A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

by Eric Newby

  After the horrors of the night the dawn had an almost mocking beauty, the mist had risen, a gentle wind blew and the tops of the poplars waved gently against an apple-green sky. At six we set off.

  The mouth of the Darra Samir was very narrow and the path by the torrent blocked by boulders the size of a small house. Twice the horses had to swim the river with the lower part of our gear underwater; Shir Muhammad’s grey cut one of its forelegs badly, an inauspicious beginning to the day.

  Once past this bottleneck the valley rose steeply, flanked by gigantic hills, with little terraced fields of barley, blue vetch and clover half-hidden among the rocks. Here the irrigation ditches were of a beautiful complexity and I thought how my children would have liked them; the water running swift and silent until it reached a place where the dyke had been deliberately broken by the ‘Lord of the Waters’, allowing it to gurgle through into some small property and continue its journey downhill on a lower level as a subsidiary of the main stream.

  The track followed the line of the main ditch, never more than two feet wide. Along the dykes there were beds of thick greer moss, sedge, golden ranunculus, and bushes of wild pink and yellow roses were growing, all now, in the early morning, thickly covered in dew. Strung between the bushes the webs made by a very large sort of spider were as complex as wire entanglements and, when the sun rose over the hill ahead, they glistened like thick white cords. Only the limp and dying wild rhubarb that covered the lower slopes of the hill, like the flags of the losing side after a battle, imparted an air of melancholy to the scene.

  In an hour and a half of hard climbing we came to a collection of round stone huts, like bothies in the Hebrides but roofed with earth and wild rhubarb stems. Among the rocks on the hillside on the far side of the torrent they were almost invisible, only the smoke that hung over them in the still air showed that they were human habitations. The fuel for the fires was spread out on flat rocks to dry in the sun, pieces of dung the size and shape of soup plates at which Shir Muhammad looked longingly.

  Down by the water a large herd of black and white cattle, smallish beasts with humps, were feeding on the grass that grew in round pin-cushions among the stones. There were also flocks of fat-tailed sheep high up on the hillsides and some angry-looking goats.

  ‘The aylaq of the Kaujan people,’ said Abdul Ghiyas. This was the summer pasture of the people of the village whose elders we had entertained the previous night. Without another word all three drivers drove their long iron pins into the ground, picketed the horses and sat down cross-legged in the excruciating position that Hugh found second-nature and that I was still only able to endure for minutes at a time.

  ‘One of the great advantages of travelling in this part of the world is that, if you wait long enough, something happens,’ said Hugh, after we had been sitting for ten minutes without anything happening at all. ‘You can’t imagine doing this in England, squatting down, outside a village. You’d starve to death.’

  ‘I can’t see much point in doing it here.’

  But I was soon to be confounded. Gradually, our arrival began to cause a disturbance. Women and children came to the doors of their houses, making gay splashes of colour in the sombre landscape and uttering long, wailing cries that were taken up and echoed by men, up to now unseen, high up on the mountain-side. There was a sudden baying of dogs and a wild stream of curs and hounds came leaping from rock to rock across the river and up towards us, ravening for flesh and blood, to be beaten off with volleys of stones and appalling blasphemy. They were followed by two men; one short and stocky, the other taller, with brown eyes, strong neat beard, a straight nose, a man with an air of dignity. Abdul Ghiyas seemed to know him, for he embraced him warmly. His name was Abdul Rahim.

  They had brought with them an earthenware pot containing dugh,2 boiled and watered milk, some qaimac in a wooden bowl, the thick yellowish crust that forms on cream, and some bread to mop it up. Our drivers tucked in with gusto. For us it was no time to be stand-offish, it was vanishing down their gullets far too quickly for that; we joined them. The dugh was cool, slightly sour and very refreshing; the qaimac, mopped up with bread that was still hot from the oven, was delicious.

  We went on our way, Abdul Rahim accompanying us. The going was really hard now, very steep over landslides of flat slab lying loose on the mountain, now almost red hot in the sun. Abdul Rahim led, picking his way easily, while far behind the expedition wallowed and hesitated. The air was full of the sounds of slithering as the horses struggled up, and the sounds of walloping and awful curses. All of us had eaten and drunk unwisely at the aylaq and now we burped unhappily, like windy babies, as we toiled upwards.

  We were crossing the head of a deep defile. Above us the mountains swept back in screes of the same slab on which we were making such heavy weather. Above these screes were great bulbous outcrops of what looked like limestone and behind them, seen through clefts, were pinnacles shining with ice and snow. Every now and then one of the slabs underfoot would start to move, gain momentum and slither downhill like a toboggan, over the precipice and into the invisible river.

  Finally, at half past nine, we rounded the last bend, climbed a steep wall of debris and saw at the end of a long, straight valley, an enormous mountain.

  ‘Mir Samir,’ said Hugh.

  It was about six miles off, and seeing it from the west against the morning sun and at this distance, it was an indistinct brown pyramid, flecked with white, veiled in haze, the base in deep shadow.

  It was an exciting moment, but it was not the mountain, but the prospect immediately before us, so enchanting was it, that held our attention.

  We were in a great meadow of level green grass, springy underfoot and wonderfully restful to my battered feet. Winding through it was the river, no longer a torrent but peaceful between grassy banks, with a maze of backwaters forming narrow promontories and islands, all coming together in a small lake at the foot of which we were now standing. A cool breeze was blowing, rippling the water. It was a place to linger, making the programme ahead seem even more unattractive than usual.

  The valley was full of magnificent horses, the joint property of the people in the aylaq and some Pathan nomads, still higher up. Now, terrified, they went thundering away in single file, weaving through the maze of channels and up on to the mountain-side, manes streaming in the breeze.

  This meadow was succeeded by a second in which the Pathan nomads were camped in black goatskin tents, an altogether fiercer, tougher bunch than the Tajiks and more mobile.

  The third and highest had the same beautiful grass, and the same labyrinth of watercourses. At the far end, by the foot of a moraine that poured down into the meadow in a petrified cascade of stone, there was a large rock, covered with orange lichen, which offered some slight shade from the heat of the sun. Here we unloaded our horses. In the chronicles of any well-conducted expedition this would have been called the ‘base camp’.

  All through the afternoon we lay close in under the rock, our heads and shoulders in shadow, the rest of our bodies baking in the sun. In the intervals of dozing we studied the mountain through Hugh’s massive telescope, which he normally carried slung in a leather case and which gave him a certain period flavour. From where we were at the foot of the moraine that ended a hundred yards away, it was obvious that there was a lot of what the military call, often with only too great a regard for accuracy, ‘dead ground’ between ourselves and the actual base of the mountain. We were in fact in almost the same position as we had been on the Milestone Buttress: at the ‘start’ but not at the ‘beginning’.

  What I could see was awe-inspiring enough. Mir Samir, seen from the west, was a triangle with a sheer face. It was obvious, even to someone as ignorant as I was, that at such an altitude not even the men whose kit reposed in the ‘Everest Room’ back in Caernarvonshire would be able to make much of the western wall. The same objections seemed to apply to a sheer gable-end directly facing us, which we had already christened with
that deadly nomenclature that has a death-grip on mountaineers, the North-West Buttress. More possible seemed another more distant ridge of the mountain that appeared to lead to the summit from a more easterly direction.

  ‘That’s our great hope,’ Hugh said. ‘You can’t see it from here but out of sight under the buttress there’s a glacier running down from a rock wall that joins up with the buttress itself. That’s the west glacier. This moraine comes from it.’ He indicated the labyrinth in front of us. ‘On the other side of the wall is the east glacier under the east ridge. My idea is to get up on the wall and either down on to the east glacier or round the edge of the buttress and up on to the ridge that way. It’s difficult to explain when you can’t see it,’ he added.

  ‘It’s impossible.’

  What I could see was a continuous jagged ridge like a wall running from Mir Samir itself directly across our front and curling round to form the head of the valley.

  ‘Pesar ha ye Mir Samir, the sons of Mir Samir,’ was how Abdul Rahim picturesquely described the outriders of this formidable rock. He had promised to accompany us to the high part the next morning, though not to climb. Now he started to talk as any squire might of the hunting and shooting.

  ‘When I was a young man I could run through the snow as fast as an ibex and caught three with my bare hands. The winter, when the snow is deep, is the best; then the partridge and the ibex are driven into the valleys and with dogs and men we can drive them against a rock wall or into the drifts. But now I am old [he was thirty-two] and have grey hairs in my beard and sometimes my heart hurts like a needle. I have been many things. I was two years a soldier and when there was the uprising of the Safis I fought against them.’3

  He went on to tell us about his married life. ‘I have had three wives. The first two were barren but the third had three children. They were suffocated because she slept on them each in turn. She is a heavy woman. I would like to take another but they cost 9,000 Afghanis [at the official rate of exchange 50 to the pound about £150 in our money; at the bazaar rate of 150, about £50]. That is in money. In kind, two horses, five cows and forty sheep. After the wedding perhaps three hundred people come for a whole week of feasting. They must be given rice; so you see it is not cheap.’

  It was time for the evening prayer and the four men made their devotions, orientated, I thought, rather inaccurately, towards Mecca.

  ‘I expect Abdul Ghiyas will be saying a few extra ones this evening,’ Hugh said as the ceremony, moving in its simplicity, came to an end. ‘I’ve asked him to come with us as far as the rock wall tomorrow.’

  For the first time I noticed that planted in the meadow in front of Abdul Ghiyas where he had been saying his prayers was an ice-axe.

  As the sun went down, the wind began to blow, dark clouds formed behind the mountain and the whole west face was bathed in a ghastly yellow light that in the southern oceans would be the presager of a great gale. The heat of the day had rendered the mountain remote, almost unreal; now suddenly the air was bitterly cold and I tried to imagine what it could be like up there on the summit at this moment. We issued the windproof suits. Shir Muhammad rejected his, as did Badar Khan and Abdul Rahim; only Abdul Ghiyas accepted one.

  The sun was setting behind the Khawak Pass. At this time I should have been leaving Grosvenor Street after a day under the chandeliers. Instead we were cooking up some rather nasty tinned steak over a fire that was producing more smoke than heat. The smell of burning dung, the moaning of the wind, the restless horses, the thought of Abdul Ghiyas saying his prayers, dedicating his ice-axe, and above all the mountain itself with its summit now covered in swirling black cloud, all combined to remind me that this was Central Asia. I had wanted it and I had got it.

  When it was quite dark the noises began.

  ‘Ibex,’ said Hugh.

  ‘I think it’s damn great rockfalls.’

  ‘In the spring a panther took three lambs from this place,’ said Abdul Rahim.

  ‘Brr.’

  We got up at four and huddled grey and drawn over a miserable fire of dung and the miracle root, buta, at this hour not readily combustible, and which never got going. The arrival of two barefooted Pathans, one wearing nothing but a shirt and cotton trousers, the other an ancient tottery man of eighty, a walking rag-bag, did nothing to make us feel warmer. Abdul Ghiyas was a fantastic sight in a rather mucky turban he had slept in all night, a windproof suit in the original war department camouflage and unlaced Italian climbing boots. He no longer looked like a nurse, more like a mad sergeant.

  After drinking filthy tea and eating some stewed fruit, we set off, leaving Badar Khan to look after the horses. It would be tedious to enumerate the equipment we took with us; it was much the same as anyone else would have taken in similar circumstances: there was certainly less of it than any other expedition I have ever heard of. Each of us carried about forty pounds, all except Shir Muhammad who had a large white sheet with all the ropes and ironmongery in it slung across his shoulder. In the grey light we looked for all the world as though we were setting off for an exhumation. Even our ice-axes looked more like picks. I wished Hyde-Clarke could have seen us now.

  ‘I wonder what the Royal Geographical Society would think of this lot?’ said Hugh, as we splashed through some swampy ground in ‘Indian file’.

  ‘Doesn’t matter what they think, does it? We’re not costing them anything.’

  ‘They’ve lent us an altimeter.’

  ‘It’s nice to think they’ve got an interest in the expedition.’

  Beyond the meadow that wetted our feet nicely for the rest of the day, we reached the moraine, grey glacial debris up which we picked our way gingerly. Above us the long ridges were already brilliant in the rising sun. We were three quarters of an hour to the head of the moraine. Here we rested. Abdul Ghiyas had a splitting headache brought on by the altitude; his face was ash-grey.

  By seven the sun was blinding on the snow peaks. We were off the moraine now and on sticky mud where the torrents spilled over the edge of the plateau. Higher up, in the pockets of earth between the rocks, Abdul Rahim showed us fresh tracks of ibex and wolf. Then, suddenly, there was a terrific fluttering as birds got up in front of us and Abdul Rahim was off, dropping his rucksack, his chapan looped up, running like a stag at over 15,000 feet and disappearing over the edge of the hill.

  There was an interval, then he reappeared half a mile away. Originally there had been five birds; now there were only two but he was on the trail of one flying ten yards ahead of him, going towards a lake which it splashed into. Whether he wanted to or not his impetus carried him into the water in a flurry of spray and he scooped the bird up.

  Very soon he came loping towards us, the bird under his arm.

  ‘Kauk i darri,’ ‘I’m going to tame it,’ he said. It was a white snow cock, half grown. It seemed completely unafraid, nestling close to him. It was a remarkable achievement, particularly for one who had only the night before been telling us that he suffered from a weak heart.

  Shir Muhammad chose this moment to unsling his sheet full of ironmongery and drop it with a great clang on the stony ground. Like a child out shopping with its mother, bored with the conversation over the baskets, he too was fed-up with standing around at 15,000 feet doing nothing in particular; kauk i darri taken by any means were commonplace to him. His action settled our camping place. It was as suitable as any other.

  * * *

  1. The American traveller Charles Masson. Narrative of Various Journeys, etc., London, 1842.

  2. Pronounced oog not ugh.

  3. This little-known campaign against the Safi tribes of the Kunar Valley took place some time between 1945 and 1947.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Round 1

  We were in an impressive and beautiful situation on a rocky plateau. It was too high for grass, there was very little earth and the place was littered with boulders, but the whole plateau was covered with a thick carpet of mauve primulas. There were c
ountless thousands of them, delicate flowers on thick green stems. Before us was the brilliant green lake, a quarter of a mile long, and in the shallows and in the streams that spilled over from it the primulas grew in clumps and perfect circles.

  The lake water came from the glacier of which Hugh had spoken; we were in fact in the ‘dead ground’ that I had been trying hard to visualize during our telescope reconnaissance. From the rock wall that was our immediate destination, the glacier rolled down towards us from the east (to be accurate E.N.E.) like a tidal wave, stopping short a mile from where we were in a confusion of moraine rocks thrown up by its own movement, like gigantic shingle thrown up by the sea.

  The cliff at the head which divided it, according to Hugh, from a similar larger glacier flowing down in the opposite direction, looked at this distance, about two miles, like the Great Wall of China; while above it, like a colossal peak in the Dolomites but based at a far higher altitude, the mountain itself zoomed straight up into the air to its first bastion, the pinnacle of the north-west buttress. Above the buttress there was a dip, then a second ridge climbing to another pinnacle, twin to the first, then another ridge that seemed to lead to the summit itself.

  The cliff joined the buttress low down on its sheer face. Vast slopes of snow or ice (in my untutored state there was no way of knowing the difference) reached high up its sides. To more skilful operators they might have offered an easy beginning; no one could have found the rock above anything but daunting.

  For some time we considered our task in silence.

  ‘It’s nothing but a rock climb, really.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Just a question of technique.’

  ‘What I don’t see is, how do we get on to it.’

  ‘That’s what we’ve got to find out.’

  The west wall that had filled me with such awe when the sun set on it was now scarcely to be seen at all; only the apex of that fearful triangle was visible with a light powder of snow on it, far less than I had imagined.