Travel
B5
SEPTEMBER 8 – 14, 2011
A Walk in the Hindu Kush
TIM HANNIGAN
TIM HANNIGAN
Journeying
into northern
Pakistan
BY TIM HANNIGAN
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-gray mountain
walls rose on either side towards
snow-streaked ridges, slicing a sky
the color 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
sky-scraping 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 named 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
A COLORFUL TRADITIONOF
PRIDE: A spectacularly
decorated truck on the
Karakoram Highway. The
decorations are a tradition
and a matter of great pride
amongst Pakistani truck
drivers.
A VIEW OF THE MAJESTIC ULTAR MOUNTAIN: Karimabad, the capital of Hunza, in all its autumn glory with the 24,239-foot Ultar
Mountain as a backdrop.
TIM HANNIGAN
British Library and the archives
of the Royal Geographical Society.
There I had spent long hours leafing through his original letters
and reports, poring over the erratic
scrawl of his handwriting as he
described audacious crossings of
mountain passes and clashes with
local chieftains.
Hayward was a middle-class
orphan from Leeds. After a brief
and undistinguished career in the
British Army in India, he took to
traveling 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
TIM HANNIGAN
PREPARING A PAKISTANI STAPLE: Flatbread, known as naan,
baked in a tandoor oven, is the staple ac companiment of any
meal in Pakistan.
GEOGRAPHY GURU
Growing Your Geography Knowledge
Quiz 334
SOUTHERN CONTINENT:
Name all the nations of South America. First letters below!
A_____
Bo____
Br____
Ch____
Co____
E_____
F_____
G_____
Pa_____
Pe_____
S_____
U_____
V_____
nswer for Quiz 333:
NORTH AMERICAN BORDERS:
The border between Mexico and the southern United States
(1938 miles) is longer than the border between Alaska and
Canada (1538 miles).
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, 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
machinegun-toting soldiers to
seek out the beautiful locations
that Hayward had described. On
the other side of the Karakoram,
I had traveled 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 of English-speaking
Uighur 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 15,528foot (4,733-meter) 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 travelers 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.
WATCH YOUR STEP! A hair-raising footbridge over the Hunza
River near Passu.
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 visitor 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—
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—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 take 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 his
own travels in the explorer’s footsteps, ‘Murder in the Hindu Kush,’ is
published by the History Press.
TIM HANNIGAN
SPOTS OF COLOR IN THE MOUNTAINS: Trees in the picturesque
Hunza Valley.
Fill in the boxes using
numbers between 1 and 9
so that each column, each
row, and each 3x3 square
contain all nine numbers
only once.