The Next Horizon

by Chris Bonington

  We stopped at the rest house, a mud hut with a gaping square in the roof to let the smoke out and the rain in; there was no sign of beds or food but we just sat and waited. You have got to be patient in a place like Hunza; things move slowly but eventually something happens.

  One of the village elders arrived and made a courtly little speech which was translated to me:

  Just as the sun has been hidden by the clouds for over ten days, so the British have left Pakistan for many years. I am very glad to welcome you, a Briton, back to Hunza.

  He then produced a rather dirty cloth full of dried apricots and apples. I had barely recovered from my last attack of dysentery, but did not see how I could refuse, so shoving my fears into the background, I tucked into the dried fruit. Another long pause and we were invited to supper.

  Our host, Ali Murad Khan, was seventy but looked fifty, and lived near the edge of the cultivated area. We picked our way along narrow paths by the side of irrigation channels to his house. It was typical of a moderately prosperous Hunza home, flat roofed with two storeys; the lower one, a dark dungeon, they live in during the winter, while the upper storey is for summer. There are no windows and all the light comes from a hole in the roof.

  Ali Murad Khan owns two small fields, twenty sheep, two cows and an ox. He, like all Hunza people, is almost entirely self-sufficient – has to be, for there is practically no money coming in to buy food, furniture or clothing. From his farm he gets fruit in season, apricots, grapes, apples, peaches and mulberries; he owns a few poplar trees for timber and some lavender for firewood. He also grows wheat and potatoes. His clothing comes from the wool of his sheep.

  He apologised to me that this was the lean season; they were waiting for their fruit and wheat to ripen. There was little food to be purchased from the shops in the bazaar, and what there was, was expensive. The only income that Ali Murad Khan had was from selling cloth woven from the wool of his sheep and from making Hunza wine from his grapes. Although they are Muslims, the people of Hunza take a liberal view on the subject of drinking. His eldest son, who lived with him, had a pension of fifteen rupees a month from serving for fifteen years in the army. No family in Hunza could survive without sending some members down into Pakistan to earn a living either in the army or as servants or porters, thus bringing some hard cash back into the valley. In many instances men spent ten months of the year in the lowlands, leaving wives and families to look after their farms.

  That night Ali Murad Khan brought out some mutton that had been hung in the cellar for the past three months; the spices barely disguised its pungent flavour. We sat on the floor round the big communal pot and, using bits of chupatti as a spoon, shovelled meat, gravy and curried vegetables into our mouths. For the first time in the week I had been in Pakistan I began to feel part of the land and people in a way that I would never have done if Monsarrat, or any other European, had been with me. The two wives sat in the background, waiting for us to finish, for they could not eat in front of a stranger.

  Next morning we finished our walk into the valley of Hunza; another six miles up the gorge, and we came round a low spur that had barred our view. Suddenly the valley opened out into a great basin, about eight miles long and four wide, paved in brilliant green, yet dominated by stark rocky sides that stretched up into ramparts of snow-clad peaks.

  This oasis in the midst of a mountain desert is entirely dependent on glacier melt water, which is channelled into irrigation canals by a complex system of channels and sluices, and shared out amongst the separate villages and then amongst the individual fields in strict rotation. A wide stony river splits the valley in two, dividing the State of Hunza from Nagir. At the end of it, you can just see the Mir of Hunza’s palaces. His old one is a white painted eyrie, perched high on a crag, while the new, in grey granite, nestles below.

  There are many theories about the origins of the people of Hunza. That afternoon, walking through the valley, I couldn’t help noticing how many of the inhabitants had fair skins, blue eyes and blond hair. Hunza is on the old caravan route between the interior of Asia and the Indus Valley, one of the most important trade routes of the old world, and an area where there must have been a constant intermingling of peoples. Besides the theory that the Hunzas are descended from soldiers of Alexander the Great, there is one the Mir suggested to me: that they originally came from a place called Hunz in the Caucasus, and were driven into their present home during the reign of Tamerlane. Their language, Brushaki, bears no relation to either the Indian or Iranian language families.

  The women of Hunza do not hide under the burkha, like most of the women of South Pakistan, and by Muslim standards they have a great deal of freedom. They wear an attractive embroidered pill-box hat, held in place by a scarf, brightly coloured tunic and baggy trousers. The girls are deliciously pretty, but there is one snag: under no circumstances would they allow themselves to be photographed. My guide told me that this had not always been the case, but a Brazilian film company had made a film in Hunza some years before and had then inserted into it a childbirth sequence shot somewhere else. This had so incensed the sensibilities of the ladies of Hunza that they had spurned all forms of photography ever since.

  That night, and for the next ten days, I stayed at the Hunza Hotel; it was hardly four-star, except for the prices. A pot of tea cost two rupees (approximately eight pence) and a vegetable curry, the standard meal, was seven rupees. I had a bare, but clean, room furnished with a bed and a small table, with a commode next door.

  Each day I explored the valley, took pictures and talked to as many people as I could. At times I could not help being painfully aware that I was in a place that was on the threshold of becoming a tourist resort, when every form of goodwill becomes a marketable commodity.

  Certainly, no Alpine valley could compare with Hunza for sheer, devastating beauty – it is the contrast more than anything else, green upon arid brown all capped with white. To the south-west, Rakaposhi, a huge complex of writhing snow ridges and hanging glaciers; to the north, the soaring wall of the Passu peaks that jumps 16,000 feet to a turreted ridge of ice and rock spires. To the east, more mountains, glaciers, rock and snow.

  On my first morning I attended the Court of the Mir of Hunza; it was an informal affair. At ten o’clock, the Mir, an absolute monarch with complete control over the internal affairs of his 20,000 people, walks from his palace to the Durbah, a courtyard with a verandah down two sides. The Mir sits on a small rostrum, and his Court, in strict order of precedence, squat on carpets in two lines on either side of him.

  The Court consists of the headman and elders of Hunza; they are appointed by the Mir, but he is careful to choose men who are respected by the villagers. They meet every day and spend an hour or so hearing disputes, giving judgement or just gossiping. This is Parliament, High Court and Cabinet, all rolled into one. There is no civil service, taxation, army, or even police force.

  Anyone can walk into the Court without appointment, and state his grievance. On this particular morning there was one case. The servant of a villager called Dadu complained that he had not been paid his wages. On the other hand, Dadu claimed that the boy had stolen a goat worth 120 rupees and had drunk his entire stock of wine. Everyone had a say in the case, sometimes everyone speaking at the same time, but eventually the Mir raised his hand and pronounced judgement.

  ‘If Dadu makes an oath on the Koran in the presence of his headman, I am quite sure he will be telling the truth. It is therefore only fair that you lose your salary. Do you agree to this?’

  The boy agreed and the case was closed.

  There is little violence in Hunza. The only murder committed in recent years was two years before, when Nadir Aman, a farmer, had a dispute over the position of a poplar tree in one of his fields. By custom, trees cannot be closer than fourteen yards to another man’s field. Nadir Aman was told by the village elders to cut down the tree, but he took no notice. His neighbour finally cut it down himself and, in a rage, Na
dir Aman went to his house and shot him. At Court, the Mir had sentenced him to be banished from Hunza, the most serious punishment possible, for there is no death penalty or prison.

  That afternoon I had tea with the Mir. A short, fairly portly man, he looks rather like an English country squire, favours tweeds and visits Europe every year.

  ‘I always stay at the Savoy in London. I don’t like those modern hotels where you do everything over the telephone; it’s so impersonal and the service is so bad,’ he told me. ‘This is a very happy country; there are no rich or very poor. Money can bring many problems and here in Hunza there is very little. I still pay all my servants in kind, with food or cloth. People grow their own produce; if someone is building a new house, everyone gives a hand. There is no question of payment, for they all help each other and eventually it balances out.

  ‘A few years ago the Pakistan Government started their system of basic democracy to give villagers more say in their affairs. I offered it to them here in Hunza, but the Elders turned it down. We already have a democracy.’

  As I explored Hunza, I felt he was right. What other state exists without police force or prison?

  It was certainly difficult to tell rich from poor. When I went to see Zafarulla Beg, who has the reputation for being the wisest man in Hunza, I found him working with a pick and shovel, alongside his servant; and yet he is headman of Hindi, a fairly big landowner and eighty years of age. As he showed me round his orchards, he was giving me a hand over walls, rather than the reverse.

  He is also respected for being a skilful physician. Until comparatively recently, there were no medical facilities in Hunza, and even today there is only a small hospital run by a medical orderly without a doctor, but it is rarely used and the people prefer their own home cures. They make concoctions of herbs for illness and set simple fractures or dislocations. I saw Zafarulla Beg at work on one of his servants, a man who had dislocated his foot. He strapped it to a split piece of wood and then tapped in a wedge, which forced the dislocated joint back into place. It looked very painful, but effective.

  The Hunzas have a reputation for longevity, but on this score they do not seem to be in the same class as the inhabitants of the Caucasus, who also claim they live to ages up to 130 years. The oldest man in Hunza is said to be 106 years old, and I was able to talk to the 102-year-old grandfather of my guide. He still does a little farming and showed no sign of senility. It wasn’t so much the great age of the people of Hunza that impressed me, but rather the vigour and obvious happiness of the old people.

  This might partly be accounted for by the balance of their diet which is frugal, yet highly nutritious. They eat meat only on special occasions, and the staple diet is wheat chuppatis with potatoes or vegetables, washed down by sour milk. In season, there is any amount of fruit, and they dry all the surplus for consumption during the remainder of the year. In addition, the family is still a strong unit, and the old are both respected and cared for. The elders of the village have a tranquillity and pride that one seldom sees amongst old people in the West.

  During the day there is always a rattle of tin drums and the squeal of whistles played by the children. At weddings, house-moving and religious festivals, the men perform their traditional dances. This is still very much part of their lives and not just a money-earner for the benefit of the tourists.

  One night I was invited to a prayer evening and feast at the home of Ghullam Mohammed. There were eight of us altogether, seated round the floor of his living-room. Most of them had come straight from the fields where they had been working all day. Jan Mohammed, the priest of the Jamal Khana, their place of worship, was dressed just the same as everyone else; he received no salary, and earned his living by teaching the girls of the village and running a small farm.

  That night he conducted the prayers and singing. His face was cadaverous, with a huge beak of a nose jutting from it. He needed a shave, and his bare feet were none too clean, but when he sang in a strong grating voice that pulsated with rhythm and an unbelievable happiness, it hit deep into one’s emotions. They all joined in for the choruses, and I was told they were singing love songs to the prophet and ballads of their own religious experience. It made the best folk-singing in Britain sound a bit insipid.

  Hunza is a place of sounds, of water hurrying through irrigation channels, a donkey braying in the night, children crying or the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer from the palace roof – there is no loudspeaker system and his voice merges with the grandeur of surrounding mountains and the peace of the evening.

  That night I met my first tourists; the road from the outside world had at last been opened. They were very disappointed that I was not Nicholas Monsarrat – ‘He must be such a gorgeous man.’ They boiled and sterilised all their water, even when it had already been boiled once by the cook – ‘You just can’t trust anything out here.’ They grumbled, probably with good cause, about the amount they had been charged for sightseeing.

  I couldn’t help resenting their presence, and everything that tourism stands for. One has an instinctive and selfish longing to preserve places that are strange and picturesque, but beyond that, Hunza seemed a tranquil and contented island in the midst of a sea of violence, corruption and poverty. A new road has been built into the valley that links it with China. This might bring in some industry and hotels, but with it must inevitably come all the other attributes of a more sophisticated society – crime, graft, political strife, a police force and prisons.

  There is no answer to the problem, and anyway there is very little anyone can do about it. Progress is a runaway monster whom no one seems able to control.

  – CHAPTER NINETEEN –

  THE BLUE NILE

  From a distance it had seemed a harmless shimmer on the river, but now we were looking straight down a steep chute into a boiling pit of white water.

  ‘Straighten out the boat,’ shouted Chris Edwards.

  But it was too late – three paddles could do nothing against such a current. We smashed on to a rock and scraped down with the water piling round us. It all happened so quickly that I cannot remember any sequence of events; there was no sense of direction or time – just an angry, foaming wall of white, towering above us. Then I was in the water. I had a glimpse of the boat only a few feet away before being dragged under.

  It was like being in a washing machine. No sooner did I reach the surface than I was pulled back again. I was not particularly frightened – I had not even swallowed much water but I realised I was drowning. My body, limbs, muscles seemed to have lost their own identity and to have become an integral part of the water around me. Thoughts swam sluggishly in a brown void – a feeling of guilt at having betrayed Wendy, and then one of curiosity. ‘What will it be like when I’m dead?’

  Then, with equal suddenness the water released me and I found myself being swept towards some rocks just below the fall. I couldn’t swim properly as the trousers of my rubber wetsuit had been dragged down round my ankles, pinioning my legs: but somehow I managed to reach a rock and drag myself out of the river.

  Up to that moment, I don’t think that I, or any other member of the Great Abbai Expedition, fully appreciated just how savage and powerful the Blue Nile can be. It was a turning point in the expedition. Before the accident, it had been possible to be light-hearted and to enjoy the exhilaration of plunging through racing white water, but after it we just plugged on doggedly, trying hard to complete the job we had started.

  The previous day, nine of us in three Avon Redshank inflatable boats had pushed off from the bank at the start of the Blue Nile – or Great Abbai as it is called locally – where it flows out of Lake Tana. It was difficult to believe that this was one of the most dangerous, and least known, rivers in the world, for the current was almost imperceptible, flowing in a wide stream between tossing plumes of papyrus. Heron and egret flew low across the water, and a hippo sank out of sight as the front boat glided past.

  It is called the Blue Ni
le, but its waters are a muddy brown flood that hurtles through 500 miles of unexplored gorge to the deserts of Sudan and Egypt. It seemed incredible that at a time when almost every natural feature on earth had been conquered and explored, one so accessible and important to the history of man had succeeded in retaining its secrets.

  The source of the river is easy enough to reach; it lies in a swamp in the Highlands of Ethiopia, a small spring that nurtures a stream flowing into Lake Tana. The expedition had already completed the lower and easier section of the river from the Shafartak Road Bridge to the Sudanese frontier, and was now about to attempt the first-ever descent of the completely unknown part of the Blue Nile. For its first twenty miles the river flows through gently undulating farmland, until it drops 150 feet sheer over the Tississat Falls and plunges with ever-increasing violence through twenty miles of gorge to the Portuguese Bridge. From there, the river was completely unknown as far as the Shafartak Road Bridge, 120 miles further on.

  We were members of one section of the seventy-strong Great Abbai Expedition, and as we set off down-river, other groups were moving into position on the bank to give us support. Our three boats were called Faith, Hope and Charity: Captain Roger Chapman, leader of the ‘white water’ team, had made extensive modifications to the boats, having the bottoms strengthened and inserting inflated football bladders into the sides, so that they could not sink. He had decided to do without engines, since there was too great a risk of the propellers being smashed against rocks in the shallow rapids. So we were to depend on paddles for power and steerage.

  I was sailing in Charity, with Corporal Ian McLeod and Lieutenant Chris Edwards. Edwards played rugger for the Army and was a powerful 6ft 7m. McLeod was lean, even emaciated, yet probably the toughest and most experienced member of the expedition. He had served with the crack Special Air Service regiment in jungle and desert, and was used to working in small parties under exacting conditions. Hope was crewed by Lieutenant Jim Masters (at forty-two years old, the oldest member of the party), Staff Sergeant John Huckstep and John Fletcher, who owned a garage at Tewkesbury and specialised in renovating vintage cars. The third boat, Faith, was crewed by Roger Chapman, Alastair Newman, a lecturer in physics at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and Corporal Peter O’Mahoney, who admitted to being worried by the water but volunteered to come because we needed an experienced wireless operator.