Hi all. Im back in internet country but the connection is still to slow to send pictures. enjoy reding our adventures of the last ten days or so.26 June. The day took a sad turn, literally. Grey, Mukrim and Farhad went to the launch area at the summer palace where Farhad took off first. For some reason he flew away from the launch initiated a right hand turn and did a 355 degree turn into the hill. He took the impact with his right hand side and broke his shoulder and wrist. All the pilots of the valley were in town for a club meeting so he got plenty of support. It is sad and frightening to see the state of the local hospital. It is filthy and run down and will make me try harder to stay out of it. Grey and Mukrim did the rescue and were exhausted, a glide down into the valley is all they could manage.
27 June. It is Sunday today and there is not enough people to fill up a taxi. We are stuck in Chitral for one more day. The conditions are wearing us down. Our diet is not complete with all dairy products and fresh vegetables missing. The quality of the air in this town is not that great either with the burning of garbage and wood smoke. We have all had infected air ways and the usual stomach problems.
28 June. It took hours to fill up a taxi so that we had to wait in the taxi stand to hold our place. In the morning we missed out on an earlier taxi because we didn’t stay around. It gets unbearable hot and it is two o’clock before we get going. We pay for an extra seat so we have more room and we don’t have to wait any longer to fill up the car. The cushioning on my bud has worn a bid thin over the last five weeks and the five hours drive from Chitral to Mastuj is taking its toll on my derrière. The temporary bridge that we have crossed twice, since we have been in Chitral, is no longer. I didn’t get the full story but it either collapsed or washed away. It means an extra 15Km drive to the next bridge which in these parts means another hours drive. We check in in one of the guesthouses and go to the police station to write down our detail. We also find out that next days bus is totally booked out so that we have an extra day in this village. Our room has a garden court yard with some cherry trees laden with fruit which just happen to be ripe at the moment…..
In the evening I feel feverish and hit the sack early. We are in rural Pakistan here and we are meeting a different level of society. Here the young people want to leave. The economic situation is near hopeless and the administration is corrupt. It is tough to tell them the truth, there is very little chance that they will ever be able to get a visa or afford a plane ticket. Who M I to tell them to stay here and fight the system from within. I knew it already but questions like this emphasise again how lucky Im to have been born in Europe.
June 29. Just as well the bus was full. A days rest before we do the next 7 hours to the Yasin Valley is probably not a bad idea. I spent the day lounging around in the garden and go for a walk around the place. Im not feeling that great, which must have an impact on the way I see things. The place looks in decline with lots of the irrigation channels in disrepair and houses abandoned. It is still a green oasis in an environment of barren rock and the cherries tasted good.
June 30. The bus leaves at 6am so we are up nice and early. The ride takes us over the chandur pass, famous for its highest polo ground in the world, and then down into the valley that leads all the way to Gilgit. Iv taken my sleeping bag to sit on so the ride is a little more comfortable but I should have taken my earplugs as well. The chitraly music is very repetitive and monotonous to our ears and it is way to loud in the bus.
Grey has been doing the social networking and when he mentioned to Farhad that we intended to go to Yasin he got the address of some relative that has a summer house there. We got of the bus in Gupis and after a few phone calls we are in a taxi and on our way to the father of the chief of justice of Gilgit. We leave the narrow valley behind and the most spectacular landscape reveals it selves once the valley opens up. Snow covered peaks and rugged crags all around and the whole valley lush and green. It looks like Para Gliding heaven to me. The taxi drops us off at a walled property and stepping through the gate we enter a beautiful garden with roses and cherry trees laden with fruit. Nobody speaks more then a few words of English so the situation is a bid awkward at first but a grand child is summoned from somewhere to be our interpreter and things get organised. Bowls of cherries appear, thee gets served and introductions are made. It appears that we are staying with the father of the chief justice for one night and that we will move to his sons place tomorrow once that one has arrived from Gilgit. Im totally out of it, the bacteria are playing havoc with my guts and I have no energy left. A visit to the doctor next morning gets organised for me and I sleep away the rest of the afternoon. Were we with the descendants of the Chitraly royal family before, now we are with the descendants of the royal family of Varshigoom now called Jasin. There is some great flying potential here, the only thing is that there is no roads up the sides of the valley so to reach any take off we will have to walk. Iv gotten to weak to spent that kind of energy but Grey and Mukrim scout out some potential launch and landing sites.
July 1. In the morning a taxi gets organised and I get taken to the local hospital to have a consultation with the GP. I wile away the day in the vicinity of the bathroom and Grey and Mukrim go for some walks around the place. In the afternoon the chief justice arrives and a car get organised to take us to his house. He speaks perfectly English and we learn a great deal about the history of the valley. All rulers lost their power in the seventies when Bhuto declared that all people should be governed by democratic government, al the kingdoms got abolisched. The royals got banned from their lands and deported elsewhere. Now they are back but” apparently” have not much to say anymore in local government. In the valley alone there is some 1400 descendants of the royal family which, Im sure, must create quiet a power house in the local government. In the family summer residence we get a big room with en suite bathroom, tiled and clean, alas no hot water as the boiler is broken. Apart from the awkwardness that we are guests that have invited themselves and that the host doesn’t want anything in return, things are good. We get fed and anything we need gets organised.
July 2. The medication seems to work and my appetite has returned. I still feel very weak though and need a few more days to recuperate. Grey and Mukrim get picked up by the taxi at 9.30 and drive to the bottom of the hill. Our host has organised a few porters to carry their bags up the mountain. At noon I see them launch from about 400 metres above the valley floor and soon they climb to cloud base. Mukrim lands near the house in the riverbed after two hours and Grey flies a 60km tri angle and lands after 4 hours near the house we had stayed the first night. I borrow a bicycle and ride the 5km or so to where Grey is. By the time I arrive he has just finished packing and we get ushered into the walled family compound, away from the huge crowd that has gathered. Inside we sit in the traditional family room which is a rectangle with a square in the middle, formed by for carved wooden pillars. This is the place where the whole family lives in the winter. The men sleep on one side of the square and the women on the other. Inside the square is a stone cooking platform with a hole in the ceiling right above it for the smoke to escape.
The ceiling is made of poplar beams laid in a diamond pattern three or four layers deep.
It must get pretty cosy in the winter as in this family alone there are 8 adults, 16 grand children and the grand parents.
Food gets brought out for us and then thee and cherries. Grey shows his photos to all and he is the man. A taxi get organised for him and I cycle back home. People around here are not used to seeing foreigners especially not on a bicycle so I get a lot of attention on the way. That may also be because the kids in the compound have decorated me with roses so I look a bid like a dandy on a bike.
Grey’s flying stories are of massive 7000 metre high mountains and glaciers and many valley’s, I will have to be better tomorrow!
July 3. This time it is Mukrim who stays behind. He has been neglecting a cold and the last two nights he has been coughing his lungs out. We have banished him to the insolating cell so he can cough as much as he likes without keeping us awake. This morning he is feeling to weak. Im not yet back to my former self, which a few people much be happy about, but with a strong local boy carrying my bag up the hill, I can manage the flying. We make good time and before 11am we are on a spot about 500metres above the valley. Thermals are coming trough constantly and the sky is already filled with big cumulus. We promise each other to stay together and explore one of the side valleys to try and get close to one of the 7000metre peaks. However the sky gods have another idea in mind. After Take off, Grey finds a good thermal that takes him a few hundred metres above the launch site. When I Launch the sun disappears behind a cloud and it takes me a lot longer to get away. By the time Im up, Grey has sunk out low. We repeat this for the next hour till I have had enough. The wind is a lot stronger today and the shear level where the thermals meet the wind is not a nice place to be. Even though this shear level is at 4700metres we climb trough it often enough. When we get below 4000 it feels like we are getting low, the valley still 1500metres lower but the immensity of the landscape distorts all perspective. Our radio communications are not very professional and with those big gloves on not easy either. I decide to fly my own flight and cross the main valley to the windward side of the mountains. By now this is also the sunny side and the thermals are strong at some stage my Vario shows a constant 10 metres per second. I fly the length of the valley to Darkot where the glider decides to do its own thing and folds itself up, changes its mind, opens up again and throws in a little pirouette before giving me back the control. All this pretty much out of the bleu in a few seconds and to close to the summit of a 6000 metres peak to feel comfortable. And to think that I had just put away my video camera, bummer, would have made some interesting footage…… The cloud base has risen to 6000 metres like yesterday but with the stronger west wind the flying is not as good. After 4 hours I have had enough and glide to the landing field. The people have asked us to land near their house again and Grey has already gathered a big crowd with his landing. I have plenty of height to burn so I throw in a few spirals and wing overs and the crowd goes nuts. Grey is doing the crowd control and gets everybody to the side of the landing field before I land. When I touch down there must have been two hundred kids and adults running towards me and I land to a spontaneous applause. I get just enough time to bunch up my glider and swing it over my shoulder before they reach me. I walk straight into the walled compound and the door closes behind me leaving all the onlookers behind for Grey. The rest is a repeat of yesterdays, Cherries, delicious food and green thee and the smiles of 16 grand children and a grandpa to top it all of.
July 4. Today was set aside as a rest day for Grey and Mukrim which was perfect timing. It was windy and overcast in the morning so flying was not possible. Grey needs to go and see a doctor for the same reason as me and Mukrim is still coughing away. It is Sunday so Grey will have to wait till tomorrow before he will be able to go further then a few steps away from the toilet. We pass the day doing absolutely nothing and wonder how we manage. Somehow time passes and we are not part of it. Breakfast, lunch and dinner get served on time and we don’t have to think about anything. Yesterday we heard rumours and today we got confirmation that the one big event of the year, the Shandur polo festival, has been cancelled. The two provinces cant agree on who is responsible for the event and are disputing the boundaries of the province. It is a political game with the people the big losers. Very sad.
July 6. Shajjad from Islamabad still seems to think that there is going to be some sort of event at Shandur pass so he is driving up with his bus and 25 pilots. They have been asked to put up an air show and fly into the festival grounds. I had decided long ago that it is not going to be my sort of scene so I had decided to move on to Karimabad. However, after our little outing today I have decided to stay in this valley for a few more days. We hired a taxi and drove to the head of the valley. We took plenty of photos and even watching them now, just having been there, they don’t reflect what we just witnessed. The valley ends in a sort of enormous amphitheatre formed by 6000 metre high mountains. The summits are draped in fluted snow fields that end in big hanging glaciers. Further down the main glaciers collect all the falling ice and snake down to the valley like giant high ways. Around the village the fields are an emerald green and the sky was dark bleu. Its all on such a huge scale and such a intense, unspoiled beauty that it is hard to describe. The whole area so asks to be explored from the air that I cant leave this place without having a go at it. Again the people are very friendly and on my walk I had to refuse their offers for cups of thee several times or risk blowing up my bladder.
June 7. This morning Im going it alone. Grey and Mukrim are leaving for Chandur at lunch time, so I take the taxi to the bottom of the hill by myself. The conditions look great and again we start walking to late. I think this site is on early in the morning and a good launch time would be 10.30. When we walk up, yes Im using a porter again, the thermals come trough strong but by the time Im ready to take off the sun has gone to the side of the hill and thermals are less frequent. It is so bad that I almost bomb out and I have to pull all the tricks out of the bag to stay in the air. The house thermal is not working and it is not soar able. I try my luck further away from the hill and find something to get me back to take off height but then I lose it. I go for drastic measures and fly across a valley onto some scree slopes that are baking in the sun. It is still not convincing and it takes a lot of manoeuvring to work my way up high enough to cross the main valley and finally hit the good stuff. When you only get one shot at the day and you have to walk two hours to get to the launch site there sure is a good incentive to try a bid harder.
From then on it all becomes easy and the next hour to reach the head of the valley is a walk in the park. It looks very feasible to fly close up to those awesome glaciers that we saw yesterday during our excursion by road. Now I just have to make the right choice, or I go wide and follow the sunny sides of the mountains or I go straight across onto these massive walls of ice and hope for some dynamic lift. Small thermal clouds are actually forming on the shady side of the mountain and I decide for the direct route. What a totally awesome spectacle. There is no way to describe it. Im flying over miles and miles of ice and Im thermaling up on some lift generated by the few rocks that are not covered by snow. I glide along the entire north face of this mountain towards a saddle that I arrive just a bid to low at to see what is on the other side. I have not the faintest idea of the lay of the land on the other side and have to make up my route while Im there. I find some lift at the far end of the saddle and get enough height to glide back and get a look over to the other side. I have two seconds to make up my mind whether to go across this pass or not. In those two seconds I see a massive wall of ice, a glacier at the bottom of the valley and a rock face at the sunny side and way down a river that seems to flow to the south. I pop over and immediately regret it. The rocks are not that high above the glacier and the lift generated by them is very broken. The bag of tricks is being called on for the second time today and the prospect of a 3 day walk out keeps me fighting. It works and the reward for this act of, well’ you decide, act of bravery? is a flight to the summit of this 6500metre high monster of ice and rock called Tuy mountain. I get to the sunny side which has more exposed rock and easily thermal to the top. From this altitude the topography of the area is clear and I can see my way back home. It is only 2.30 and I have a “What now” moment. What do you do after such a spectacle? I decide to put the Chandur pass into the “Go To” on my GPS and find that it is only 82km away. I make good progress for the first 15km but then it gets more cloudy ahead. With many more mountains to cross and a totally unknown lay of the land I decide that I have pushed my luck enough for today and head for home. I only have to fly out of this one valley for 15km and I will be home where the cherries and green thee are waiting for me. I cant figure out what is going on with the air. I hid massive sink and headwind, then get propelled up in erratic thermals to fall out of the sky again with a tail wind. The prospect of a landing in this narrow valley looms and the walk out would be a total bummer. I skim the mountain side to catch as many bubbles as I can and slowly get to the mouth of the valley with a sigh of relief. I go on final glide, clear the last power lines with one metre to spare and touch down at the far end of the landing field. My approach was so low that nobody saw me coming and for the first time there are no hordes of kids to deal with. What a totally awesome day!
July 7. I have decided that today is going to be my last day in this piece of heaven. There is much more flying to be done but I somehow don’t need any more. Also I feel that we have stayed with these people for long enough and shouldn’t abuse their hospitality. When Grey and Mukrim left for Chandur I moved back to the house where we spent the first night. The guy that runs the show here is the village police man and the cousin of the chief justice. A guy with quite a bid of status and today was the day that he wanted to show off his European visitor to the village. He speaks hardly any English but goes out of his way to help us. We walked up to the place where the old fort used to be. In the 16th century the sikks came from what is now India and invaded Yasin. A big battle was fought around the fort and thousands of people died. Not much is left of the structure but it still is a great spot with a dominating view over the valley. On our way back we stop by the one hotel in the village to find a group of people that have just finished a 5 day tracking from Chitral to Yasin. The surreal thing is that they are watching the world cup soccer semi final between Uruguay and Holland on TV. Iv been away from the Netherlands long enough to feel impartial but it is still great to see them win. Once back home, after lunch and a siesta I find out that the grand father is not as healthy as he looks. They were going to put him in the same taxi bus as me tomorrow morning to take him to Gilgit.I doubt he would survive the ride. I can afford to pay a private taxi for both of us and it is a way to thank them for their hospitality, I also will not need to be on the side of the road at 5am tomorrow morning to wait for the taxi bus…….
July 8. A transit day today but what a spectacular drive from Gupis to Gilgit. The phandar river turnes into a big volume of water that at times get compressed into a narrow gorge and thunders down rapids. The small green irrigated islands of cultivated fields contrast sharply with the barren rock all around. It is a lot warmer in this valley and by the time we get to Gilgit it is outright hot. I check in into one of the better hotels in Gilgit and enjoy the first non Pakistani meal in 7 weeks. Chicken sweet and sour never tasted that good. I also have a proper bath room and enjoy my first real shower with warm water in seven weeks as well. Till now it has been mainly buckets of cold water and the occasional cold shower. It is such a handicap to know about all those luxury things like hot showers and different types of food. Without the knowledge of existence of those things the yearning for them would not be there and acceptance of conditions or situations not an issue. I sometimes wonder how different life would have been if I wouldn’t have known about sex….
Anyway, where was I. After a late lunch a great shower and a bid of world cup on TV I venture out in the late afternoon heat to find a place to fill up my Oxygen bottle and buy some supplies for the bus trip to Karimabad tomorrow. Again the people are supper helpful and in no time I find the person that supplies the whole area with Oxygen. As the bottle in his shop doesn’t give enough pressure he takes me to his store room where he has hundreds of cylinders. My connector doesn’t quiet fit on his bottles so he fits another one on my setup and away I go. With a full bottle I can have a go at the altitude record or, failing that, at least stay warm above 6000 metres for an hour or two. Rakaposhi with its 7788 metres is visible from Gilgit and Karimabad is right at its base.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
June 22. Grey landed in Booni yesterday so he is travelling back this morning and we have no news from Mukrim. The flying conditions look like a repeat of yesterday so Dimitry and myself try to be on the launch site an hour earlier. The plan is to get to Tirich Mir before the clouds develop so we can get a closer look at this beast of a mountain. I hope to fly a tri angle with Booni Zoom as a third turn point. The thermals are strong and some what erratic at first which results in a surprise frontal collapse that leaves me a bid shaken. Then we get in the groove and make good time. We stay together till we get to Tirich mir and then we loose each other. The landscape is so immense, if you take your eye from the other for a few turns it is very hard to connect again. I struggle with my camera to get a few photos and that is enough to loose sight of Dimitry. I push on alone to Booni Zoom and have a very enjoyable scenic flight back to Chitral where I arrive after 6 hours in the air. We are clocking up the hours, Grey has 39 hours of airtime in 10 flights, more then he would do in a year of free flying back home. I think it is going to be a rest day for me tomorrow, unless Grey wants to take me for a tandem. It’s a tough life this Para bumming.
June 25. The 23th was a rest day with time to update the blog. Putting it on the web was impossible though, power cuts and slow connections frustrated me to no end. I realise that some readers were anxious to find out what happened to Mukrim as I said that he had been lost for a few days in my last blog. He landed way up north and actually spend a few days in a hostel waiting for flyable weather, which didn’t come. He had a long long ride back in the back of a jeep. Grey landed in Booni on the 21st and got invited by a family to spent the night. He was so happy with their hospitality and the presence of a few pretty women that he got ground suck two days later and landed in their backyard again, giving away the option of flying a big tri angle. The 24th I went back to the kalash area with Dimitry but this time to a valley that is not visited by tourist that often. Once past the police check point it is another 8km on a four wheel drive track through a narrow valley to the main village in the Rambour valley. We get dropped of by the taxi in front of the two mountain police that are stationed there to protect any foreigners that venture there. The border with Afghanistan is only a few km up the road. Two years ago a Greek engineer got kidnapped by the Taliban from the next valley and only got released 8 months later after payment of a big sum of money. This place is totally idyllic. The fields of ray and wheat are being harvested. Big walnut trees and Mulberry trees are laden with fruit and all the irrigated land is bright green. And every where in the landscape are the women in their bright traditional dresses. It all looks like some painting from the romantic classics with children playing, women working the fields and oxen ploughing.
When we flew over this place two weeks ago I had spotted a few villages higher up the valley and that is where I wanted to go. One of the police officers happened to be from up there so he turned from bodyguard into personal guide. This was the first time in weeks that I had done any sort of exercise so it was hard to keep up with this mountain goat.
The weather clouded over and a few drops of rain fell which was perfect as I don’t think I could have kept up in a burning hot sun. The village consisted of 5 houses, tucked away behind a ridge overlooking a small cirque of steep irrigated land planted with corn. We sat in the garden and ate cheese and chapatti and drank black thee. This is a summer village where they grow their crops and then descend to the main village for the winter. The inside of the house is Spartan, a woodstove, some pots and pans, some beds without mattress and a chest for their clothing and of cause a TV set. After lunch we met the other villagers which are all delighted to see themselves on the digital camera. Interaction is limited as the guide is the only one with a few words of English. Then we walk along the main water race to the next village were we meet another family on their balcony. After more chapatti and yoghurt and photos of everyone we return to the valley were we stay in the only guest house. Talking about water races. It is incredible the way they run the water for kilometres along the mountain sides in channels made of what ever material is available. In places they have carved out a passage in sheer cliff faces and in others they have build up the hill sides to create a level ground for the water to run. The water race is the life line for the whole community, no water, no crop. It would be interesting to find out how the building and maintenance is administrated.
In the evening we get a glimpse of what it is to live in a small community like this. There is about 250 people in the village. Every one knows every one and you cant do one step without somebody knowing about it. Just before dark the women come to the village centre to talk and the kids play in a heap of sand. Then they stoke up the fire and make dinner. We get our dinner served on the balcony and because we are outside the Muslim influence we try some of the local wine. Next day we hear that one of the police officers that is stationed in the village got into the wine as well and, drunk, tried to have his way with one of the local women. Quiet a scandal and a reminder of how great it is to have a society without alcohol.
26 june. We have been in Chitral for 3 weeks now and we are getting ready to move on. We had dinner with Farhad on Thursday night and witnessed an awesome thunderstorm with a severe downpour. Next day we got the sad news that 15 people died in the village due to a massive mud slide that engulfed their houses. All the hill sides are denuded of trees so that there is nothing to stop the soil from washing down. The road out of town is blocked by a landslide as well so we have to postpone our departure. I was not feeling that great anyway so a 5 hour trip in a jeep was not on top of the list of things to do. Today the weather is great so Grey has gone up with Mukrim and Farhad to fly. Dimitry is getting ready to travel back to Islamabad and Im still trying to get my guts under control. This may be the last blog for a week or two. We plan to go to Jasim valley and Im not sure if we have access to internet there. From Jasim valley we may visit the Polo festival on Chandur pass on the 7-8 of july and then move on to Karimabad. To be continued……..
June 25. The 23th was a rest day with time to update the blog. Putting it on the web was impossible though, power cuts and slow connections frustrated me to no end. I realise that some readers were anxious to find out what happened to Mukrim as I said that he had been lost for a few days in my last blog. He landed way up north and actually spend a few days in a hostel waiting for flyable weather, which didn’t come. He had a long long ride back in the back of a jeep. Grey landed in Booni on the 21st and got invited by a family to spent the night. He was so happy with their hospitality and the presence of a few pretty women that he got ground suck two days later and landed in their backyard again, giving away the option of flying a big tri angle. The 24th I went back to the kalash area with Dimitry but this time to a valley that is not visited by tourist that often. Once past the police check point it is another 8km on a four wheel drive track through a narrow valley to the main village in the Rambour valley. We get dropped of by the taxi in front of the two mountain police that are stationed there to protect any foreigners that venture there. The border with Afghanistan is only a few km up the road. Two years ago a Greek engineer got kidnapped by the Taliban from the next valley and only got released 8 months later after payment of a big sum of money. This place is totally idyllic. The fields of ray and wheat are being harvested. Big walnut trees and Mulberry trees are laden with fruit and all the irrigated land is bright green. And every where in the landscape are the women in their bright traditional dresses. It all looks like some painting from the romantic classics with children playing, women working the fields and oxen ploughing.
When we flew over this place two weeks ago I had spotted a few villages higher up the valley and that is where I wanted to go. One of the police officers happened to be from up there so he turned from bodyguard into personal guide. This was the first time in weeks that I had done any sort of exercise so it was hard to keep up with this mountain goat.
The weather clouded over and a few drops of rain fell which was perfect as I don’t think I could have kept up in a burning hot sun. The village consisted of 5 houses, tucked away behind a ridge overlooking a small cirque of steep irrigated land planted with corn. We sat in the garden and ate cheese and chapatti and drank black thee. This is a summer village where they grow their crops and then descend to the main village for the winter. The inside of the house is Spartan, a woodstove, some pots and pans, some beds without mattress and a chest for their clothing and of cause a TV set. After lunch we met the other villagers which are all delighted to see themselves on the digital camera. Interaction is limited as the guide is the only one with a few words of English. Then we walk along the main water race to the next village were we meet another family on their balcony. After more chapatti and yoghurt and photos of everyone we return to the valley were we stay in the only guest house. Talking about water races. It is incredible the way they run the water for kilometres along the mountain sides in channels made of what ever material is available. In places they have carved out a passage in sheer cliff faces and in others they have build up the hill sides to create a level ground for the water to run. The water race is the life line for the whole community, no water, no crop. It would be interesting to find out how the building and maintenance is administrated.
In the evening we get a glimpse of what it is to live in a small community like this. There is about 250 people in the village. Every one knows every one and you cant do one step without somebody knowing about it. Just before dark the women come to the village centre to talk and the kids play in a heap of sand. Then they stoke up the fire and make dinner. We get our dinner served on the balcony and because we are outside the Muslim influence we try some of the local wine. Next day we hear that one of the police officers that is stationed in the village got into the wine as well and, drunk, tried to have his way with one of the local women. Quiet a scandal and a reminder of how great it is to have a society without alcohol.
26 june. We have been in Chitral for 3 weeks now and we are getting ready to move on. We had dinner with Farhad on Thursday night and witnessed an awesome thunderstorm with a severe downpour. Next day we got the sad news that 15 people died in the village due to a massive mud slide that engulfed their houses. All the hill sides are denuded of trees so that there is nothing to stop the soil from washing down. The road out of town is blocked by a landslide as well so we have to postpone our departure. I was not feeling that great anyway so a 5 hour trip in a jeep was not on top of the list of things to do. Today the weather is great so Grey has gone up with Mukrim and Farhad to fly. Dimitry is getting ready to travel back to Islamabad and Im still trying to get my guts under control. This may be the last blog for a week or two. We plan to go to Jasim valley and Im not sure if we have access to internet there. From Jasim valley we may visit the Polo festival on Chandur pass on the 7-8 of july and then move on to Karimabad. To be continued……..
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
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June 15. We wake up to a grey sky. Dimitry is in a bad way with the squirts so we all have another day to recover. With a copy of Dimitries computer programmes we figure out a way to download Greys track logs and the day is spent eating, washing, sleeping and a few hours on the internet. It’s a tough life! Have I told you yet how delicious the Mangos are around here? We eat kilos of the fruits and are now officially addicted to Mango shakes.
June 16 Mukrim has been away for 4 days now without news and we are starting to ask ourselves what can be the matter. Im of the opinion that there is nothing we can do and going to the police would only complicate matters for us. These mountains are so vast and rugged, a search is totally futile. We have demanded the opinion of the local pilots one of which has connections with the police. We have decided to formally sound the alarm on Sunday when he will have been away for a week. It is another non flyable day so Grey and Dimitry go to the hot pools a few hours drive from chitral. I need some time on my own away from every body so I stay at home.
June 17. The lost son has been found alive. Mukrim flew deep into the northern territories and will need a few days to get back. The police passed on a message by radio to the local pilot here to say that he was safe. Today is the finals of the polo tournament. It is a big event with thousands of spectators. It is free style polo so everything is permitted. It is a rough bunch of tartars but their riding skills are superb. They swing their polo sticks while riding at full speed and manage to either hit the ball or stop the opponent of doing so by hooking their stick behind the opponents one. The horses do get a beating, with the ball hitting their legs and the stray polo sticks flying in all directions. The crowd goes ballistic and the live music does its bit to excite them even more. The remarkable thing is that there is thousands of people but there is not a word of discontent.
Afterwards everybody walks home and there is no yelling or shouting or anti social behaviour. Im sure dying for a beer sometimes but a society without alcohol makes for very different behaviour. Now that Im remarking on the differences, here is another one.
There is no women on the street!!! And if there are they are covert up from top to tow. Now that I think about it I may already have remarked on this “no women” thing but it is so remarkable for us I have to say it again. It may have its positive sites as well. There seems to be no competition for women and so there is no jealousy or macho behaviour by the men. When we spent the night at the summer palace last week we only got a glimpse of the girls there and when I asked if I could take a photo of the family it was a definite NO.
Later the husband explained that if I took a photo of his wife the Imam in the village would be very upset. I guess it has to do with being vain or something. Now that we have been up there a few times and have drunk their thee and showed our good behaviour, the veil is slowly coming of and we are now allowed to see the women folks faces. It sure is different.
June 21. Time fly’s when you are having fun. I don’t remember what I did on the 18th. I think it was not flyable and I went for a walk around town. Met some trades people, sewing machine repair shop, woodworker, timber mill, and bakery. Had a cup of thee with the woodworker and tried to find out where the timber comes from. The forests are miles away and only accessible by foot. I guess the trees have been cut from the lower slopes long ago and now they have to walk for days to get their fire wood and timber. With the growing population in all the valleys it will not be long and they will have cut the last trees. Wood is still cheaper then gas so there is no incentive to move away from it. Last week we drove back to our hotel on sunset and got a good look at the smog that hangs over the valley at night. Now that Im sitting on my eco horse anyway I will tell you about the way they dispose of their rubbish here. It is nothing new really, it goes on everywhere in developing countries, but it keeps shocking me. The main shopping street has an open drain on both sides. All the rubbish gets dumped in those drains and once a day they open the flood gates at the top of the street and flush everything to the bottom of the street where it flows onto the river. With my European mind I just cant see how anyone can do that without any feeling of guild. In the back streets this system doesn’t work so well so there is piles of a mixture of plastic and paper and mud just sitting right in front of shop doors. I think this river eventually empties into the Indus and I wonder how the delta of the Indus looks like. We, in the rich countries, try to be clean, recycle, save energy, have carbon footprints and have emission control on our cars. It really is a joke when you realise how few we are in those rich countries and how many there is in the developing countries. 164 million in Pakistan alone. What saves the planet for the moment is that those developing countries don’t have much in the way of chemicals to dump in the rivers I think. Although the places to get your oil change done around here are conveniently close to the water……
On the 19th we went flying but the air was stable. With all my warm clothes on as usual I did sweat like a horse and gave up after a couple of hours scratching at low altitude.
Saturday looked great and I was feeling good, ready for a big flight. However, the wind aloft was strong which put us in the rotor of the big mountains behind the launch site. It made for unpleasant flying with Dimitry getting drilled into some canyon after which Grey and I decided to cross the valley and try the windward side. It worked much better but the conditions stayed unpredictable which made for frustrating flying for some and great flying for others. Me being the some and Grey being the other.
I set Sunday apart to take the Prince for a tandem. He is quiet a character by the way. In 1989 he was probably the first Pakistani ever to fly on a Para glider. In that year some Austrian tourist started doing flights from the hills here and Farhad, the prince, was quick to invite him to come and stay at his home. He ended up getting some ground handling lessons of this guy and doing his first short flights. It wasn’t till ten years later that he got his first wing and flung himself of the mountain. By then his mate had been to Islamabad to get some instruction and together they tried to kill themselves. He has spiralled out of the sky 3 times and has managed to survive all 3 without injury, falling on steep slopes or wrapping his glider around a huge rock and falling on his feet. There is about halve a dozen pilots here now which are sharing a few wings that are so old and trashed you look straight trough them. But it is all they have got and they do their top to bottoms with it, without reserve parachutes and no back protection what so ever. Allah must be with them.
It was a great looking day and Grey, Mukrim and Dimitry decided to have another go at the 7600 metre high Tirich Mir. I didn’t have a plan really but once we were in the air the conditions were so good that I decided to follow them. The approach is pretty straight forward. Get high, 5500, glide across a valley onto ridge and follow this ridge to the enormous mass of snow and ice. I was probably half an hour behind Grey and Dimitry, Mukrim having disappeared into some canyon, and the cloud base was at 6000metre. A cloud street over the ridge made for easy flying and I ventured into the clouds a bid. MISTAKE!!! The cloud was much bigger than anticipated and we got sucked up into it. For some reason I was not able to keep a straight course so that we spiralled upwards. Here I must clarify that I have been in cloud a few times and know how to deal with the total whiteout condition. It got bitterly cold and we got covered in hoarfrost. In eight minutes we climbed 1400 metres and popped out of the clouds at 7455 metres. The view of the mountain was obscured by masses of cloud so the sight seeing was over and we needed to get down into warmer air to defrost anyway. The blood circulation in my hands came back soon enough and with it the pain. Farhad, in the front seat, was in a worse way and had the shivers for quite a while. One of his fingers refused to come back to life and he said he was happy to make a b-line for the valley. That was still a long glide away though and with some exercise and time his digit started working again. There was still plenty of hours in the day and I was keen to try and make a tri angle out of the flight so we kept going. The scenery is out of this world on the east side of the chitral valley. The barren lower slopes turn thinly forested with altitude and then into snow covered peaks. Deep side valleys cut in, some with beautiful meadows grazed by herds of goats, with glaciers at higher altitude. We flew south till were the valley does a big S turn and the ridge drops away. We soared along the summit of the highest mountain of the valley and then did the long glide back to the launch site were we arrived with fifty metres to spare. Awesome!!!!!!!!!!
June 22. Grey landed in Booni yesterday so he is travelling back this morning and we have no news from Mukrim. The flying conditions look like a repeat of yesterday so Dimitry and myself try to be on the launch site an hour earlier. The plan is to get to Tirich Mir before the clouds develop so we can get a closer look at this beast of a mountain. I hope to fly a tri angle with Booni Zoom as a third turn point. The thermals are strong and some what erratic at first which results in a surprise frontal collapse that leaves me a bid shaken. Then we get in the groove and make good time. We stay together till we get to the mountain and then we loose each other. The landscape is so immense, if you take your eye from the other for a few turns it is very hard to connect again. I struggle with my camera to get a few photos and that is enough to loose sight of Dimitry. I push on alone to Booni Zoom and have a very enjoyable scenic flight back to Chitral where I arrive after 6 hours in the air. We are clocking up the hours, Grey has 39 hours of airtime in 10 flights, more then he would do in a year of free flying back home. I think it is going to be a rest day for me tomorrow, unless Grey wants to take me for a tandem. It’s a tough life this Para bumming.
June 15. We wake up to a grey sky. Dimitry is in a bad way with the squirts so we all have another day to recover. With a copy of Dimitries computer programmes we figure out a way to download Greys track logs and the day is spent eating, washing, sleeping and a few hours on the internet. It’s a tough life! Have I told you yet how delicious the Mangos are around here? We eat kilos of the fruits and are now officially addicted to Mango shakes.
June 16 Mukrim has been away for 4 days now without news and we are starting to ask ourselves what can be the matter. Im of the opinion that there is nothing we can do and going to the police would only complicate matters for us. These mountains are so vast and rugged, a search is totally futile. We have demanded the opinion of the local pilots one of which has connections with the police. We have decided to formally sound the alarm on Sunday when he will have been away for a week. It is another non flyable day so Grey and Dimitry go to the hot pools a few hours drive from chitral. I need some time on my own away from every body so I stay at home.
June 17. The lost son has been found alive. Mukrim flew deep into the northern territories and will need a few days to get back. The police passed on a message by radio to the local pilot here to say that he was safe. Today is the finals of the polo tournament. It is a big event with thousands of spectators. It is free style polo so everything is permitted. It is a rough bunch of tartars but their riding skills are superb. They swing their polo sticks while riding at full speed and manage to either hit the ball or stop the opponent of doing so by hooking their stick behind the opponents one. The horses do get a beating, with the ball hitting their legs and the stray polo sticks flying in all directions. The crowd goes ballistic and the live music does its bit to excite them even more. The remarkable thing is that there is thousands of people but there is not a word of discontent.
Afterwards everybody walks home and there is no yelling or shouting or anti social behaviour. Im sure dying for a beer sometimes but a society without alcohol makes for very different behaviour. Now that Im remarking on the differences, here is another one.
There is no women on the street!!! And if there are they are covert up from top to tow. Now that I think about it I may already have remarked on this “no women” thing but it is so remarkable for us I have to say it again. It may have its positive sites as well. There seems to be no competition for women and so there is no jealousy or macho behaviour by the men. When we spent the night at the summer palace last week we only got a glimpse of the girls there and when I asked if I could take a photo of the family it was a definite NO.
Later the husband explained that if I took a photo of his wife the Imam in the village would be very upset. I guess it has to do with being vain or something. Now that we have been up there a few times and have drunk their thee and showed our good behaviour, the veil is slowly coming of and we are now allowed to see the women folks faces. It sure is different.
June 21. Time fly’s when you are having fun. I don’t remember what I did on the 18th. I think it was not flyable and I went for a walk around town. Met some trades people, sewing machine repair shop, woodworker, timber mill, and bakery. Had a cup of thee with the woodworker and tried to find out where the timber comes from. The forests are miles away and only accessible by foot. I guess the trees have been cut from the lower slopes long ago and now they have to walk for days to get their fire wood and timber. With the growing population in all the valleys it will not be long and they will have cut the last trees. Wood is still cheaper then gas so there is no incentive to move away from it. Last week we drove back to our hotel on sunset and got a good look at the smog that hangs over the valley at night. Now that Im sitting on my eco horse anyway I will tell you about the way they dispose of their rubbish here. It is nothing new really, it goes on everywhere in developing countries, but it keeps shocking me. The main shopping street has an open drain on both sides. All the rubbish gets dumped in those drains and once a day they open the flood gates at the top of the street and flush everything to the bottom of the street where it flows onto the river. With my European mind I just cant see how anyone can do that without any feeling of guild. In the back streets this system doesn’t work so well so there is piles of a mixture of plastic and paper and mud just sitting right in front of shop doors. I think this river eventually empties into the Indus and I wonder how the delta of the Indus looks like. We, in the rich countries, try to be clean, recycle, save energy, have carbon footprints and have emission control on our cars. It really is a joke when you realise how few we are in those rich countries and how many there is in the developing countries. 164 million in Pakistan alone. What saves the planet for the moment is that those developing countries don’t have much in the way of chemicals to dump in the rivers I think. Although the places to get your oil change done around here are conveniently close to the water……
On the 19th we went flying but the air was stable. With all my warm clothes on as usual I did sweat like a horse and gave up after a couple of hours scratching at low altitude.
Saturday looked great and I was feeling good, ready for a big flight. However, the wind aloft was strong which put us in the rotor of the big mountains behind the launch site. It made for unpleasant flying with Dimitry getting drilled into some canyon after which Grey and I decided to cross the valley and try the windward side. It worked much better but the conditions stayed unpredictable which made for frustrating flying for some and great flying for others. Me being the some and Grey being the other.
I set Sunday apart to take the Prince for a tandem. He is quiet a character by the way. In 1989 he was probably the first Pakistani ever to fly on a Para glider. In that year some Austrian tourist started doing flights from the hills here and Farhad, the prince, was quick to invite him to come and stay at his home. He ended up getting some ground handling lessons of this guy and doing his first short flights. It wasn’t till ten years later that he got his first wing and flung himself of the mountain. By then his mate had been to Islamabad to get some instruction and together they tried to kill themselves. He has spiralled out of the sky 3 times and has managed to survive all 3 without injury, falling on steep slopes or wrapping his glider around a huge rock and falling on his feet. There is about halve a dozen pilots here now which are sharing a few wings that are so old and trashed you look straight trough them. But it is all they have got and they do their top to bottoms with it, without reserve parachutes and no back protection what so ever. Allah must be with them.
It was a great looking day and Grey, Mukrim and Dimitry decided to have another go at the 7600 metre high Tirich Mir. I didn’t have a plan really but once we were in the air the conditions were so good that I decided to follow them. The approach is pretty straight forward. Get high, 5500, glide across a valley onto ridge and follow this ridge to the enormous mass of snow and ice. I was probably half an hour behind Grey and Dimitry, Mukrim having disappeared into some canyon, and the cloud base was at 6000metre. A cloud street over the ridge made for easy flying and I ventured into the clouds a bid. MISTAKE!!! The cloud was much bigger than anticipated and we got sucked up into it. For some reason I was not able to keep a straight course so that we spiralled upwards. Here I must clarify that I have been in cloud a few times and know how to deal with the total whiteout condition. It got bitterly cold and we got covered in hoarfrost. In eight minutes we climbed 1400 metres and popped out of the clouds at 7455 metres. The view of the mountain was obscured by masses of cloud so the sight seeing was over and we needed to get down into warmer air to defrost anyway. The blood circulation in my hands came back soon enough and with it the pain. Farhad, in the front seat, was in a worse way and had the shivers for quite a while. One of his fingers refused to come back to life and he said he was happy to make a b-line for the valley. That was still a long glide away though and with some exercise and time his digit started working again. There was still plenty of hours in the day and I was keen to try and make a tri angle out of the flight so we kept going. The scenery is out of this world on the east side of the chitral valley. The barren lower slopes turn thinly forested with altitude and then into snow covered peaks. Deep side valleys cut in, some with beautiful meadows grazed by herds of goats, with glaciers at higher altitude. We flew south till were the valley does a big S turn and the ridge drops away. We soared along the summit of the highest mountain of the valley and then did the long glide back to the launch site were we arrived with fifty metres to spare. Awesome!!!!!!!!!!
June 22. Grey landed in Booni yesterday so he is travelling back this morning and we have no news from Mukrim. The flying conditions look like a repeat of yesterday so Dimitry and myself try to be on the launch site an hour earlier. The plan is to get to Tirich Mir before the clouds develop so we can get a closer look at this beast of a mountain. I hope to fly a tri angle with Booni Zoom as a third turn point. The thermals are strong and some what erratic at first which results in a surprise frontal collapse that leaves me a bid shaken. Then we get in the groove and make good time. We stay together till we get to the mountain and then we loose each other. The landscape is so immense, if you take your eye from the other for a few turns it is very hard to connect again. I struggle with my camera to get a few photos and that is enough to loose sight of Dimitry. I push on alone to Booni Zoom and have a very enjoyable scenic flight back to Chitral where I arrive after 6 hours in the air. We are clocking up the hours, Grey has 39 hours of airtime in 10 flights, more then he would do in a year of free flying back home. I think it is going to be a rest day for me tomorrow, unless Grey wants to take me for a tandem. It’s a tough life this Para bumming.
Friday, June 18, 2010
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June 12. Bleu sky again and the taxi driver is late picking us up. Once on the launch site it is clear that we have wasted a few hours of flying time. The thermals are ripping through and the sky fills rapidly with puffies. It is Saturday so we have spectators. Dimitry gets dragged on launch and ends up in Mukrims glider doing some damage to his competition lines. We all take of and get hovered up to 5000 metres in now time .I don’t get the time to put my feet in the stirrup till I get to cloud base. Im in a hurry so I lead the way crossing the Chitral valley. The first part of the flight is going to be a repeat of the flight of two days ago so I fly straight to the thermal points I remember. The clouds are forming on the mountain range one valley back from our previous flight so I cross over into the next valley and fly from thermal to thermal, not bothering to climb out to cloud base. The thermals are very strong and entering them is like riding a wild bull. Several times my glider collapses and opens with a bang so loud, I have to look up to see if it hasn’t exploded. I get eight meters a second sustained climbs and Grey goes two better with 10 meters a second, averaged out over 10 seconds. On the glides I get time to adjust my gloves and to take in the scenery but over all it is rather intents flying. The views are spectacular. From our vantage point it is hard to get a grip on the scale of things. The valleys are at 1500 to 2000 metres altitude and when we get below 4000metres we feel that we are getting low. The valley is about 40km long and ends in a glaciated saddle at an altitude of about 5500 metres, We fly over the saddle into another valley that runs east for about 20km. At this stage Im flying with Dimitry, Grey is about 10km behind us and Mukrim has gone down to land in Chitral to repair his broken line. I cross the saddle with 150metres to spare and have to choose between the left and the right side of the valley. I choose left and get totally drilled. I drop like a brick and see a premature end to my flight looming together with a monster walk out through this desolate rock strewn desert. I manage to cross over to the south side and soar some little ridges on the 40km plus wind that is blowing down the valley. I jump from ridge to ridge flying back wards in dynamic air mixed with the occasional thermal. Then the valley floor drops away sharply where it connects with the next valley system. I stay very close to the true right hand side of the valley and find the life saving thermal that takes me all the way to 6200 metres and safety. Dimitry came over the saddle and chose the right side and flew straight into a thermal that kept him well above 4500 metre. He joined me in my life saving thermal and together we spiralled upwards. Then he glides of towards Mastuj with bad stomach cramps and ends his flight there. Now I look down on the Shandur pass and into the Ghizer valley that runs all the way to Gilgit. For the first time I get an impression of the scale of the landscape. Im at 6200 meters, some 2000 metres higher than Mt Blanc, but here Im soaring around the summits. The snow covered peaks dominate the view in all directions as far as the eye can see and the valleys, far below, are coloured by a patchwork of bright green irrigated fields surrounded by endless acres of barren rock. It is about 3 in the afternoon and I should have another 4 hours to fly the 200km to Gilgit. I try to raise Grey on the radio but get no reply. I don’t know if he made it over the pass so now it is each one for him self. With a light tail wind Im doing 45 to 50kmh and make good progress. The sky ahead is over developing but there is still enough sunshine on the ground to provide a climb every 10 km or so. Then Grey comes through on the radio. He has had a similar experience as me, coming over the pass, and is some 30km behind me. The kilometres tick away and Im getting in a rhythm of sorts, climbing, gliding, climbing, gliding. Every time I get over 5000 metres I turn on my Oxygen system to get a little squirt of gas with every breath. Its effect is almost instant and most noticeable in the fact that my hands and feet warm up again. At the 120km point the cloud cover increases and the climbs become more difficult. Grey comes back on the radio saying he is going to land. I push on another 10 km and then I fly into a headwind and strong sink. All of a sudden the ridges have rotor and I sink below 3500metres. Ahead the valley becomes narrow and it looks like the potential landing spots are far and few between. I try to get Grey on the radio to tell him that Im turning back to join him but I get no reply. At 130km I turn around and soar the cliffs in the valley breeze to maximize my return distance. I can see the poplar trees slowly swaying in the wind and my GPS indicates a 15kmh tailwind. I line up a nice green field and hover upwind for several minutes to check for gusts and power lines. It’s a real spider web down there but the wind is constant. My hovering has attracted the attention of everyone in the village and I land on the road in frond of the usual crowd. I pack quickly with the help of the English speaking local and Im ready just as a Jeep drives up. I get a ride on the roof and leave the stunned villagers behind. I hope Grey has kept his radio on so I will not drive past him. Every few minutes I try to raise him but get no reply. Then I come around a corner in the valley and my radio jumps to life. I tell Grey Im on a Jeep and instantly he sais that he can see me. I expect to see him on the ground but he is nowhere to be seen. He urges me to stop the car so I do. The car leaves and Im in front of a little shop on a empty road in the middle of nowhere. Grey is not answering my calls anymore and for a moment I start to question my sanity. Did I really talk to him? Why is he not answering? I climb the ladder that is standing against the shop wall and try again. A flustered Grey comes on the radio. He has just landed flying back wards and has taken a tumble. He was still flying when I came around the corner and he saw me on the roof of the Jeep. All is well and after a few minutes I walk into his welcoming crowd. While Grey packs his gear I stop every vehicle that is going back up the valley to get a ride to the nearest place to spent the night. Not that there is a lot of traffic though. The third car is a taxi, actually going in the opposite direction but for the price of a bus ticket from Islamabad to Chitral he will take us 10km up the road. We are tired and don’t fancy getting stuck where we are, so we pay the 500 rupees. The Lake view hotel in Phander is just perfect for us. Situated on a high point above the lake we have a great view over the valley. The public bus passes the next day at 2 o’clock to take us on the 5 hour ride to Mastuj where we spent another night and then take a taxi Jeep back to our hotel in Chitral. Cross country flying here is a test of endurance. We decide that our next flights are going to be tri angles or out and returns to cut out the retrieve drive.
June 15. We wake up to a grey sky. Dimitry is in a bad way with the squirts so we all have another day to recover. With a copy of Dimitries computer programmes we figure out a way to download Greys track logs and the day is spent eating, washing, sleeping and a few hours on the internet. It’s a tough life! Have I told you yet how delicious the Mangos are around here? We eat kilos of the fruits and are now officially addicted to Mango shakes.
June 16 Mukrim has been away for 4 days now without news and we are starting to ask ourselves what can be the matter. Im of the opinion that there is nothing we can do and going to the police would only complicate matters for us. These mountains are so vast and rugged, a search is totally futile. We have demanded the opinion of the local pilots on of which has connections with the police. We have decided to formally sound the alarm on Sunday when he will have been away for a week. It is another non flyable day so Grey and Dimitry go to the hot pools a few hours drive from chitral. I need some time on my own away from every body so I stay at home.
June 12. Bleu sky again and the taxi driver is late picking us up. Once on the launch site it is clear that we have wasted a few hours of flying time. The thermals are ripping through and the sky fills rapidly with puffies. It is Saturday so we have spectators. Dimitry gets dragged on launch and ends up in Mukrims glider doing some damage to his competition lines. We all take of and get hovered up to 5000 metres in now time .I don’t get the time to put my feet in the stirrup till I get to cloud base. Im in a hurry so I lead the way crossing the Chitral valley. The first part of the flight is going to be a repeat of the flight of two days ago so I fly straight to the thermal points I remember. The clouds are forming on the mountain range one valley back from our previous flight so I cross over into the next valley and fly from thermal to thermal, not bothering to climb out to cloud base. The thermals are very strong and entering them is like riding a wild bull. Several times my glider collapses and opens with a bang so loud, I have to look up to see if it hasn’t exploded. I get eight meters a second sustained climbs and Grey goes two better with 10 meters a second, averaged out over 10 seconds. On the glides I get time to adjust my gloves and to take in the scenery but over all it is rather intents flying. The views are spectacular. From our vantage point it is hard to get a grip on the scale of things. The valleys are at 1500 to 2000 metres altitude and when we get below 4000metres we feel that we are getting low. The valley is about 40km long and ends in a glaciated saddle at an altitude of about 5500 metres, We fly over the saddle into another valley that runs east for about 20km. At this stage Im flying with Dimitry, Grey is about 10km behind us and Mukrim has gone down to land in Chitral to repair his broken line. I cross the saddle with 150metres to spare and have to choose between the left and the right side of the valley. I choose left and get totally drilled. I drop like a brick and see a premature end to my flight looming together with a monster walk out through this desolate rock strewn desert. I manage to cross over to the south side and soar some little ridges on the 40km plus wind that is blowing down the valley. I jump from ridge to ridge flying back wards in dynamic air mixed with the occasional thermal. Then the valley floor drops away sharply where it connects with the next valley system. I stay very close to the true right hand side of the valley and find the life saving thermal that takes me all the way to 6200 metres and safety. Dimitry came over the saddle and chose the right side and flew straight into a thermal that kept him well above 4500 metre. He joined me in my life saving thermal and together we spiralled upwards. Then he glides of towards Mastuj with bad stomach cramps and ends his flight there. Now I look down on the Shandur pass and into the Ghizer valley that runs all the way to Gilgit. For the first time I get an impression of the scale of the landscape. Im at 6200 meters, some 2000 metres higher than Mt Blanc, but here Im soaring around the summits. The snow covered peaks dominate the view in all directions as far as the eye can see and the valleys, far below, are coloured by a patchwork of bright green irrigated fields surrounded by endless acres of barren rock. It is about 3 in the afternoon and I should have another 4 hours to fly the 200km to Gilgit. I try to raise Grey on the radio but get no reply. I don’t know if he made it over the pass so now it is each one for him self. With a light tail wind Im doing 45 to 50kmh and make good progress. The sky ahead is over developing but there is still enough sunshine on the ground to provide a climb every 10 km or so. Then Grey comes through on the radio. He has had a similar experience as me, coming over the pass, and is some 30km behind me. The kilometres tick away and Im getting in a rhythm of sorts, climbing, gliding, climbing, gliding. Every time I get over 5000 metres I turn on my Oxygen system to get a little squirt of gas with every breath. Its effect is almost instant and most noticeable in the fact that my hands and feet warm up again. At the 120km point the cloud cover increases and the climbs become more difficult. Grey comes back on the radio saying he is going to land. I push on another 10 km and then I fly into a headwind and strong sink. All of a sudden the ridges have rotor and I sink below 3500metres. Ahead the valley becomes narrow and it looks like the potential landing spots are far and few between. I try to get Grey on the radio to tell him that Im turning back to join him but I get no reply. At 130km I turn around and soar the cliffs in the valley breeze to maximize my return distance. I can see the poplar trees slowly swaying in the wind and my GPS indicates a 15kmh tailwind. I line up a nice green field and hover upwind for several minutes to check for gusts and power lines. It’s a real spider web down there but the wind is constant. My hovering has attracted the attention of everyone in the village and I land on the road in frond of the usual crowd. I pack quickly with the help of the English speaking local and Im ready just as a Jeep drives up. I get a ride on the roof and leave the stunned villagers behind. I hope Grey has kept his radio on so I will not drive past him. Every few minutes I try to raise him but get no reply. Then I come around a corner in the valley and my radio jumps to life. I tell Grey Im on a Jeep and instantly he sais that he can see me. I expect to see him on the ground but he is nowhere to be seen. He urges me to stop the car so I do. The car leaves and Im in front of a little shop on a empty road in the middle of nowhere. Grey is not answering my calls anymore and for a moment I start to question my sanity. Did I really talk to him? Why is he not answering? I climb the ladder that is standing against the shop wall and try again. A flustered Grey comes on the radio. He has just landed flying back wards and has taken a tumble. He was still flying when I came around the corner and he saw me on the roof of the Jeep. All is well and after a few minutes I walk into his welcoming crowd. While Grey packs his gear I stop every vehicle that is going back up the valley to get a ride to the nearest place to spent the night. Not that there is a lot of traffic though. The third car is a taxi, actually going in the opposite direction but for the price of a bus ticket from Islamabad to Chitral he will take us 10km up the road. We are tired and don’t fancy getting stuck where we are, so we pay the 500 rupees. The Lake view hotel in Phander is just perfect for us. Situated on a high point above the lake we have a great view over the valley. The public bus passes the next day at 2 o’clock to take us on the 5 hour ride to Mastuj where we spent another night and then take a taxi Jeep back to our hotel in Chitral. Cross country flying here is a test of endurance. We decide that our next flights are going to be tri angles or out and returns to cut out the retrieve drive.
June 15. We wake up to a grey sky. Dimitry is in a bad way with the squirts so we all have another day to recover. With a copy of Dimitries computer programmes we figure out a way to download Greys track logs and the day is spent eating, washing, sleeping and a few hours on the internet. It’s a tough life! Have I told you yet how delicious the Mangos are around here? We eat kilos of the fruits and are now officially addicted to Mango shakes.
June 16 Mukrim has been away for 4 days now without news and we are starting to ask ourselves what can be the matter. Im of the opinion that there is nothing we can do and going to the police would only complicate matters for us. These mountains are so vast and rugged, a search is totally futile. We have demanded the opinion of the local pilots on of which has connections with the police. We have decided to formally sound the alarm on Sunday when he will have been away for a week. It is another non flyable day so Grey and Dimitry go to the hot pools a few hours drive from chitral. I need some time on my own away from every body so I stay at home.
Monday, June 14, 2010
June 10. We wake to a bleu sky and it takes a while before the first puffy clouds develop.
Grey isn’t having any premonitions but I think it is going to be a good day. We all decide that shandur pass would be a good goal for the day with the town of Mastuj a good alternative. We launch at midday and it takes more then an hour to get to cloud base at 4500 meters. That sets the trend for the day. Somehow it takes us 6 hours to fly 80Km. The scenery is spectacular and the cloud base rises to 5500 which is not quiet enough to pop over to the shandur pass. On the way I spot a group of ibex at about 4000meters. I whip out my video camera and try to get some footage and almost kill myself in the process. Flying close to the terrain with one hand while in thermal and trying to point a camera at some goats is not a good idea. Due to the cloud we cant get over the mountain range that separates us from the valley that runs up to the shandur pass. We have lost Mukrim early in he flight and then Dimitry disappears after about 70km. Grey and I are together at 80km were we are a bid confused as to where the town of mastuj is situated. After a bid of calculating we decide that it is right underneath us. We are both pretty tired at this stage and Grey is happy to go and land. That is till I tell him that it is only another 17km to make the hundred. It is six o’clock by then and the shadows in the valley are getting longer. We squeeze out 4 more thermals and make it to the one hundred and one kilometre. We top up one more time and glide back the whole 15km to land on the polo ground where the usual crowd welcomes us. We hug and get our cameras out to film each other and the crowd. I have decided on a routine for those crowd landings. I ask if there is somebody that can speak English and get that person to do the crowd control. I ask for space to spread and pack my glider and get everything in the bag asap. Then it is time for some fouling around and finding out if there is a place to stay. This time the English speaking person also becomes our host. He guides us through the labyrinth of small fields and irrigation channels to his family house followed by a part of the crowd. Grey and I are exhausted and would have loved to eat and hit the sack but our host was much to happy to have some company. Dinner got served and I fell asleep before the thee arrived leaving Grey to do all the small talk. At 10pm I use a bid off my Dutch bluntness to make our host leave so we can crash.
June 11. We have to get up at 5am to catch the first jeep back to Chitral. The Mastuj- Booni road is under reconstruction so the ride is even more hair raising than usual. With 14 people in a land cruiser we are like sardines in a can and there would be no escape if we would end up going over the edge. Accidents don’t seem to happen very often though and one has to have a little bid of fait. We arrive back at our hotel after 5 hours to find Mukrim and Dimitri already there. They both landed a few kilometres short of Mastuj and stayed with some locals for the night. The rest of the day we wash, sleep and eat and recharge all our batteries for tomorrows flight.
Grey isn’t having any premonitions but I think it is going to be a good day. We all decide that shandur pass would be a good goal for the day with the town of Mastuj a good alternative. We launch at midday and it takes more then an hour to get to cloud base at 4500 meters. That sets the trend for the day. Somehow it takes us 6 hours to fly 80Km. The scenery is spectacular and the cloud base rises to 5500 which is not quiet enough to pop over to the shandur pass. On the way I spot a group of ibex at about 4000meters. I whip out my video camera and try to get some footage and almost kill myself in the process. Flying close to the terrain with one hand while in thermal and trying to point a camera at some goats is not a good idea. Due to the cloud we cant get over the mountain range that separates us from the valley that runs up to the shandur pass. We have lost Mukrim early in he flight and then Dimitry disappears after about 70km. Grey and I are together at 80km were we are a bid confused as to where the town of mastuj is situated. After a bid of calculating we decide that it is right underneath us. We are both pretty tired at this stage and Grey is happy to go and land. That is till I tell him that it is only another 17km to make the hundred. It is six o’clock by then and the shadows in the valley are getting longer. We squeeze out 4 more thermals and make it to the one hundred and one kilometre. We top up one more time and glide back the whole 15km to land on the polo ground where the usual crowd welcomes us. We hug and get our cameras out to film each other and the crowd. I have decided on a routine for those crowd landings. I ask if there is somebody that can speak English and get that person to do the crowd control. I ask for space to spread and pack my glider and get everything in the bag asap. Then it is time for some fouling around and finding out if there is a place to stay. This time the English speaking person also becomes our host. He guides us through the labyrinth of small fields and irrigation channels to his family house followed by a part of the crowd. Grey and I are exhausted and would have loved to eat and hit the sack but our host was much to happy to have some company. Dinner got served and I fell asleep before the thee arrived leaving Grey to do all the small talk. At 10pm I use a bid off my Dutch bluntness to make our host leave so we can crash.
June 11. We have to get up at 5am to catch the first jeep back to Chitral. The Mastuj- Booni road is under reconstruction so the ride is even more hair raising than usual. With 14 people in a land cruiser we are like sardines in a can and there would be no escape if we would end up going over the edge. Accidents don’t seem to happen very often though and one has to have a little bid of fait. We arrive back at our hotel after 5 hours to find Mukrim and Dimitri already there. They both landed a few kilometres short of Mastuj and stayed with some locals for the night. The rest of the day we wash, sleep and eat and recharge all our batteries for tomorrows flight.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
31May One aspect of being in a Muslim country is that there is no women visible on the street or anywhere we get invited for that matter. The few that we see cover their face with their scarf as soon as men arrive or if adhering to the stricter Sunni group they wear the full burka. The streets are full of men and for us there is definitely something missing. We are amazed by the kindness of this people. Where ever we are people go out of their way to help us. We get invited for cups of thee and people on the streets greet and shake your hand. We may get charged a higher rate for certain food or services but there is non of the money oriented aggression that prevails in many other countries. I really have to pinch myself sometimes to check if I’m not dreaming. If only life at home could be so pleasant.
Today we have set ourselves the task to try and fly around Trichmir, the big mountain that dominates the valley towards the north. The weather is again perfect and all three of us are able to get to 5500 meter before we cross the valley onto the foot hills of this 7700 meter giant. About an hour into the flight we lose contact with each other. Some high clouds move in from the south-west and the top of the mountain disappears. We are all flying with our bivi gear so that we can camp out if necessary. I fly along the south face of Trichmir and fly across some spectacular glacier landscape on a easterly heading to end up in Booni, another Para Gliding base camp. The sky looks threatening towards the west and I decide against camping out. Again the unbelievable kindness of the people blows me away. I land on a soccer field and one of the young boys there takes charge of the situation. He makes contact with the local pilots and organizes a ride into the village for me. Once at his house he produces a huge dish with mulberries, which are in season at the moment and we talk about al kinds of things till one of the local pilots shows up to take me to a place to spent the night. I get fed and we talk paragliding and politics till after dark. The scene is paradisiacal, the stars are out, the honey suckle is spreading its strong fragrance trough the garden, the frogs are croaking and there is the noise of water running through the irrigation channels. I sit in the dark in this walled garden for quiet some time before going to bed and feel totally at peace.
June 1 .In the morning at seven I get woken up for breakfast. Muzafara runs a school and needs to go but I can stay as I wish. The sky is totally bleu apart from a few early thermal clouds. For a moment I regret not having landed in the mountains to be able to fly back to chitral today but then I wouldn’t have had the encounter with these nice people. Plenty of time for flying. The bus ride back is spectacular. The landscape is barren but for the places were people have diverted the water to irrigate the land. Channels, kilometres long, have been carved out and build on the mountainsides to bring the water to the fields. They have clearly been doing this for centuries as the villages and orchards are full of big trees. Higher up in the valley the fields are still green with growing wheat and barley but on the desend back to Chitral the grains are riper and the fields look like a patchwork of greens and yellows. Outside the alluvial fans that are used for irrigation the land is rocky and under constant attack of the elements. The erosion is visible everywhere and the river is running black with silt.
I come back to the hotel around lunch time to find Grey already there. He has had an adventure of his own, landing in some mountain village and staying with a local family. He caught a jeep ride back to the hotel. Mukrim arrives back later in the afternoon, having flown to Booni. He top landed on the local paragliding launch site and camped out but decided to fly down in the morning and catch the bus back to the hotel as he run out of battery power on his GPS.
June 2. A big cyclone in the Bay of Bengal is playing havoc with the weather and it looks like we are in for a few non flyable days. We need a day anyway to do some domestic chores, do some Emailing and enjoy walking through the town and soak up the local pace of life.
June 3. Grey is having a craving for toast and jam. The local breakfast of fried egg and chapatti is not agreeing with him. He has a point, as the eggs are swimming in cooking fat. We pay a visit to the one luxury hotel in town and sit at a table, eat with knife and fork and sip black thee from an almost un chipped cup. The place has 45 rooms and is almost empty. White toast, scrambled eggs, butter and jam and black thee for 2.5 $US doesn’t break the bank and gives our stomach a break in the morning. As the day doesn’t look flyable we organise ourselves a excursion to a valley about 40 km from chitral where the non Muslim tribe of the Kalash people live. Much of their culture is being preserved in the newly build community centre with museum, medical centre and school. The local building stile hasn’t been replaced by concrete yet and the place looks rather idyllic. I guess the biggest attraction are the women, as they dress in very colourful costumes and don’t hide behind scarves or burkas. Our visit was a bid to short to get a good look around but we had to take the last taxi back otherwise Grey would have ended up sleeping with one of these girls.
Jun 4. The weather will be upset by this cyclone for the coming days. Today was rainy and the temperature has dropped. Mukrim has made friends with the local bank manager who is very interested in our activities. In the evening he comes by to invite us to his place for lunch tomorrow. The day passes with eating, a visit to the internet café and an attempt to rewire the GPS cable so Grey and Mukrim can down load their track logs. Grey, yesterday, got a refund for our airline tickets for the flight from Islamabad to Chitral. Later he got a call that they gave us to much money and if we could please come and return the difference. Seen as that all the people seem so honest around here we popped in this afternoon to sort it out. We got the royal treatment with cups of thee and cake and biscuits and a nice chat with the PIA airlines manager and we returned the 600 rupees. It is clear that the people around here are desperate for tourist to return. The repeated request is that we please spread the message how beautiful and safe it is in this part of Pakistan once we return to our home countries.
June 5. I dropped off my Icebreaker jersey at the tailor yesterday to get new cuffs put on. As I went to check my Email this morning I picked it up next doors. When I asked him how much it cost he said it was up to me. He must have spend at least an hour unpicking and re-sewing the cuffs. When I gave him 150 rupees he only took 50, less then a New Zealand dollar.
The sky cleared in the morning and we decide to get our gear ready so that we can go for a flight after the bankers lunch. Im not feeling to great today as my head cold is really breaking through so I return to bed as Grey and Mukrim get picked up.
June 8. Grey and Mukrim never got to fly. Lunch turned into an afternoon affair as was to be expected. Next day I still didn’t feel that great so I stayed in bed till the afternoon. Grey and Mukrim went up for a flight and ended up in Booni, about 60km to the north, caught up with the local pilots there and got the last bus back to the hotel. June the 7th The weather is very unstable. The sky is bleu in the morning but very quickly the cumulus develop and by lunchtime there is big cumulo nimbus cells which bring thunder and rain. Just as we are ready to get in the taxi, Dimitri , a pilot from the Ukraine, walks into our hotel so now we are four We decide to try and fly a triangle. First we fly south as that is where the thunderstorms seem to develop earlier. The cloud base is low at 4000 meter and we hop from ridge to ridge. By the time we get to the fourth ridge, the one that separates us from the kalash village, the clouds get to threatening and we turn around. We fly back to the launch area and top land in the hope that it may clear later in the afternoon. On the way we loose Dimitri but he lands safely back at the hotel. The remnants of the palace on the launch area are guarded by a young family. We get offered thee and chapatti and we try to understand each other talking with our hands and feet. The weather doesn’t clear and we decide to stay the night. Doors get unlocked and we enter the main room of what once was a substantial walled complex. Inside we find some epoch furniture, a fireplace and mirrors on the wall all covered with a thick layer of dust. We drink more thee, go for a walk up the ridge to stretch our legs and get served dinner at eight. Not a bad spot for a first paragliding bivi.
At night it rains and the wind howls around the buildings but in the morning the sky is clear. Dimitri comes up with the taxi and after a breakfast of thee and chapatti we are ready to launch at half past ten. The conditions are the same as yesterday but we start two hours earlier. We have the same flight plan and I don’t mess around this time. With the base at 4000 I don’t even top out the thermals and lead the way hopping from ridge to ridge. We lose Dimitri again but the three of us stay fairly close together and help each other along. The landscape is wild and at some stage in the flight as we squeeze over a little saddle in the ridge, the ground falls away and we look down sheer cliffs several hundred meters high. The clouds thicken again and by the time we fly over the kalash valley the sun is gone and at times we fly through light snow. I push my luck trying to get over one more ridge but arrive to low and get hit by the rotor. By the time I get back to the wind ward side of the valley Iv lost a lot of height and have to do some serious scratching to gain a few hundred meters. In the mean time Grey has been waiting near cloud base and decides to fly back to the main chitral valley. Mukrim didn’t get the last climb and is hugging the walls to get out to the main valley as well. This is the place we visited by car only a few days ago so we know the lay of the land. Once in the main valley the sun is back but there is a 15km wind that is scattering the thermals. Grey and I land at the same spot and as usual a crowd forms in no time. At first there is no English speakers but then a big pick-up truck pulls up with two engineers from the local marble mine. They are on their way to Chitral, so our return ride is secured. The ten steps to the truck was even less then the walk to the launch site this morning. Allah must be with us on this trip! The weather forecast is good for tomorrow, maybe it is going to be the big one…… PS uploading photos is taking to long
Today we have set ourselves the task to try and fly around Trichmir, the big mountain that dominates the valley towards the north. The weather is again perfect and all three of us are able to get to 5500 meter before we cross the valley onto the foot hills of this 7700 meter giant. About an hour into the flight we lose contact with each other. Some high clouds move in from the south-west and the top of the mountain disappears. We are all flying with our bivi gear so that we can camp out if necessary. I fly along the south face of Trichmir and fly across some spectacular glacier landscape on a easterly heading to end up in Booni, another Para Gliding base camp. The sky looks threatening towards the west and I decide against camping out. Again the unbelievable kindness of the people blows me away. I land on a soccer field and one of the young boys there takes charge of the situation. He makes contact with the local pilots and organizes a ride into the village for me. Once at his house he produces a huge dish with mulberries, which are in season at the moment and we talk about al kinds of things till one of the local pilots shows up to take me to a place to spent the night. I get fed and we talk paragliding and politics till after dark. The scene is paradisiacal, the stars are out, the honey suckle is spreading its strong fragrance trough the garden, the frogs are croaking and there is the noise of water running through the irrigation channels. I sit in the dark in this walled garden for quiet some time before going to bed and feel totally at peace.
June 1 .In the morning at seven I get woken up for breakfast. Muzafara runs a school and needs to go but I can stay as I wish. The sky is totally bleu apart from a few early thermal clouds. For a moment I regret not having landed in the mountains to be able to fly back to chitral today but then I wouldn’t have had the encounter with these nice people. Plenty of time for flying. The bus ride back is spectacular. The landscape is barren but for the places were people have diverted the water to irrigate the land. Channels, kilometres long, have been carved out and build on the mountainsides to bring the water to the fields. They have clearly been doing this for centuries as the villages and orchards are full of big trees. Higher up in the valley the fields are still green with growing wheat and barley but on the desend back to Chitral the grains are riper and the fields look like a patchwork of greens and yellows. Outside the alluvial fans that are used for irrigation the land is rocky and under constant attack of the elements. The erosion is visible everywhere and the river is running black with silt.
I come back to the hotel around lunch time to find Grey already there. He has had an adventure of his own, landing in some mountain village and staying with a local family. He caught a jeep ride back to the hotel. Mukrim arrives back later in the afternoon, having flown to Booni. He top landed on the local paragliding launch site and camped out but decided to fly down in the morning and catch the bus back to the hotel as he run out of battery power on his GPS.
June 2. A big cyclone in the Bay of Bengal is playing havoc with the weather and it looks like we are in for a few non flyable days. We need a day anyway to do some domestic chores, do some Emailing and enjoy walking through the town and soak up the local pace of life.
June 3. Grey is having a craving for toast and jam. The local breakfast of fried egg and chapatti is not agreeing with him. He has a point, as the eggs are swimming in cooking fat. We pay a visit to the one luxury hotel in town and sit at a table, eat with knife and fork and sip black thee from an almost un chipped cup. The place has 45 rooms and is almost empty. White toast, scrambled eggs, butter and jam and black thee for 2.5 $US doesn’t break the bank and gives our stomach a break in the morning. As the day doesn’t look flyable we organise ourselves a excursion to a valley about 40 km from chitral where the non Muslim tribe of the Kalash people live. Much of their culture is being preserved in the newly build community centre with museum, medical centre and school. The local building stile hasn’t been replaced by concrete yet and the place looks rather idyllic. I guess the biggest attraction are the women, as they dress in very colourful costumes and don’t hide behind scarves or burkas. Our visit was a bid to short to get a good look around but we had to take the last taxi back otherwise Grey would have ended up sleeping with one of these girls.
Jun 4. The weather will be upset by this cyclone for the coming days. Today was rainy and the temperature has dropped. Mukrim has made friends with the local bank manager who is very interested in our activities. In the evening he comes by to invite us to his place for lunch tomorrow. The day passes with eating, a visit to the internet café and an attempt to rewire the GPS cable so Grey and Mukrim can down load their track logs. Grey, yesterday, got a refund for our airline tickets for the flight from Islamabad to Chitral. Later he got a call that they gave us to much money and if we could please come and return the difference. Seen as that all the people seem so honest around here we popped in this afternoon to sort it out. We got the royal treatment with cups of thee and cake and biscuits and a nice chat with the PIA airlines manager and we returned the 600 rupees. It is clear that the people around here are desperate for tourist to return. The repeated request is that we please spread the message how beautiful and safe it is in this part of Pakistan once we return to our home countries.
June 5. I dropped off my Icebreaker jersey at the tailor yesterday to get new cuffs put on. As I went to check my Email this morning I picked it up next doors. When I asked him how much it cost he said it was up to me. He must have spend at least an hour unpicking and re-sewing the cuffs. When I gave him 150 rupees he only took 50, less then a New Zealand dollar.
The sky cleared in the morning and we decide to get our gear ready so that we can go for a flight after the bankers lunch. Im not feeling to great today as my head cold is really breaking through so I return to bed as Grey and Mukrim get picked up.
June 8. Grey and Mukrim never got to fly. Lunch turned into an afternoon affair as was to be expected. Next day I still didn’t feel that great so I stayed in bed till the afternoon. Grey and Mukrim went up for a flight and ended up in Booni, about 60km to the north, caught up with the local pilots there and got the last bus back to the hotel. June the 7th The weather is very unstable. The sky is bleu in the morning but very quickly the cumulus develop and by lunchtime there is big cumulo nimbus cells which bring thunder and rain. Just as we are ready to get in the taxi, Dimitri , a pilot from the Ukraine, walks into our hotel so now we are four We decide to try and fly a triangle. First we fly south as that is where the thunderstorms seem to develop earlier. The cloud base is low at 4000 meter and we hop from ridge to ridge. By the time we get to the fourth ridge, the one that separates us from the kalash village, the clouds get to threatening and we turn around. We fly back to the launch area and top land in the hope that it may clear later in the afternoon. On the way we loose Dimitri but he lands safely back at the hotel. The remnants of the palace on the launch area are guarded by a young family. We get offered thee and chapatti and we try to understand each other talking with our hands and feet. The weather doesn’t clear and we decide to stay the night. Doors get unlocked and we enter the main room of what once was a substantial walled complex. Inside we find some epoch furniture, a fireplace and mirrors on the wall all covered with a thick layer of dust. We drink more thee, go for a walk up the ridge to stretch our legs and get served dinner at eight. Not a bad spot for a first paragliding bivi.
At night it rains and the wind howls around the buildings but in the morning the sky is clear. Dimitri comes up with the taxi and after a breakfast of thee and chapatti we are ready to launch at half past ten. The conditions are the same as yesterday but we start two hours earlier. We have the same flight plan and I don’t mess around this time. With the base at 4000 I don’t even top out the thermals and lead the way hopping from ridge to ridge. We lose Dimitri again but the three of us stay fairly close together and help each other along. The landscape is wild and at some stage in the flight as we squeeze over a little saddle in the ridge, the ground falls away and we look down sheer cliffs several hundred meters high. The clouds thicken again and by the time we fly over the kalash valley the sun is gone and at times we fly through light snow. I push my luck trying to get over one more ridge but arrive to low and get hit by the rotor. By the time I get back to the wind ward side of the valley Iv lost a lot of height and have to do some serious scratching to gain a few hundred meters. In the mean time Grey has been waiting near cloud base and decides to fly back to the main chitral valley. Mukrim didn’t get the last climb and is hugging the walls to get out to the main valley as well. This is the place we visited by car only a few days ago so we know the lay of the land. Once in the main valley the sun is back but there is a 15km wind that is scattering the thermals. Grey and I land at the same spot and as usual a crowd forms in no time. At first there is no English speakers but then a big pick-up truck pulls up with two engineers from the local marble mine. They are on their way to Chitral, so our return ride is secured. The ten steps to the truck was even less then the walk to the launch site this morning. Allah must be with us on this trip! The weather forecast is good for tomorrow, maybe it is going to be the big one…… PS uploading photos is taking to long
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