B2
TRAVEL
14 – 20 JULY 2011
photos by tim hannigan
A walk in the
Hindu Kush:
journeying
into northern
Pakistan
Following in the footsteps of an ill-fated
Victorian explorer, Tim Hannigan finds
warm welcomes and jaw-dropping
landscapes in the mountainous north of
troubled Pakistan.
The valley opened ahead of
me in the sharp Central Asian
sunlight. Stark, iron-grey
mountain walls rose on either
side towards snow-streaked
ridges, slicing a sky the colour
of lapis lazuli. The lower
slopes were hidden beneath a
mass of flaming poplar trees.
There was not a breath of
wind, and the distant hiss of
the river underpinned a vast,
overarching silence.
The track bent northwards
between blue buttresses
towards the forbidden Afghan
frontier, the Pamir Mountains,
and my own ultimate destination. I was in the wildly remote
Yasin Valley in the mountainous north of Pakistan, a day’s
walk from my journey’s end in
the tiny village of Darkot.
Pakistan might have a
scary reputation as a nation
wracked by political violence
and the hideout of the late
Osama bin Laden, but up
here, surrounded by the skyscraping peaks of the region
known as Gilgit-Baltistan,
all those troubles felt a world
away.
But still, my journey had its
own ominous undertones: I
was following in the footsteps
of a Victorian explorer called
George Hayward. When he
came to the Yasin Valley in
early 1870 it had been no
pocket of halcyon calm, and
his own hike north to Darkot
had been that of a dead man
walking; he was bound for a
brutal demise.
HAYWARD’S TRAIL
I had been following
Hayward’s trail for a year, but
the early stages of the journey
had taken me to the less
exotic surrounds of the British
Library and the archives of the
Royal Geographical Society,
where I had spent long hours
leafing through his original
letters and reports, pouring
over the erratic scrawl of his
handwriting as he described
audacious
crossings
of
mountain passes, and clashes
with local chieftains.
Hayward was a middleclass orphan from Leeds. After
a brief and undistinguished
career in the British Army in
India, he took to travelling in
the high mountains around
Kashmir. He was eventually sponsored by the Royal
Geographical Society to try
to reach and map the unexplored Pamir Mountains, in
what is now Tajikistan. For
two blazing years he did everything he could to reach his
goal, crossing the Karakoram
without a tent, enduring
captivity in the Silk Route city
of Kashgar, and traversing the
Indus Gorge in midwinter.
He was thwarted by politics
and geography at every turn,
and eventually he stumbled
upon a dirty little war, fought
far from prying eyes in the
area around Gilgit in what
is now Northern Pakistan.
Troops of the expansionist
Maharaja of Kashmir were aggressively annexing formerly
independent local fiefdoms
– with tacit British approval,
for this was the arena of “the
Great Game”, the struggle for
dominance in Central Asia
between Britain and Russia.
Never one to keep quiet,
I found not fear
and loathing, but
a warm welcome
in one of the
most beautiful
mountain
regions on Earth
A spectacularly decorated truck on the Karakoram Highway.
The decorations are a tradition and a matter of great pride
among Pakistani truck drivers.
Flatbread, known as naan, baked in a tandoor oven, is the
staple accompaniment of any meal in Pakistan.
Hayward spoke out about
evidence he had seen of
massacres in the region, and
earned the ire of Britain and
Kashmir as a consequence.
Ultimately, he was murdered
in unimaginably brutal circumstances at the head of
the Yasin Valley. His killing
has never been satisfactorily
explained.
RETRACING HAYWARD’S
FOOTSTEPS
It was certainly a fascinating
story, but to put it in its modern
context, I had decided that I
needed to retrace Hayward’s
footsteps in the 21st century.
It was a daunting prospect,
for Kashmir, Xinjiang and
Pakistan are, if anything, more
unstable now than they had
been in the mid-19th century.
On the Indian side of the
Line of Control in Kashmir,
I had avoided machineguntoting soldiers to seek out
the beautiful locations that
Hayward had described.
On the other side of the
Karakoram, I had travelled
through Xinjiang in his wake.
In the late 1860s the region
had been an independent
Turkic state, but now it was
under the heavy hand of the
Chinese regime. Internet had
been shut down across the
province, and the handful
HAIR RAISING: Crossing a footbridge over the Hunza River near Passu. The river flows through the Karakoram mountain range.
his own travels in the explorer’s footsteps, ‘Murder in
the Hindu Kush’, is published
by the History Press. For more
information visit www.murderinthehindukush.com
FURTHER
INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Buses connect Gilgit with
Kashgar in China between
May and November. There
are weather-dependent
domestic flights between
Islamabad and Gilgit with
PIA.
Karimabad, capital of Hunza, in autumn with the 7,388 metre Ultar mountain as a backdrop.
of English-speaking Uyghur
locals I met whispered their
disquiet in hushed, paranoid
tones.
And then, finally, there
was Pakistan, surely one of
the world’s most daunting
travel destinations for anyone
who keeps half-an-eye on the
news. But to my surprise, after
crossing from China along
the Karakoram Highway, a
stupendous strip of tenuous
tarmac straddling the frontier
at the 4,733-metre Khunjerab
Pass, I found not fear and
loathing, but a warm welcome
in one of the most beautiful
mountain regions on Earth.
Gilgit-Baltistan, the upland
fastness of Pakistan’s far north,
has remained largely insulated
from the recent troubles
which have wracked the rest
of the country. Its unique
local cultures and the rough
roads have kept violence at
bay. In the 1990s the region
was the hub of Pakistan’s
nascent tourist trade, visited
by a steady stream of travellers each summer. All that has
changed now, but as I headed
south along the Hunza Valley I
found that this was still a place
of hyperbolic landscapes,
where amber apricots were
laid out to dry in the sun, and
where wiry traditional music
and homebrewed brandy were
still the cornerstones of the
local social scene.
In the regional capital
Gilgit – a ramshackle town of
warm handshakes and endless
cups of tea – I crossed paths
with the handful of survivors
from the days of the tourism
boom: bankrupt hoteliers and
gift-shop owners, still ready to
welcome the rare visitors with
a smile and a cup of sweet
Pakistani tea.
On a warm afternoon, I
watched a wild polo match –
the unofficial national sport
of this rugged region, more
like horseback rugby than
the genteel sport of English
princes. And then, finally, I set
out on the final stage of my
journey, west from Gilgit to
Yasin, bound for the scene of
Hayward’s death.
FINAL JOURNEY
The majority of Yasinis are
Ismaelis, followers of the Aga
Khan (hereditary head of the
Ismaelis), whose charitable
foundation runs a string of
schools in the valley, staffed
by
admirably
dedicated
teachers. As I made my way
along the valley, hordes of
smiling children – boys and
girls – with ruddy faces and
blondish hair, emerged to
greet me.
It was late afternoon when
I reached Darkot, a scattering
of rough, stone-walled houses
between hems of slender
poplar trees. To the north, the
tail-end of the valley narrowed
and rose to the high pass that
Hayward had hoped to cross
on his way to the Pamirs.
By the time he reached
Darkot – on July 17, 1870 –
Hayward knew that his life
was in danger. He spent his
last night awake, clutching a
gun in the doorway of his tent.
But at first light he succumbed
to sleep and was overpowered,
dragged into the nearby forest,
and beheaded.
My own welcome in Darkot
was much warmer. The local
schoolmaster, a kindly man
named Mohamed Murad,
offered me a place to stay in
his family guestroom, and
then – quite unsurprised by
my reason for visiting Darkot
On the street in Gilgit, the main town of Pakistan’s far north.
– he agreed to show me the
spot where the explorer was
killed.
The events of 1870 are
still remembered in Darkot
today, and are still a cause for
concern among the villagers,
who are at pains to point out
that the murderers were not
locals. The exact location
of the killing is still known;
its name – Feringhi Bar,
“Foreigner’s Valley” – commemorates the grisly event.
In the soft light of early
evening, Murad and another
local teacher, Abdul Rashid,
led me across scored brown
slopes to the spot. It was a
beautiful, tranquil place: a
patch of goat-cropped grass
under a buckled apricot
tree with the mountains all
around.
There we sat down together
for a picnic of sweet tea and
traditional flatbread. It was
a somewhat incongruous
activity, considering the grim
history of the location, but, in
this warmly hospitable, heartbreakingly beautiful place, I
decided, it was the perfect end
for my journey.
Tim Hannigan is a freelance
travel writer and photographer. He is originally from
Cornwall, but is usually based
in Indonesia. His book about
George Hayward’s wild life
and violent death, and about
WHERE TO STAY
The Madina Guesthouse
(www.madinahotelgilgit.
com) is a much-loved
institution from the days
of the backpacker trail,
with a tranquil garden
and staff brimming with
kindness.
At the other end of the
scale, the Hindukush
Heights (www.hindukush.
com.pk) in Chitral is a
boutique hotel with an
impressive list of notable
former guests on its
register.
FURTHER READING
Lonely Planet’s (www.
lonelyplanet.com) Pakistan
and the Karakoram Highway
guidebook gives the only
reasonably up-to-date
coverage, but Footprint’s
1999 Pakistan Handbook
offers unrivalled detail
(www.footprintbooks.
com). As well as Murder in
the Hindu Kush, there’s a
wealth of literature on the
history of the region. John
Keay’s The Gilgit Game is
brimful of ripping yarns.