up behind the village, al ittle delayed after our informative abnd entertaining visit to the fort. We passed a shepherdess and stood aside to allow her handsome long-haired goats to pass. She held out her hand, and gave me a hearty handshake, and said something that, although linguistically completely incomprehensible, was obviously an accompanying welcome. As she outstretched her hand to Patrick following behind (note, we were breaking with Pakistan tradition and I was walking behind) it was a moment that illustrated the confidence and equality felt by women here we had not seen before in rural Pakistan. It was a lovely, memorable moment.

Before leaving Karimabad to shoot north, we spent a most pleasant evening with Amber and Pete, an American couple who are teaching at an American school in Karachi. They were enjoying the liberation of getting away from the stricter Islam practised down on the coast. They feel that they are living under virtual house arrest and, indeed, the school can insist that they curtail their movements if there are any ‘issues’ going down - Danish cartoon protests, for example. I’m not sure I could choose to live with such strings attached.

Pasu, the end of the road for us

And so we had a jaunt up the road to Pasu, the northernmost settlement of any size on the KKH. We’d heard of a little restaurant with splendid views where apricot cake and tea were served on a terrace. Before we managed to make it there, we had to take on our final KKH challenge - a 25 foot thick chunk of ice across the highway. Although this forms every year in the same place no permanent diversion has been made, just a graded track through river washed morraine. I found it very odd in another respect; each year the huge hunk of ice is cleared using construction machinery that just is not up to the job. As we passed by on the bumpy alternative, a 360° excavator was scratching pathetically with the teeth of its bucket against the glassy surface of the ice. There are hydraulic jack hammers that can be attached to these things that would transform the machine into a huge mechanical ice-pick, using which the job could probably be completed in a matter of days rather than weeks or seemingly months. Just a thought. Thankfully the diversion had its own diversion off to one side side of it as the first version seemed to have become the stream bed for the glacial melt-water. The depth of water was not an issue but the perfectly spherical 4-inch diameter cobbles revealed in the stream bed looked as inviting as riding on ball bearings.

We found Ghulam in good spirits. He seems to have found quite a nice lifestyle; he is married to Annie, an Australian, and so has the liberty of two countries with hugely different climates, he has a restaurant in each so he can simply relocated as the seasonal demand dictates. There is no hurry to develop the restaurant in Pasu, although there are plans to add a few rooms and develop the camping a little more. He’s very pragmatic; he already has the location and successful business and so just needs to wait around and respond to the demands of the market. We’ve been to plenty of places, Karimabad being a prime and recent example, where anyone and everyone has jumped on the guesthouse bandwaggon only to discover that there are not enough tourists to fill the available beds. Pasu would be a spot worth spending more time at. It is ringed by stunningly beautiful mountains and there are plenty of hiking options for pathetic creatures like ourselves, even the face of a glacier is only half an hour away from the restaurant. But we had an appointment with Iran and only a short time on our visa so we turned reluctantly south.

We made it back to Gilgit after a beautiful afternoon ride down the valley. It is quite extra ordinary how passing along the same piece of road a second time seemes to take half the time. On the way north I’d been cursing the potholes and the minor detours, heading south I didn’t even notice them - OK so we did avoid one of the detours that had been particularly uncomfortable. We were welcomed back at the Madina, they even still rememberd how Heken likes her tea after our absence of 72 hours. Remarkable. On our first visit we’d been in the back wing which is not attached to the emergency power supply and there had been a number of frustrating power cuts. Now we were in a deluxe room at the front and, naturally, there were no outages.

Poor Eva and Criostoir were still in residence, their ‘medi-vac’ flight having been cancelled the day before. They had no real reason given for the cancellation and it seems that taking the public flight from Gilgit to Islamabad is something of a lottery. In the past, Ali has had flights booked but had to take the 18 hour bus journey instead following a random cancellation. Talking of Ali, she had returned to the north with her guests who, I thought, were bearing up pretty well, looking pretty fresh although having flown into Pakistan, had a brief stopover in Islamabad and then a two day journey up the KKH.

A curious thing in the general interpretation of Islam is that women need to be protected and every inch of their bodies covered, to stop the temptation of men, or somesuch. But there are curious anomalies that occur when you discourage women from working. So for instance, most clothes in Pakistan are made to measure, by male tailors. This means that tailors must have some contact physical with females, same with doctors. All underwear is sold by men. Even in liberated UK, I would feel awkward having a discussion with an unknown male about my bra size and the pros and cons of underwiring, not least because I find it hard to believe that they really comprehend the relative merits of different forms of trussing. Personally I like to try on a bra, because they vary so much in they shape that they are, but this must be an impossibility for Pakistani women. I thought of the millions of women suffering the discomfort of ill-fitting underwear under their burkas. Kind of adds insult to injury.

Up in the north of Pakistan I had become rather taken with the cap of the chaps, floppy flat cap type affairs, rather more pratical than your more usual skull cap type thing. As we headed South again the flat caps dwindled and the skull caps returned. We paused in Kohistan to fill the tyres and found Chilas less unwelcoming. This time there was no stone throwing and a kindly gentleman silently gave up his seat in the shade for me to sit down. There were lots of curious looks at the bike, which we had become so familiar to, and none of the unfriendly glares we had experienced on the first time through. Of course I still did not see a women for another 100 or so km, but second time around I felt more like a curiousity than the enemy.

Peshawar via Chattar Plain (and a load of other places we’re not sure of)

We by-passed Besham and pushed on to Chattar Plain, which is refreshingly verdant with pine trees and lush fields compared to the barren southern KKH. It is green because it catches the tail end of the monsoons from India. The sky darkened and thunder rumbled, drizzle began to dampen us, but it threatened more. We were heading for a motel come campsite recommended by an overland truck we had met going the other on the KKH. Having been on the road for 3 months going east from the UK, they seemed to be well into the their adventure. It was odd to think that as we were on our final leg back home others were just beginning. Our intention to camp was overridden by our wish to stay dry and we splashed out on a room that still had the tell tale signs of the overlanders in the bin, European shampoo container, an empty wine bottle. It did also mean that the motel owner hadn’t put the energy into even the most cursory attempts to clean the room. On another day would have demanded that they clean up and change the sheets, but today we had had a long day and the need to shower and sleep overrode anything that would delay those 2 activities.

Refreshed we shuffled into the resaturant and I was caught between laughing out loud and having a heart attack when I read the prices on the menu. It was insultingly overpriced, these were European prices. We chose sparingly, from the veg menu and managed to muster a surprisingly nutritious selection of pakora, dhal and bread.

More amusing was the electricity or lack of it. In most of Pakistan we had become used to lengthy power cuts, but generally once a day. But here the power went off and then flicker back on again just long enough for you to extinguish the candle and then would cut out. Whilst none of the surrounding houses seemed to have been affected, we sat in darkness for a couple of hours.

We were on a bit of a flow and decided to leg it to Peshawar in a day. Maps can be cruel in their level of detail. It was good enough to show a road that seems to cut a corner of the highway and gives us respite from the heavy traffic around the industrial towns. But what it doesn’t tell you is that the‘short-cut’ in fact adds on about 50km to your journey by constructing an Escher style roadway over a hillock. The road was clearly built by someone with an excess of time on their hands who saw no reason to take the most direct route when a more convoluted one would do. In theory this would have been a biker’s paradise, with the road worryingly free from traffic and a twisty road as far as the eye could see, but for the pot-holes in the fragmented tarmac and the gravel on the surface. We did however brighten up the days of some of the villagers along the way, as they smiled an waved us on, who no doubt will be chatting for weeks about the weird motorbike with a couple of aliens in space suits that pottered through town one sunny afternoon. If we had not gone that way we would have missed out on one of the most commanding sights of our journey in Pakistan; a couple of men on horseback, their dress and poise was regal. A glimpse as we rode past was enough to understand that whoever these people were they had far too much dignity and grace to take kindly to a couple of tourists that want to take they photo. Instead it is an image I will hold in my memory. It also did truly avoid the metropolis which formed unwelcoming blobs on our map and as we escaped the Escher loop we tumbled back onto the Highway.