Along the Karakoram Highway

Pakistan today occupies the front and center the global media's attention. Pakistan is also on my mind. You see, for the past several months, my younger brother has been in Islamabad working for an international organization. I worry about him, but not excessively; we've lived through more dangerous times in Beirut of the early eighties. In one of those ironic twists of fate, twenty years ago, it was my father who was posted in Islamabad and worked in the same office complex where my brother now works.

During my father's tenure there, I visited several times and came know and like this complicated and troubled country. During one visit, I went on road trip in the company of an Argentinian photographer and Mustafa, an Argentine Sufi convert. We drove West to Peshawar, then teeming with Afghan refugees as well as plotters and schemers of all stripes. We continued to the North West Frontier province and the lovely Swat valley, now ground zero for the Taliban insurgency. It is in the Northern reaches of the Swat valley that you realize how complex this country is. All you have to do is look at the people passing you by to realize the multiplicity of distinctive features and distinctive clothes that mark the various ethnicities, tribes and sects that share this land at the crossroads of China, the Indian subcontinent, and central Asia.

But perhaps the most memorable journey was flying up North to Gilgit, at foothills of the Himalayan chain at the juncture of the Hindu Kush mountains and the Karakoram chain, and then driving the incredible Karokaram highway all the way to the border of China. Recently married , the trip was a gift from my parents to me and my wife.

The first inkling that this was no ordinary place was the view from the window of the PIA turboprop flying us from Islamabad to Gilgit. At cruising altitude, we were flying below the peaks of the mountains that surrounded us from all sides. After a night in Gilgit, the birthplace of polo, we set out on the Karkoram highway. The highway itself was an engineering feat that took fifteen year to complete and the combined efforts of Pakistani and Chinese engineers. It runs 848 Km to the border of China at the Khunjerab pass, the world's highest paved mountain pass at 4703 m. We head North in a jeep with open sides, on narrow roads often hugging deep precipices, across raging rivers on hanging bridges and with baited breath across rock slide zones. The Karokaram highway is notorious for rock slides. Upon emerging unscathed from a rock slide zone, a sign exclaims "Alhamdulilah". All fears, however, are quickly forgotten as the most stunning scenery unfolds in front of our eyes. The sheer scale of the place is breathtaking and the views otherworldly. You are surrounded, in all directions by peaks that are six and seven thousand meters high. The landscape goes from stark moonscapes to , within minutes around a bend in the road, lush green valleys with terraced gardens and orchards pregnant with apples, peaches and apricots spread amid humble villages; it is as if you'd died and gone to heaven.

The Hunza valley is one such place. We stopped for the night in the town Karimabad nestled on a rocky ridge across the valley from the mighty Rakaposhi mountain with its peak, at 7788 m, showing just above the clouds. We are the only customers at the Karimabad resthouse that evening. The family that runs it goes into a frenzy of activity when they learn that we haven't eaten and within an hour two huge platters of rice pilaf with chicken and meat materialize, enough to feed a family of ten.

The people of Hunza valley are predominantly Ismailis and are known for their peaceful demeanor. The also benefit from the generosity of the Agha Khan Foundation. Each humble village has a decent looking school and a medical clinic courtesy of the Foundation. We continued along the Karakoram highway for the next day encountering equally majestic scenes, past the Batura glacier and shortly before arriving to the Khunjerab pass, to the east, we glimpsed the mighty K2 at a distance, the worlds second highest peak at 8611 m, straddling the border of China in Pakistan. At the Khunjerab pass car and buses stopped and passengers descended inhaling the thin air and taking measure of the place. The pass, after all, sits astride of the old silk trade route travelled by Marco Polo in the 13th century but before him by the Chinese Monk, Fa Hien in the 4th century and the Iranian historian and scientist, Al Biruni in the 11th century.

Twenty years on, no other place we have visited measures up to what we saw along the Karakoram highway. And on the evening news, when Pakistan is reduced to a one-dimensional cutout about terrorism and extremism, I remember a very different Pakistan.

Photos by AK:

1. View from flight to Gilgit

2. Rakaposhi peak and Hunza valley

3. Karimabad

4. Chatting with the elders of Karimabad (I am in the blue T shirt)

5. Mountains around Gilgit

6. K2 top left of photograph