Himalaya (2004)

by Michael Palin

  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.

  Meanwhile, the players are emerging from a team talk and are getting ready to mount their horses. In their red jerseys, white pakol hats, red knee pads and black boots they stand out like mediaeval knights among the rough and ready dress of the villagers. The captain, a wiry middle-aged man wearing dark glasses, caresses his horse’s head and talks soothingly into its ear.

  A fiercely fought game sees Laspur coming in to win an 8-7 victory. The crowd pour onto the pitch and no-one tries to stop them. The quiet, rather studious figure I saw whispering soothing confidences to his horse two hours ago is the hero of the day, flung up onto the shoulders of rapturous supporters. First blood to the Chitral Valley. Hopefully, it will be a good omen.

  Day Seventeen : The Shandur Pass

  I’ve acquired a thick Chinese blanket from the temporary shopping mall up here on the pass and though my tent remains an ice-box, I actually slept last night, after an unpromising start when I was kept awake, not by drums and pipes but by someone being very funny near my tent. I couldn’t tell whether it was Urdu or Pashto they were speaking, but it didn’t really matter. His total control of the audience was wonderfully infectious and I lay curled up in my many layers of thermals, shirts, sweaters and fleeces, giggling away, without understanding a word.

  More people have arrived overnight and our encampment is now part of a growing community. Figures are scattered among the grassy boulders, cleaning teeth, scrubbing feet and washing faces in bowls of water heated on a brushwood fire, which Maboub, who is in charge of these matters, has to keep continually tended, as thinner air at this height make things harder to burn. In the kitchen tent, where a violent gas fire looks like an accident waiting to happen, Zahoor, the chef, produces scrambled eggs, fried potatoes and even porridge for our breakfast.

  At the far end of the valley, away from the hustle and bustle of the ever-expanding encampment, the ‘A’ teams are out beside the lake practising shots, gallops, passes and tight-reined turns. Both sides exercise together in the cool of early morning, then return to their separate camps.

  Gilgit’s team is drawn entirely from the ranks of police and army. They’re well-drilled, organized, efficient but institutional. Their captain, Bulbul Jan, is a tall middle-aged man with neat, short hair and the modest, kindly manner of an avuncular schoolmaster. Hard to believe as he talks softly to us that he is one half of the most successful combination in free-style polo. The other is his tall, black Punjabi stallion, Truc.

  Bulbul is 55 and his horse is 21. Together they have played in 15 of these matches and have led Gilgit to victory for the last two years, proving that despite the Herculean efforts required of them up here on the plateau, guile and experience still count as much as youth and strength. Bulbul claims that Truc can tell him, within 24 hours of a game, just how things will work out.

  ‘So what about your chances tomorrow?’

  Truc bares his teeth and rears his head away, clearly impatient to end the interview.

  ‘Truc is in a very good mood,’ pronounces Bulbul Jan.

  Chitral come across as the gentlemen amateurs, with an altogether more happy-go-lucky approach to their polo, but the mood at the camp today is subdued. Gilgit won the ‘B’ game this morning, though one of their horses collapsed and died of a heart attack at the end of the first chukka. Neither side wants this to happen, and Sikander admits that this is only one of several such deaths over the last few years, grim reminders of the demands of such a phys
ical game at such a high altitude.

  He concedes that Gilgit’s ‘A’ team are the favourites. They are unchanged from last year, and unlike Chitral’s series of misfortunes, have had no casualties among their horses. I ask about the rumours I’ve heard about black magic and spells being put on the teams.

  He shrugs.

  ‘I never used to believe it, but now since everyone does, I’ve also started believing it.’

  ‘You think it’s more than just coincidence?’

  He nods.

  ‘More, yes, more than coincidence.’

  He thinks the only possible advantage for Chitral is that they have Afghan horses, tough and strong after apprenticeships carrying men and goods over the high border passes.

  I ask what it will be like if they should lose tomorrow.

  ‘Terrible. Terrible.’

  He laughs, a little desperately.

  ‘We try to go back in the dark. We pack up, get ready and leave at night.’

  ‘Do they forgive quickly in Chitral?’

  Sikander Ul-Mulk pauses, then shakes his head philosophically.

  ‘It takes about a month or two.’

  Day Eighteen : The Shandur Pass

  The weather is perfect.

  A crowd, estimated at around 15,000, has gathered at the ground well in advance of the game. Apart from a VIP area on top of the main stand, the accommodation is basic, ranging from purpose-built concrete terraces to standing room on the various low mounds of glacial debris that enclose the playing area. One of these, with perhaps the least good view, is reserved for women.

  The six players of each side parade onto the pitch, Chitral in scarlet, Gilgit in blue and white. Protection is optional. None of the Gilgit side wears protective headgear, whereas three of the Chitralis have helmets and one wears a pakul.

  I’m squeezed into one of the terraces. There are no seats and we just settle ourselves as best we can on mud and stones. My eyes meet those of a policeman with riot helmet, night stick and dark glasses, sitting at the end of our row. He pulls on a cigarette and turns away. Above us is a line of brightly coloured kites, strung together, stretching right across the ground. (I later learn that there are 105 of them, thus winning, for a Doctor Ejazul Haq of Islamabad, the world record for the number of kites ‘aired on a single thread’.)

  Silence falls as a prayer is read out from the Koran. The horses canter forwards to the centre-line to receive the ball. Bulbul Jan, bareheaded, looks every bit the midfield general, effortlessly in control at the centre of his team. Truc, less effortlessly in control, is the first to fertilize the pitch.

  I don’t blame him. If I was facing 50 minutes of constant running, sudden sprints, balls flying about and full-speed charges towards two-foot-high stone walls, I’d have probably done the same. In free-style polo the player is as much fair game as the ball and deliberate obstruction with either horse or mallet is a great skill. Nor are the horses and players the only ones taking risks. Mallets are dropped or broken with considerable frequency and stable boys take terrible risks rushing into the fray with replacements.

  The game is non-stop, fast and even.

  Predictably, Gilgit score first with Bulbul pushing in an easy goal after a furious build-up. He now gets to restart the game with a tapokh, which is very good to watch. The goal scorer races up the field at full gallop, holding both the ball and the mallet in the same hand, then, still with one hand only, releases the ball and strikes it ahead of him. It’s often missed or half hit, but the apricot-wood hammer of Bulbul’s stick meets the ball head on. It soars up the other end, bounces past the goal and is thrown back into play by a spectator, this keeping any interruption to the flow of play to a minimum. Maqbool pulls a goal back for Chitral and they go into the break unexpectedly level.

  After a long interval display of ceremonial dancing, all hands and arms turning and twisting gracefully, the players are back on the pitch and a repeat of the first half is played out in the first few minutes. A Gilgit goal, then a Chitral equalizer. As a well-informed spectator next to me says it’s now all about the stamina of the horses.

  Gilgit’s powerful ponies begin to outrun Chitral, racing after the long ball with breathtaking speed. Two more Gilgit goals, then Bulbul Jan and the ageing Truc first set up a superb through pass for the fifth goal before running in the next one themselves. 6-2.

  The Chitral supporters simply disappear at this point, streaming off the mounds and emptying the stands. Their departing cars send up columns of dust that blow over the ground as if bringing down a final curtain over their team’s efforts.

  The departure of these fair-weather supporters seems, perversely, to spur on the Chitral team and they pull back two goals in an unexpectedly nail-biting finish.

  Gilgit have made it a hat trick of wins and won best player award. For Chitral there is the consolation of Best Horse, won by a tireless grey called Computer, and not much else but a night-time skulk back down the mountain.

  I’m sure someone somewhere will claim it’s been a victory for black magic.

  Day Nineteen : The Karakoram Highway

  The view from my hotel window in Gilgit is an exercise in contrasts. Immediately outside is a carefully tended rose garden, of the sort you might see in a Best Kept Village in the Cotswolds. A half mile further away, this tidy view swells into a stupendous wall of mountain scenery, rising from the muddy cliffs carved out by the River Gilgit.

  Soon we’re running north, deeper into these mountains, along the road that bears their name - the Karakoram Highway, also known as the Eighth Wonder of the World.

  A collaboration between the Chinese and the Pakistanis, the road winds 800 formidable and majestic miles, from Kashgar in western China almost to the Pakistan capital, Islamabad. It first took traffic in 1978 after 20 years of construction. Considering the obstacles in its course - some of the highest and least stable mountains in the world, fierce winds, temperature extremes ranging from icy cold to blazing summer heat - 20 years is pretty quick, but the human price paid was considerable. Between 500 and 800 Pakistanis and untold Chinese died in its construction, roughly one life for every kilometre.

  Before there was the KKH there was the Silk Road, a network of trails and passes that led from Persia and Turkey through Afghanistan and into China, a commercial conduit following and enriching the precious routes through the mountains.

  Apart from the increased prosperity brought by the road itself, many projects round here bear the name of the Aga Khan, spiritual head of the Ismaili Muslims, a Shiite sect who believe their leader to be a direct descendant of the Prophet’s son-in-law. The Aga Khan Foundation provides money for education (especially girls’ schools), healthcare and agricultural schemes. The results can be seen in the communities through which we pass. The settlements are tidy, with solid communal buildings and ingenious irrigation systems flowing between immaculately built dry-stone walls.

  In the Hunza valley, believed to be the model for many Shangrilas and the inspiration for James Hilton’s book Lost Horizon, the Karakoram Highway is quiet as a country lane, running beside neatly planted fields of spinach, potatoes and cabbage and sundappled orchards of apricot, apple, peach, pear and plum. Yet this is one of the geomorphic hot spots of the world. This tranquil countryside lies above the epicentre of a titanic geological upheaval. Around 50 million years ago India collided with the rest of Asia, or rather the great mass called the Indian plate drifted north and ran into the much larger mass of the Eurasian plate. The force of the impact pushed one over the other and thrust them both skywards, creating a momentum that is still at work, carrying India deeper into Asia at the rate of two inches a year. The Hindu Kush, the Karakoram, the Pamirs and the Himalaya are all, in a sense, wreckage from one of the great head-on collisions in the history of the planet.

  A sign outside a modest little town reads simply, ‘Chalt. Where Continents Collide’. Which certainly puts ‘Artichoke Capital of the World’ in its place.

  There are few sp
ots where the consequences of tectonic trauma are more dramatically visible than at the Rakaposhi View Restaurant in Ghulmet. Rakaposhi is one of the most imposing peaks of the Karakoram, rising to 25,500 feet (7772 m). As we sit at a table beneath a willow tree eating fresh-picked cherries we are looking at the highest unbroken mountainside on earth. From the River Hunza, just below us, to the summit of its western face far above us, a single slope rises 18,000 feet (5486 m). Three and a quarter miles of rock, glacier and gravity-defying terraces of snow and ice.

  And the lavatory’s spotless.

  The KKH, like an earlier engineering marvel, the Forth Railway Bridge, needs constant attention as the road climbs higher and the ice cracks the rock and the snowmelt sends the rubble slithering down onto the highway. So it’s no great surprise to hear that a landslide has blocked the road between here and the 16,000-foot (4877 m) Khunjerab Pass which leads into China. Even if we got there we couldn’t go further, as the frontier has been closed due to the SARS epidemic. We detour up to the village of Altit.

  The Altit road is not one for faint hearts; it’s just an unfenced track of flattened debris dug across the middle of a 3000-foot spill of scree. Halfway along it someone tells me that the word Karakoram means ‘crumbling rock’ in Turkish.

  I’m much relieved when we drop slowly down through the tree line, but just as I’m feeling secure we have to cross a slatted bridge of warped and bent timbers, between which I can see a lot more of the raging waters of the Hunza than I’d like to. Under the weight of each vehicle it bounces up and down as if it were made of elastic. Never have I been so happy to reach the other side of a bridge.

  On the way back to Gilgit, the sun hits the eastern spires and ridges of the mountains and turns their tips the colour of molten metal. I only hope the Himalaya can live up to the magic of the Karakoram.