July 13. Well, that didn’t happen. We are getting a little taste of the monsoon so it was overcast most of the day with a few spots of rain. The weather forecast is for a few days of this so tomorrow, if it doesn’t rain, we take a Jeep ride into one of the valleys to get a close up look of one of those giant glaciers around here. Today we went for a walk around the area along irrigation channels and trough a maze of pathways. It keeps amazing me to what lengths humans go to make the environment inhabitable for them. Thousands upon thousands of tons of rock have been and are being moved to create terraces and water channels to be able to grow crops.
July 14. We took the Jeep into the Hopper valley. After an hours drive we reached the end of the road and The Hilton Inn, from where the walking track climbs over a little rise to reveal the first glacier. As every where, the people are desperate for visitors and we get assaulted by people selling things as soon as we get out of the car. Out of pity more then necessity we take a guide to show us the way. The glacier is covered with rocks but some parts are fairly active and huge seracs have been pushed up. The scenery is big and wild and it feels good to have my feet on the ground. Flying is a great way to see a lot of country with minimal effort but for me it doesn’t leave the same dept of impression as a walk. It is a partly cloudy day which is just as well. It is still hot and breakfast wasn’t sitting to well with me so about three quarters of the way in I turn around to make it slowly back to the car. Grey continued with the guide along a second glacier to reach a summer grazing area with Sheppard’s huts and stunning views of the high peaks all around. When we get back to the hotel a fourth pilot has arrived. Mukrim has to leave in a few days so it is great to have someone else to replace him.
July 15. It was a flyable day but once in the air it was rough and inverted. This launch is not very high and with the current conditions it is very much hit and miss weather one gets away or not. This time it is Mukrim again that misses and ends up in the landing field after 10 minutes. The air was very rough and inverted and after two hours of trying to get higher dark clouds started to form to the south with the sound of thunder reaching us, time to land
The 16th Grey, Pierre and I take the taxi up to Eagles nest. Halfway up the road is blocked by a new landslide. Tonnes of mud and rocks have spilled from the slope above the road. A reminder of the fragility of this man made oasis. The slopes are steep and the layer of arable soil lose and overlaying solid rock, the irrigation water a perfect lubricant to get things sliding. We walk across and catch another taxi to take us to the end of the road. It has been very warm and the air has been stable so we are having a late start. We are driving up because there is a few small clouds forming, giving us the hope to find some thermals. The walk up is pretty hot this late in the day and I suffer under the load of my glider and all the bivi gear. Getting ready and putting on a long john, fleece pants, pants and flight suit plus double down jacket is an energy sapping exercise when the temperature is over 30 degrees Celsius. The thermal cycles are weak and, as usual, across the slope. I shoot straight across the canyon and have to scratch a long time very close to the slope before I can relax a little. Pierre and Grey launch shortly after me but do not find the lift I got and sadly sink out to the village. I climb out and repeat the flight around Lady finger and Hunza peak. Then around 3 o’clock all thermal activity stops and I glide across the hunza valley towards The Rakaposhe side and get a glimpse of the enormous ice fields that surround this mountain. Then I glide back to Karimabad and phone Grey to come to the fort to take some pictures while I soar around it. Another great flight, I cant be to enthusiastic as Grey and Pierre bombed out, hopefully we get some more instability soon so we all get to fly this awesome scenery.
July 17. The sky is an azure bleu with not one single cloud. It is hot and nothing stirs. Time to play the tourist and visit the nearby fort. The Altit fort was build some 800 years ago and has some interesting Tibetan characteristics. The little village at its foot is unspoiled by concrete structures and is a maze of little alley ways. Prince Charles was here in 2002 and visited one of the local houses. The owner has turned the place into a shrine and points out were the prince sat and were he put his hand, all riveting stuff.
The village square is a water reservoir that doubles as the kids swimming pool and with this heat it is full of them, daring each other to jump the highest from the trees surrounding the water.
July 18. The stable conditions persist and we stabilise with it. We are becoming so stable, we hardly move. It was a day doing nothing more than eating, sleeping, internet and lamenting with the locals about the lack of tourists. The people here are getting a raw deal. First of all Osama blew up the twin towers and as a result the conflict spilled over the border into Pakistan. Pakistan is supporting the Americans so the Taliban fights against it with a few bomb attacks on the capital. As a result the tourism numbers have dropped to virtually nothing and the people relying on tourism are left to fend for themselves. Just imagine this happening in New Zealand or any other big tourist destination. The little town of Karimabad has developed on tourism with the main street lined with tourist shops full of carpets, shawls and other nick knacks. The streets are empty but the shop owners are still putting out there wares and sit in front of their shops eagerly awaiting the arrival of the hordes that are not coming. It is hard to look at the pour buggers sitting there day in and day out looking at us with expecting eyes. Yesterday I asked the guy at the ticket office for the fort how many visitors he had had. Two people had bought a ticket. We kind of laughed about it and decided that that was better then crying, which would scare away any potential client. On top of the perceived danger of terrorism they have to deal with a natural disaster that has come in the form of a land slide that has wiped out one village and has created a dam of a mile wide and some hundred metres high. The lake behind the dam is now 30km long and has drowned several villages and the Karakorum highway to China. All road transport to and from China has ceased and on top of that the road to the south is under reconstruction in a way that a trip that took 55minutes 5 years ago now takes 5 hours. If all this would befall any valley anywhere in the western world people would rise up and make sure that the rest of the world would know about there predicament and that their leaders would do something about it. Here the government is corrupt at all levels and the people seem in shock.
I wonder how much longer these people are going to take it before they rise up and revolt. I guess what saves them is the fact that most still have their land and grow their own potatoes and cereals and fruit.
July 19. Today is a day to forget for me. We went to the launch late as the conditions looked stable. Pierre hired a guide and porter and walked up a thousand metres above the launch site early in the morning. When we saw him climb up after launching we rushed up the mountain to join the puffy clouds that started to appear in the sky. As usual the thermal cycles were weak and across the hill and I repeated my routine by flying over the ravine to try and catch the lift on the other side. This time I was out of tune with the thermal cycles and sank out below the level from where to expect to work my way up again. Grey was 5 minutes behind me and worked his way up in no time. I worked hard above the fort in light lift, to the delight of the kids in the village who clapped and whistled at my efforts. I gained a few hundred metres but never got high enough to connect with the rocks and the soaring crows and my day was over in 20 minutes. Grey had an awesome flight, reached 6800metres and got pretty close to Rakaposhe.
July 20. The end is nigh. One more week and we will be leaving Pakistan. Today we woke to a cloudy sky and stumbled from breakfast to coffee, the first real one in 8 weeks, to a game of cards, to lunch and a siesta. Then at 2 in the afternoon we set of for a walk into the canyon that we fly over. There is an incredible feat of local engineering build on and in the wall of the canyon. They have blasted a ledge in the wall and build up the sides with dry stacked stone to create a canal that runs the water from the glacier nose into the village. The drop is sheer and several hundred metres deep in places and the walk along it a bid unnerving.