Progress seems positively jaunty for a few miles. Then the walls of the gorge close in and the eating of the jeeps begins as we grind along, clinging to the roller-coaster track above the Indus, at one moment rising so high above the river that we can no longer hear its roar, at the next plunging to within range of its wind-tossed spray, and all the time bumping and juddering over half-cleared piles of rubble that fling me from side to side like someone in the terminal throes of fever.
The existence of a road at all in this desperately confined space is something of a miracle. It seems to be maintained by the army, and the different companies of engineers have their names engraved on a rock at the end of each section. A camouflaged vehicle comes at us round a tight bend and as we go through the elaborate ritual of manoeuvring past each other I notice the slogan on the side of its cab. ‘Pakistan Army. Men At Their Best.’
At Skardu, the hyperactive River Indus, which has been leaping and writhing past us for most of the day, flattens out into a wide alluvial lagoon.
We find ourselves in a very singular hotel where the lights don’t always work but the waiters wear white gloves to serve dinner.
It’s called Shangri La.
Day Twenty One : Skardu to Concordia
There’s a crashed DC-3 just outside my room. Apparently, it came down after take-off at Skardu 49 years ago and, spotting an opportunity, the owner of the Shangri La Resort bought it, rolled it into the gardens, took off the wings, fitted some tables and turned it into a cafe.
Contradictions are apparent again this morning. The gardens are tended with obsessive efficiency, each blade of grass individually manicured by a dedicated, well-equipped team, yet the breakfast is a very sad affair, with toast so pale and limp that we re-christen the wicker container it comes in the laundry basket.
Such trivial preoccupations are soon behind us as we assemble at the air base for a briefing on today’s flight up into the high mountains. The message here is macho, and our two pilots are from a team called ‘The Fearless Five, M-17 pilots’.
I should imagine fearlessness is an asset if you have to fly M-17s. They’re heavy-duty Russian supply helicopters, the very embodiment of brawn before beauty. We fan out along bench seats running around the side of the cabin. It’s unpressurized and, as we’re going up beyond 15,000 feet (4570 m), we’ve been warned that for the first time since we’ve been in Pakistan we may get really cold.
The helicopter roars into the air, and once in the air the roar is augmented by various rattles and groans. Communication is only possible by shouting into the ear from point blank range.
Below us, the green fields become sparse and scattered and eventually disappear altogether as we enter the valleys that lead to Concordia. What is for us a 90-minute flight would be an eight-day trek on the ground.
The mountains close in. Steep slopes and jagged summits rise above us, the clatter of the engines echoes back off the rocks and the M-17 that looked so bulky and secure on the ground seems suddenly small and vulnerable. At 11,000 feet (3350 m) the pen I’m making notes with explodes, spattering ink around like a nosebleed.
We’re now over the imperceptibly moving tongue of the Baltoro glacier, not romantically blue and white but covered with a grey patina of dust and debris and dotted with lurid green pools where the snow and ice crust has collapsed.
Then all at once we’re flying clear of the grey constraints of the canyons and out into crystal clear sunshine and over an ice plateau of staggering beauty, with razor-sharp peaks surrounding the confluence of the Baltoro and Godwin-Austen glaciers. A tricky landing. The crew are put off first, as they need to be on the ground to shoot me emerging. We pirouette up into the air and once again circle this astonishingly beautiful coming together of ice, snow and mighty mountain peaks. As they attempt the landing a second time no-one bothers to lower the steps, so I spill out of the plane with as much dignity as I can muster and run, fast and low, away from the rotors and towards the camera. My feet strike a soft patch and I plunge forward, headfirst into snow alarmingly deeper than anything I expected.
We know we have only a few minutes to shoot before the helicopter returns and yet the best full frontal view of K2 is almost half a mile away. Led by two army guides, who are actually stationed up here, we make our way through the snow. We try to hurry but it’s hopeless, as the surface is melting in the sun. Every now and then people ahead of me drop down to their waist as if a trap door had opened beneath them.
I can’t quite believe that all this is really happening. That I’m struggling in slapstick fashion through six feet of snow in a country where the average daytime temperatures have been around 40degC (104degF). That, only five hours after drinking a cup of coffee in a crashed DC-3, I should be a mere five miles from the second highest peak on earth, half a dozen miles from the Chinese border and 13 miles from where heavily armed Pakistani and Indian troops are eye-balling each other on the Line of Control.
The reward for all our efforts is an uninterrupted view of K2, standing with symmetrical grandeur to the northwest, straddling the Chinese border. Not a wisp of cloud obscures the summit, which I know has tempted many to risk, and in some cases give their lives on a mountain much harder and crueller than Everest.
I feel hugely lucky to be here at Concordia, even if we have done it the easy way. And the helicopter doesn’t return for almost an hour, giving us time to take it all in, and, very slightly, to panic.
Day Twenty Three : Islamabad
The mountains where we’ve spent the last two weeks seem a distant memory. Everything is so different down here on the plain. And Islamabad is different again. Nothing stood here 45 years ago, when it was chosen to be Pakistan’s new capital, replacing the original capital Karachi, which, 1550 miles (2480 km) away to the south, was considered to be too remote from the heart of the country. Now nearly a million people live here.
The crowds and turbulence we experienced in Peshawar’s densely packed bazaars are absent. Islamabad is formal, with long wide avenues and comfortable residential houses laid out in numbered sectors. Instead of Storyteller Street, a typical address in Islamabad might be House 3, Street 18, H-8.
This experiment in New World orderliness has been remarkably successful. Its position certainly helps, on the border between the North-West Frontier and the Punjab, as does the presence of the ministries. Each with their competing landmark buildings, the grandiose Prime Minister’s Secretariat in Neo-Mughal style, the Revenue Buildings in American Modern, and the Supreme Court in a mixture of both, they give Islamabad a sort of official liveliness.
It isn’t a city to tempt you out for a stroll. That’s not how it works. If you’re staying in the Marriot the city comes to you, and our lobby is full of delegations, advisers, journalists, educationalists, air-con salesmen, arms dealers and anyone else wanting the ear of the government.
Islamabad is also home to one of Pakistan’s national heroes, a cricketer who led his side to a never-to-be forgotten World Cup victory, founded a cancer hospital in memory of his mother, but failed to work his magic in the world of politics. His name is Imran Khan and his PTI, anti-corruption party has only one seat in the National Assembly, his own. It’s said that the reasons why he picked up so few votes were that those he attracted were below the voting age of 21, and those he alienated, like the landowners, remain very powerful.
In today’s morning paper, however, a disillusioned former colleague of Imran is more severe. He blames Imran’s dictatorial tendencies. ‘This is not cricket, this is politics. And Imran has never understood that fact.’
We turned up at an unostentatious detached house in a leafy street whose name I forget, but it might have been 14.