Do spread word around about this expedition. Salman Rashid is a fine writer and traveller. If anyone wants to contribute in any way do PM me, I have his e mail address.
Making the expedition go
By Salman Rashid
This will be an extraordinary journey – from Skardu to Yarkand in China after over a hundred years
There are in the Central Karakorum Mountains two passes called the Muztagh. Each one of them is some 18,600 feet high, and, both lying at the heads of vast glacial systems, they are completely snow and ice-bound. Now the Old or East Muztagh Pass lies at the head of the Muztagh Glacier, one of the several tributaries of the great Baltoro Glacier that flows down the south flanks of K-2. For unknown years, this pass was used by the people of Baltistan to travel between the Shigar valley of Baltistan and Yarkand in Chinese Turkistan.
About 1800, or shortly before, this route became unusable. At that time it was believed this was because of an excessive accumulation of ice and snow on the pass. In reality, however, it was because of a breaking up of the glacier that made travel over it difficult and dangerous. Be that as it may, it was imperative for the route to Yarkand to be kept open for there lived in that Central Asiatic city a community of Baltis who maintained their relationship with families and friends in our part of the world.
Consequently, Raja Ahmed Shah, the king of Skardu ordered for a new route to be reconnoitered. The result of this survey expedition shortly after the year 1800 was the opening of the West or New Muztagh Pass. Thereafter the Baltis and Yarkandis travelling to and fro began to use this new route.
Then came time for the surveyors and cartographers of the government of British India to go to work. And one after the other men poured into that remote region of the Himalaya, Karakorum and Hindu Kush region in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of that land unknown until then. One such was called Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen who spent the year 1860 clambering about the central Karakorum region.
One day in August that year he attempted to reach the summit of the West Muztagh Pass. A terrible blizzard thwarted him and as he waited for dinner in his camp at the foot of the pass that evening, he was surprised to see four Balti mountaineers emerge from the swirling fog. These doughty men, all natives of Shigar, had travelled the long and lonely road from Yarkand to meet with relatives at home. They held Godwin-Austen in thrall with their stories of a harrowing journey made always by night and hiding away by day in order to escape the rapacious Kunjootie brigands. These Kunjooties, incidentally, were the now completely civilised people of Hunza.
That was the last recorded (I repeat, recorded) crossing of the West Muztagh Pass. We do not know how long thereafter the pass continued to be traversed. But some time afterwards it too became disused: no one crossed its snowy saddle; none braved the blizzards that swept its slopes; none knew of the stark and cruel beauty of the mountains that guard its entrance. For all practical purposes the West Muztagh Pass became just another one of those remote and secluded places on the globe.
Now the number of such places has steadily decreased over the years. Falling to the human spirit of adventure, they have been conquered one by one until scarcely any remain. But Muztagh Pass has steadfastly held on to its status as a virtually unknown spot on the map.
That is the stuff that makes the dreams of all men, possessed and driven, who dream of high adventure in remote places. So too have I dreamt this dream for almost ten years. But to go exploring in the Muztagh Pass and to cross over into China was a major expedition and not a simple trek on any old glacier. But not given to delusion, I knew I could not handle such an expedition. I knew I needed a leader of men to form the expedition and lead it through to the very end.
I cast about in Lahore. There were aspiring young mountain-walkers aplenty. Ambitious and full of spunk they were, as my guru Shahid Zaidi says, doing it for the wrong reason. Nearly all of them sought the glare of public acclaim, and they wanted it in a hurry. There were few who laid any merit by the simple experience of an active way of life in one of the greatest wilderness the planet earth possesses. Fewer still who would recall the heroism of the Balti people who pioneered this difficult route in the early Middle Ages and wished to see the remnants of their camping sites.
On the last day of July 2001 as I was about to board the bus from Skardu, I saw this face regarding me from the window. We nodded to each other. The man’s shock of auburn hair led me to believe he was a Spaniard. During the tedious journey to Rawalpindi we got talking and the Spaniard transformed himself into a Swabi Yusufzai who teaches economics at the University of Peshawar. One of his companions who I had mistaken for a Japanese (with straight eyes) was in fact a Mansehra Awan, medical practitioner by training. The way I saw those foreigners in these faces does not say very much for my grasp on ethnology.
We talked during the journey and I thought Nasser Ali Khan was the man to lead the Muztagh Pass expedition whenever it would happen. But I did not say anything to him then. Early last year I asked him. He said yes and with him Naeem Awan came on board as well. They both have a good deal of mountain experience, are not driven to adventure for the sake of publicity and are firmly planted on the earth. Since the expedition entailed crossing over into China by an irregular route, we needed permissions and clearances. The process was begun in September (2002) and we have by now got somewhere in that respect.
The next hurdle, in fact, the major hurdle, was funds to make the expedition go. Nasser is a teacher, Naeem a doctor and I a writer with little money to spare for such an expedition. We could only envy the Duke of Abruzzi that blue-blooded Italian explorer of the early part of the 20th century who financed his own expeditions to the K-2 region and left behind a good deal of excellent photos and some cartography.
All such expeditions in the West are funded by business houses or geographical institutes. Since the latter in Pakistan are always struggling to pay their staff’s salaries, they can hardly be expected to assist three madmen bent on an adventure to an area most Pakistanis do not even know exists. As for the corporate world, I thought that would be a cinch. Friend Masood Hasan who heads an advertising firm offered help. He thought the nearly Rs. 600,000 we were requesting would come from a single sponsor. How he was mistaken!
Two weeks after he had sent of the proposal to several of his clients he had heard nothing – not even an acknowledgment of receiving the paper. He telephoned and his calls were not returned: the corporate world was busy cutting each others throats over the spring festival. It is one thing to have their company logo flashed across the city or on television screens, entirely another to put it on a few tents that will be pitched on Shinchakpi Brangsa on the Panmah Glacier where no one will see them. So what if a bunch of lunatics will then come back and hold a press conference, a travelling photo exhibition, do a round of lectures around the country and even write a book about the expedition and thank the sponsor. Who reads books anyway in this blessed country.
The only thing that came out of his efforts was that we were pledged, as a loan, one Olympus IS 5000 Zoom Lens Reflex camera together with 30 rolls of whichever film I wished. That was a great beginning, but still a long way from the nearly 600,000 rupees needed to finance the expedition. Days slipped by and nothing else came. In disgust Masood wrote his weekly column about our expedition entitling it ‘Lost causes’.
Published in The News on the second day of February, it was not an inappropriate name. He enumerate how we ‘silly men’ wanted to do this expedition that will surely one day be done by a bunch of mad dog Englishmen who have been liberally funded by some well-meaning business house. But not us. Here people with money would rather fund kebabs on Food Street. But never an expedition or a book.
It wasn’t so bad, actually. We soon received pledges amounting to Rs 100,000 in total. From the other perspective we were still poorer by no less than Rs 450,000. And so here we are with exactly three months before we should set out of Skardu to raise the rest of the money, organise the food and equipment, muster the necessary porters and point ourselves in the direction of Yarkand.
Years ago the national carrier became the first airline to fly into Communist China, until then closed to the outside world. It was billed as a great ‘first’. Now the crossing of the Muztagh Pass, abandoned for over a 100 years, could be the next Pakistani ‘first’: to enter friendly China by an historical route. Nasser Khan can lead Naeem and me and our team of porters in this endeavour if the funds are in place by the beginning of April. If we miss the spring deadline and blunder into the glaciers in high summer, we are bound to be faced with blizzards that could seriously jeopardise the expedition. The expedition has to be placed at the foot of the Muztagh Pass by the middle of June.
But if we fail to raise the money and thereby are unable to mount the expedition, sooner than later some team of European mountaineers will steal this laurel from Pakistan. And for want of a paltry sum of money. What shall it be then?