Himalaya (2004)

by Michael Palin

  Day Twenty : Gilgit to Skardu

  We have been given the go-ahead by the Pakistan military to join one of their helicopters on a service flight from Skardu in Baltistan, to Concordia, close to the Chinese border, where ten of the world’s top 30 peaks are clustered, including K2 (Karakoram 2), the second highest mountain in the world.

  It’s mountaineering made easy but not to be sniffed at for all that. Last night I called my friend Hamish MacInnes in Scotland for the reactions of a world-class climber. He gave me various words of encouragement, among them the fact that the road to Skardu is known as ‘the road that eats jeeps’.

  Skardu is only 99 miles (160 km) from Gilgit, but we’re told it will take most of the day. Progress is slowed down by rock falls and land-slips at roughly one-mile intervals. Some bring us to a halt, some have to be negotiated with infinite care. Road gangs, muffled like mummies against the dust and heat, stop to watch us pass, then resume the Sisyphean task of fighting landslides with spades, shovels and wheelbarrows.

  We turn off the KKH and stop for refreshment. Across the road a large man sprawls across the threshold of a very small shop. He’s sunk deep in an armchair and has one leg up against the door-post. A sign above him announces ‘Ahmad, Gems and Minerals. We Deals In Precious Stones’. Up here, mineral seams are routinely exposed by the massive geological upheavals. As they bring our tea they tell us we’ve had one big piece of luck. The road that eats jeeps reopened only two days earlier after unusually heavy spring rain closed it at 126 separate places.

  As we set off along yet another gorge I’m aware that this is a significant moment for us. Dominating the mountains on the far side of the Indus is the westernmost bastion of the Himalaya. Nanga Parbat, an uncompromising, irregular giant of a mountain, rises to 26,650 feet (8125 m). It has wide flanks and a bad reputation. It’s known as Killer Mountain, claiming 50 lives before it was first scaled by an Austrian, Hermann Buhl, in 1953. According to Hamish, Buhl was a very hard nut indeed. Those who came on his expeditions were issued with one-way tickets only.

  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.

  Imran is in a meeting but three amiable dogs rise to greet us, tails wagging vigorously, until that becomes too much of an effort and they collapse, bellies flat against warm stones or on their backs in the shade of the verandah, legs spread-eagled in abandon.

  After a half-hour or so, Imran, unheralded by minders, secretaries or advisers, slips quietly onto the verandah, wearing a light blue shalwar-kameez. His complexion is clear and unlined and his long face has a few interesting angles, which makes him more than conventionally handsome. When we ask him if he minds us filming the house he waves his arm agreeably. He’ll only be here another three months, and his wife Jemima is back in their house in London.

  Tea and soft drinks are brought out. When I tell him of our visit to Skardu, his face lights up.

  ‘The most beautiful country,’ he says with feeling. ‘The Baltis are friendly and decent folk.’

  Imran scratches the luxuriating Labrador with his foot. He talks carefully, as economical with words as he was with runs, seldom raising his voice, but relying more on expressively graceful hands to emphasize or illustrate a point. His soft-voiced, unemotional delivery masks bracing views.

  On matters of religion he feels the clergy, rather than the scholars, are the big problem. The Koran, he maintains, quoting from it with confidence, is an example for life, but the mullahs seek to reduce its message to fit their own interpretations.

  ‘And some of them are decadent, you know,’ he says with a real touch of anger.

  He feels the Taliban began as a genuine people’s movement, a reaction against the summary justice and tyranny of the warlords.

  ‘But they were taken over by extremists.’

  We talk about the British influence. He thinks it not only strong, but fundamental. India and Pakistan were created by the British, who saw the plethora of tribes, small rulers, languages and customs as unwieldy and difficult. By playing them off against each other they created a centralized administration that India had never known before. It was a classic case of divide and rule.

  I ask him if many of the old institutions aren’t still in place, or in the case of his alma mater, Aitcheson’s College, the Eton of Pakistan, positively thriving.

  ‘For the elite we had what’s called the “English medium education” and for the masses the “Urdu medium education”, so the elite became quite Westernized and the rest of society was not that much touched by Westernization, as you’ve seen as you travel around.’

  ‘Are you tolerant of these schools still existing?’

  ‘No, I think it’s terrible this educational apartheid.’

  I press him on whether a bright lad from the bazaars would ever make it to the top in Pakistan, and he shakes his head quite vigorously.

  ‘Highly unlikely.’

  He says he made the transition from cricket to politics because he felt that, with the way things were going, his country faced a bleak future. The population growth was the highest in the world, people weren’t being educated and governments were corrupt and unconcerned with investment in human beings.

  ‘It was pretty tough because I had to stand up to the status quo, which is very strong in this country.’

  He doesn’t mince words. ‘Money in Pakistan is in the hands of crooks. The majority of people who go into politics make money through illegal means.’

  Our government minder is listening in to all this and I fear the worst, but at the end of the interview all he asks of us is that we take a photograph of him with his hero.

  Unlike the locked and barred Gulbar at the hotel in Peshawar, there is a place in the bowels of the Marriott where non-Muslims can enjoy an alcoholic beverage. It’s called The Bassment, which may or may not be a spelling mistake, and we agree to meet down there after work. I’m the first to arrive. Disapproval, in the forbidding shape of an unsmiling hotel bouncer in a suit, begins at the top of the stairs. He stands, arms folded, legs apart, resolutely avoiding eye contact, guarding the heavy door that opens onto a dank stairwell whose walls give off a pervasive odour of tobacco smoke, long since exhaled. At the bottom two swing doors open onto a long, apparently empty chamber sunk in Stygian gloom, pierced only by tiny disco lights sunk into the ceiling. Concrete walls increase the atmosphere of being in a bunker. At the bar is a Norwegian. We exchange a wary grunt of greeting, like two people who’ve come together to commit the same crime.

  I order a beer. They have no international brands, only beer brewed in Pakistan.

  Which is how I begin my acquaintance with the life-saving products of the Murree Brewery.

  Day Twenty Four : Rawalpindi

  Islamabad, its critics say, is 12 miles outside Pakistan, and this morning, as we drive out past the well-fenced government buildings and onto the wide, landscaped, highly under-used modern highway that surrounds the city I know what they mean. Everything is discreet, tidy, straight and planned, and it’s not until we reach the outskirts of Islamabad’s twin city, Rawalpindi, affectionately abbreviated to Pindi, that Pakistan comes back to life.

  Not far from the airport, we’re diverted off the main road by hundreds of police. After some time a convoy of outriders, some in open cars with gloriously conspicuous scarlet berets, races by on either side of three blacked-out Mercedes, any one of which, or possibly none, contains President Musharraf. Significantly, he doesn’t live with the civil servants in Islamabad but in Rawalpindi, where the army is based, and this whole extravagant process, an entire six-lane highway closed for a half-hour, is a reminder of where the power lies in Pakistan.

  At Independence in 1947, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, known to all as the Quaid-e-Azam, Father of the Nation, wanted Pakistan to remain a secular state but, divided as the country was into West Pakistan and East Pakistan (later to secede and become Bangladesh), the only real bond that held the disparate tribal groups together was religion. In 1956 the Constitution accepted this and declared Pakistan an Islamic Republic. The army, seeing power drifting away from them, staged their first coup two years after that and, despite various attempts to hand power to democratically elected leaders, Pakistan still is a military state, and one of the most hotly debated issues is whether or not Musharraf should give up his uniform and run for democratically elected office.

&nbs
p; Turning off the Grand Trunk Road we pass the high, blotchy walls of the old barracks behind which one of Pakistan’s experiments with democracy came to a grim end, when Zulfikhar Ali Bhutto, a populist, secular prime minister, was hanged on the orders of General Zia, leaving Zia free to accelerate the process of Islamization.

  At the heart of this nerve centre of the Islamic Republic, sandwiched between the barracks and the military headquarters, is the Murree Brewery, Pakistan’s largest purveyor of alcoholic beverages.

  Originally established in 1861, up in the Murree Hills, north of Islamabad, by Henry Whymper, brother of the first man to climb the Matterhorn, it’s a place steeped in irony. Ninety-five per cent of the brewery’s 450-strong workforce is Muslim and officially not allowed to touch the product their lives depend on. The owner, Minoo Bhandara, is a scholarly Parsee who writes regular newspaper columns and his business card notes that he was ‘adviser to the President 1982-1985’ (that same President who hanged Bhutto). His office, dominated by a 150-year-old mahogany table, feels as if it would be more at home in an Oxbridge college than a brewery.

  Minoo would make a good don. He is slightly stooped, and a large pair of glasses with thick lenses gives him an owlish air. He’s soft-voiced, courteous, a touch pedantic and very much at home in a well-worn rattan chair.

  His Muslim brew master, Muhammed Javed, has been here 17 years. More in the mould of the modern executive, he’s a genial, youthful-looking man with degrees from universities in the Punjab and America.

  His enthusiasm for the production of alcohol is abundant. He walks me past the beer production line, enthusing over the current output of 10,000 bottles an hour ranging from high strength Millennium at 7.5 per cent alcohol, through the popular and medal-winning Murree Classic at 5.5 to a Pils Light at 3.5.

  This selfless Muslim workforce also produces 20 brands of spirit including gin and vodka.

  Despite draconian laws on the possession of alcohol - a prison sentence of three to four years, un-bailable, and quite possibly a caning as well - it’s pretty clear that the Murree Brewery wouldn’t be in business if its customers were only non-Muslims.