Shimshal Valley and other magical places
Elizabeth, Lauren's longtime friend from the time when she and Tamur, her husband, worked in Islamabad, tried to tell 'us' ...the group...about Shimshal Valley off the Karakorum Highway, almost to the Chinese border before we ventured there, but, at least for me, her remonstrations about not providing enough time for Shimshal didn't sink in.
I was too taken by the village of Karimabad on the western side and Nagar on the eastern side of the Indus River, Rakaposhi Mountain, and the Princess spire that loomed far overhead of our soon-to-be-removed, unique, tent rooms imported from Tanzania and installed in the Serena Inn, Hunza Valley, Northern Area, Pakistan.
We were poised there biding time while I recovered from stomach upset. Instead of camping in Fairy Meadows at 10,000 feet, we were 'glamping' ...glamourous camping...as Nyal described it, in the Serena Inn.
The people in Karimabad are mostly Ismaili...a sect of Shia Islam in which the Aga Khan is seen as a direct descendant of Muhammad... The Aga Khan Foundation is a principal owner of the Serena hotel chain just to illustrate the close association between the secular and the religious.
We...the 'group'...Lauren strong, fun, attentive to an elderly father, Tatiana vigorous, intrepid, good-humored, Nyal adventurous, vital, encouraging, Elizabeth wonder woman, and I...hanger-on...spent time with Ejazullah Baig, the curator of the ancient Balti Fort in Karimabad who told us of raising a golden eagle from an abandoned male chick and then freeing him to the wild. The eagle appeared to listen to Ejaz as he talked and when very young would return to his perch after being allowed to soar freely in the Hunza valley.
At the end of our trip, we had a last evening supper at 'Wild Thyme', Elizabeth's restaurant in Islamabad which specializes in Hunza Valley-inspired mountain food. A guest, Christian, the head of the Swiss aid development contingent in Pakistan, related to us that in his previous post in Mongolia he had met the 13-year-old 'Eagle Huntress' heroine of a documentary about training eagles. I was reminded of the book of Steve Bodio's...an American author who lives in Magdalena, New Mexico... 'Eagle Dreams' about the Mongolian tradition of hunting with eagles.
Lauren met Ejaz in 1986 when she was studying Urdu in Pakistan. He was 14. In addition to curating he is also a 'healer'. As soon as I got over jet lag after arriving in Pakistan, we biked from Charrapani, the home of the Mueenuddin family in the Murree Hills north of Islamabad, to their small house on Khanpur Dam Lake.
Tatiana, Lauren, and Nyal were strong on the hills and in the rain. I rode a good part of the way in the following...sag wagon...Land Cruisers...the hills were steep and the roadway slick during the heavy rain....what can I say?
We spent the night in the 'Lake' house. It's a little jewel, and I applaud the creativity of Tamur's design and construction... it's unique...look at the image below.
While at the lake, we visited, via a small tourist boat that miraculously appeared at the foot of the property, the Bhamala Stupa, the location of the oldest known statue of Buddha attaining enlightenment.
I, unfortunately, ate pakoras...from a street food vendor ...on the way to the Lake and came down with stomach trouble two days later, by which time, we had arrived in the Hunza Valley from Islamabad. Ejaz prescribed Serpentine Stone grains dissolved in water plus provided a script written in a special ink that I was to roll up and place in water until the ink dissolved to form an elixir.
In addition, just in case, Lauren contacted a local doctor and asked Tamur, in Paris, to consult with him by phone. I consulted my son, Chris, in the US. All agreed that Dr. Ayaz should prescribe an antibiotic and the next day I was well...who knows what contribution turned the trick... time, serpentine stone, the elixir, the antibiotic.
Best viewed on a laptop or desktop..not a phone..although it's possible...just a little awkward. Hover the mouse pointer over the images to see the captions.. Click to enlarge. The images open in another 'tab' but each image page has an 'X' icon which when clicked returns to the original page ..use it rather than the back arrow of the browser. Once in the image gallery, there are navigation arrows that enable moving through all the images. Clicking a 'link' opens a page in another tab. That linked page will not have a return so you must return to the base page yourself.
Ali Muhammad joined us in the Hunza Valley. Elizabeth says she will not venture off the road in the valley without Ali to guide her. He has been with Elizabeth over the years and she has sent him many clients. He gained my allegiance by immediately cutting me a 'local stick' ...a walking stick...from a willow tree... on our first venture into the mountains.
I missed Fairy Meadows...but Nyal and Tati made it...Lauren hung back with me ...I still had stomach issues...and Elizabeth. Ali suggested to me that in the future, I eat an onion grown locally as a prophylactic. I know that many travelers take Cipro in advance. I like the onion option.
Ali accompanied Tatiana and Nyal up to the mountain. They said it was special. Nanga Parbat ..second highest peak after K-2...right in your face across a beautiful, grassy, green valley.
Ali, later in the trip, honored us by inviting the 'group' to his home in Nagar. We met his wider family. ..wife, mother, brothers, daughters, sons, nieces, nephews. Elizabeth remarked that in all the years, this was the first time Ali had invited her to his home.
Ali also told me while riding up into the mountains that Toyota Land Cruisers...$60K cars in the US...like the one we were in... could be bought cheaply in the Hunza Valley. He said that they are smuggled in from Afghanistan in baskets after being chopped up into pieces to avoid customs. In Hunza, they are welded back together and sold. I think some aspects of this story may be apocryphal.
The next several days in Karimabad, after coffee and an omelet in front of the tent cabin overlooking the Hunza valley and Rokaposhi mountain in the distance, we drove up into the mountains on the Nagar side and rode the bikes downhill into the villages on the river....Tati, Lauren, Elizabeth, even Ali, and Nyal...especially Nyal, were strong...
We walked the waterways above Karimabad, we trekked up to the Passu Glacier and then in the afternoon, Elizabeth shooed us into the cars because "we don't want to be on the jeep track after dark" and then we entered the valley to the Shimshal villages.
To appreciate the unbelievableness and remoteness of Shimshal Valley, a little plate tectonics and glacier geology is in order. Expand the image below of the globe and note that a huge piece of the Gondwana supercontinent around the south pole broke off a 'few' years ago...a small piece became Madagascar, a bigger piece moved east to become Australia, and a huge chunk migrated north and submerged under the South Asian landmass pushing up the earth to form the Karakorum and Himalaya Mountains.
Then the glaciers carved the valleys. Look at the satellite image to see how remote and glacier bound Shimshal is.
The consequence of all the ancient goings-on is fairyland stuff. Entering the Shimshal River valley brought to my mind Shangri-la...a mythical place described in the novel 'Lost Horizons' that was popular in my youth.
Until 2003, the only access to the Shimshal valley villages was by foot... 3 days over ~60 km. The Shimshal people completed in 2003 a jeep road that was started in 1985. The gorge formed by the river of glacier melt is so steep and tight that if two vehicles were to meet each other, it's not clear how many km one would have to back up in reverse because there are no turnarounds or laybys.
Neither Lauren nor I were prepared for the length of the drive nor the treacherousness of the road. We were fearful and at the same time in awe. Later, Elizabeth asked me if I had known the arduousness of the trip in advance would I have agreed to make it.
I said that I may have backed out and, in retrospect, that decision would have been a huge mistake.
I'm so glad it worked out. And thank goodness for the expertise of the two drivers....and the absence of landslides.
At long last, after precipitous turns at 10miles/hour, the gorge widened and behold before us was a pristine valley in which 4 villages: Farmanabad, Aminabad, center Shimshal and Khizarabad... and maybe 2500 people... nestled among green fields of wheat dissected by rock walls, lined by glacier-fed waterways, bounded on the horizon by gray-brown mountains, which were topped by snow-covered peaks that closed the valley to all except climbers who can manage 6000 meter passes.
The valley was within the kingdom of a Hunza Mir until 1974 when Zulfiqar Bhutto, Prime Minister, abolished Pakistan's last remaining princely kingdoms.
Tamur's father was a senior civil servant when Bhutto was a senior minister; by the time Bhutto was asked in as PM, his father had retired. Tamur's father and Bhutto despised one another, and Bhutto tried to have his father killed but failed by a fluke occurrence. His father believed Bhutto to be one of the most evil men he had ever met.
Before his retirement, 'Mueen' also headed the Pakistani mission to the Water conference with India in Washington, DC. During his sojourn in Washington over two years in the early 50s, he met Tamur's mother, then a reporter with the Washington Post. She, coincidentally, lived with a family friend on Dent Place in Georgetown one street north of our house.
But the valley might just as well be named 'Elizabeth-ville'. The first person we encountered on the road into the first village peered into the car and smiled, and waved and called out Elizabeth's name. We stopped and he welcomed her like a heroine. He was a Shimshali who accompanied climbing expeditions. He had climbed K-2 ...considered much more difficult to conquer than Mt. Everest in Nepal.
And then, upon demand from us all, Elizabeth's story emerged: Early after her arrival in Pakistan in 2001, she had to have a titanium plate implanted in her back and she was prescribed a walking regime to rehabilitate. She grew strong and took up cycling and trekking, and finally organized a climb of Golden Peak.
A cook on the expedition from Shimshal Valley urged her to visit his village. She was motivated by his enthusiasm and thus became the first and so far, only, woman to drive the newly completed jeep track into Shimshal Valley.
She adopted the valley, invested her own money, organized a small NGO, devised a stove to vent smoke from Yak dung burnt in stone shepherd's huts by women and children during the summer pasturing months for warmth and cooking while tending the animal herds in the high alpine meadows above the valley. The woman suffered from high rates of tuberculosis, but the incidence declined immediately after stoves were put to use.
She helped improve water sanitation and organized sports clubs for the youth of the valley. More recently, she and her husband Micheal walked the entire route over two days from the Karakoram into the valley.
And she had gained the respect and confidence of the villagers...no mean feat for an outsider in a very insular community.
Elizabeth introduced us to the family with whom she stayed while working in the valley. She visited the valley tens of times, each time managing that forbidding route. Her family invited us for a meal of chapati and yak butter...an unusual honor for outsiders, but really more a gesture to acknowledge to her friends that Elizabeth was held in great esteem.
Elizabeth practiced in her work a version of Nomus, a Shimshal language, Wakhi, word that can be translated as ‘showing concern for humanity’. It denotes a unique system of social philanthropy – and an integral part of Shimshali society.
Essentially, it’s a system in which the wealthier members of the community sponsor a building project like a bridge, trail or wall by providing resources, food and/or their own labor to honor a relative’s memory (whether they are alive or dead) and to generate blessings of God...If a person has donated his wealth for the benefit of all, in turn, people will look after and guard his property.
I was fascinated to learn about the 'economy' of the valley...how did the villagers earn money to buy things from the outside now that it was accessible...even supremely arduously?
Obviously, the valley had engaged in subsistence farming and livestock husbandry for centuries. I was told that each family had land...no one depended on renting their labor for a living...so terraced rich 'bottom land'...that is, land enriched by the silt from the river...enabled wheat and potatoes and fruit trees to flourish. I amused myself before going to sleep by imagining how a potato 'eye' ..the part planted...got from Peru, where potatoes are indigenous, to Shimshal Valley.
We visited a stone housed wheat mill in which glacier meltwater funneled by a waterway turned a wooden paddle wheel, in turn, powering a large donut-shaped stone to turn against a stationary one to grind wheat.
The apparatus has a jiggle spout...the rough stone as it turned jiggled a small funnel-shaped piece of wood so that the wheat grains fed into the donut hole of the stone evenly from the large container of raw wheat kernels separated from the chaff by throwing the cut grain stalks into the air with a rake.
I learned that the valley sold products of the Yak...butter and meat...but in addition earned money from tourists, and from serving as guides and bearers for mountain expeditions, and from selling licenses to hunt the beautiful 'Marco Polo' sheep...endangered but still in existence in the high mountains of the valley.
The Shimshalis developed a scheme by which the money earned from tourists and hunting was shared among the families.
I was struck how close to a true communitarian society they had created in their isolation from the rest of the world.
I share with Elizabeth a certain sadness for the passing of an era. The Shimshalis are now becoming integrated with the outside world after a thousand years, at least, of almost total isolation.....life is still difficult, but made easier by technology...a cell tower with satellite backhaul, household solar energy, a hydroelectricity generating plant.
And, yes, the signs of western influence are there...a little girl with a New York Yankees sweatshirt...made in China.., a teenager wearing his baseball cap backward, satellite TV dishes, a few motorbikes otherwise ubiquitous in Pakistan, even a Massey Ferguson tractor airlifted by the Pakistani army by helicopter.
The juxtaposition of old and ancient and modern is jarring.
On the way out of the valley, Lauren, Elizabeth, and Nyal rode the bikes on the last 30km...Tati and I stayed in the Land Cruisers. I was happy following along behind watching them have fun.
So, as the old expression goes: "I wouldn't take anything for this trip."
The opportunity to be hosted by Nyal, Tatiana, and Lauren and to meet and travel with Elizabeth, to feel secure under the guidance of Ali, to be confident on the road in the hands of Siraj and Waseem make this trip the 'greatest.'
Thank them all.
