There is a sense of real joy as the music and dancing goes on. The songs and the style of playing are improvisations on music that has been part of this isolated culture for centuries. Once small groups like these forget, it may disappear altogether.
Which explains the intensity of Siraj’s pleasure as he listens, his description of the songs and the music as being ‘locked in the mountains’, and the infectious magical warmth that banishes my worst memories of things folklorique.
Day Thirteen : Chitral to Mastuj
On the road again. I have a different jeep, and a different driver. Raza Khan is younger and less earnest than Nadir Begh. Whereas Nadir used to comb his hair every time we did a shot, even if we were a tiny speck on a mountain panorama, Raza is a little more relaxed and wears a baseball cap, reversed. He’s a Chitrali and everyone we meet on the road seems to be either an intimate friend of his or a member of his family.
Long before they were Chitralis, the inhabitants of these mountain areas were collectively known as the Kho, and I’ve acquired a modest, locally printed guide book that has a glossary of words in the language they still speak here, known as Khowar. It’s pleasingly phonetic and in between gasping with awe at the scenery I try out a few words on Raza. Father is tut, mother is nun, grandfather is bap, grandmother is wow and foot is pong. This is the sort of language I like.
There is a page of Miscellaneous Phrases, which is short but has an interesting theme. ‘Have you a wife?’, ‘Do you love your wife?’, ‘Is it late?’, ‘At what time shall we start?’, ‘Well done’, ‘Thank you’, ‘Don’t go naked’, ‘There is a pain in my leg’ and ‘When will you come back?’ It conjures up images of a lusty life in the mountains.
We climb slowly up the valley, the river rushing past us at great speed, huffing and puffing and occasionally leaping ostentatiously into the air as if trying to attract our attention.
As the road deteriorates the mountains grow more spectacular and quite suddenly we turn onto a flat saddle of land to be confronted by the dazzling white bulk of a massif called Buni Zum, 21,000 feet (6400 m) high, trailing glaciers and massive hanging slabs of snow. It provides a backdrop for a huge cricket match being played among the rocks, with dozens of boys fielding over a vast area.
We spend the night in the grounds of a crumbling, but still dignified fort, which commands the confluence of two rivers at the town of Mastuj. Another Ul-Mulk family house, given to them by the British in 1913 as thanks for their loyalty, it’s currently run by Siraj’s father Khushwaqt, a dapper, bright-eyed man who has just celebrated his 90th birthday, and who everyone knows as the Colonel. Hoping to attract tourists, they have built some handsome wood cabins around the perimeter of a luxurious greensward beside the fort, the sort of flat open ground where you can imagine tournaments taking place. Unfortunately, the builders have done a runner and all that’s working are the bathroom fittings. So we sleep outside in tents and clamber into the empty buildings for a shower. Very odd.
I’m kept from deep sleep by an unlikely combination of cold wind and apricots. The window panel flaps of my tent don’t zip up and the night breeze freshens to a chilly blow that provokes a gentle deluge of apricots dropping off the trees, bouncing onto the tin roofs of the unfinished chalets, rolling down the corrugated iron in interesting ways and plopping onto the roof of my tent.
Day Fifteen : From Mastuj Fort to the Shandur Pass
Three hours of dogged mountain driving out of Mastuj, our convoy is climbing out of the last cultivated valley, which now lies far below us, tucked into the massive rubble-strewn flanks of mountainside like a fig leaf on a grey marble statue. With a last heave of the gears we push through 12,000 feet (3650 m) and soon level out onto a grassy plateau with a blue lake spread along its length and saw-tooth mountains surrounding it. We’ve reached the Shandur Pass, the watershed between the valleys of Chitral in the Hindu Kush and Gilgit in the Karakoram.
Although the three-day festival doesn’t begin till tomorrow, this normally desolate and lonely place is beginning to resemble a small town. Vehicles raise clouds of dust as they arrive on the plateau laden with people, food, bedding and tents. As many as 10,000 are expected for the big polo game and shops and businesses from the surrounding villages have moved up here to supply them.
Cafes are opening, offering the obligatory karaoke, stalls are selling rugs and blankets, generators are coughing into life, and special prayer areas are being marked out with stones.
A yak has just been slaughtered at an improvised butcher’s shop, its throat cut with a foot-long curved knife. The severed head lies in a nearby stream, creamy-white innards spread out on a boulder. Customers are already queuing up to buy the cuts of meat, hanging from a horizontal wooden pole, a washing-line of flesh.
Our accommodation is in a small encampment conveniently close to the polo ground and next door to the Chitral team quarters, where I meet up again with Sikander Ul-Mulk.
The word is not good. One of the best horses they have has been hurt in training and another is lame after being hit by a ball in a practice game. News from the Gilgit team is of ominous confidence.
It might be something to do with altitude but by ten o’clock I’m blissfully tired and ready for bed. No sooner have I wriggled into the foetal warmth of my sleeping bag than the whole site explodes with noise. A thumping of drums, a squeaking of pipes, clapping, cheering and general encouragement fills the night air. When the party ends I’m aware of how bitterly cold it is. As the night goes on my tent seems to attract an icy chill and I have a short but powerful nightmare based on the scene in The Long Good Friday where recalcitrant gang members are strung from hooks in a cold store.
Day Sixteen : The Shandur Pass
A beautiful morning. The clear skies that made the night so cold are china blue and an unblinking sun shines down, mocking my night’s misery.
There are three big polo games over the next three days. The two villages nearest the pass, Laspur on the Chitral side and Ghiza on the Gilgit side, play each other today. Tomorrow is the turn of the Chitral and Gilgit ‘B’ teams, and the final day is the big match between the ‘A’ sides.
The Laspur team is camped, modestly, a mile or so back towards the pass. With only an hour to go before the game, supporters are still arriving, many of them walking up the long steep road from the village. Before they leave for the ground each player seeks the blessing of the elders of the village. Meanwhile, their supporters sit around listening to music. Various men (there are no women to be seen) are moved to dance. One of them moves particularly gracefully. My guide whispers in my ear.
‘He is Taliban.’
During a break in the dancing there is an address from a man in a dirty shalwar-kameez, with a stick, a pack and leathery, sun-scorched features. Whether he intends to look like the classic yokel or not I don’t know, but it’s clear from the way the audience listens that he is a star, and a comedy star at that. My guide tries to translate but the laughs come so thick and fast that he has trouble keeping up.
It’s all good anti-government stuff. According to my guide, it’s a popular grouse on both sides of the pass that the government praises the spirit of the mountain communities but fails to put any money their way.
Like any good comedian his eyes flick round the audience, and pretty soon alight on me. To gales of laughter he tells me that his people pray constantly for the restoration of British rule and he asks me to tell the Queen that if she gives them each a thousand rupees she can have their village back.