It is only the intrepid traveller who finds himself drawn to Pakistan. But fortune, as they say, favours the brave, as anyone who journeys to the Land of the Pure will discover.
It was too late to cancel our stay in Gahkuch when we learnt that the wedding we were supposed to attend had been postponed. So there I was, with my travelling companions, in the small busy town in remote Gilgit-Baltistan, the northernmost territory of Pakistan. Rugged mountains rose all around and the broad Gilgit River, milky-grey from fine silt, glistened nearby. The air was cool and thin, the light was bright and clear at 2,000m above sea level.
The main street of Gahkuch was lined with small shops selling farming tools and household goods. Food stalls offered kebabs and the ubiquitous milk tea, scooped into small cups from pots kept constantly on the boil, while bakeries churned out fresh flatbread. We wandered through the shops and picked up some vegetables at the market stalls.
A man in plain clothes approached our guide, spoke briefly, then walked away. “Military,” our guide said. “He was asking about the other person.” He meant our missing companion, who was back at the hotel.
It was oddly reassuring to know we were being watched. At every checkpoint along the way, our credentials were inspected and our passage noted. Yet, the soldiers and policemen were courteous, even friendly. When I asked to photograph one policeman, he grinned and adjusted his cap for the picture.
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There was only one proper hotel in Gahkuch. It was spacious if a little gloomy, with a large lawn. We were the only guests and pre-ordered our meals well in advance so the cook could go to the market for ingredients. Hotel staff accompanied us on our shopping trips, translating, bargaining and carrying our purchases.
The hotel cook was an unkempt-looking man who took an hour to prepare meals from scratch, but the food was good. There was mutton biryani, chicken handi (curry), fried chicken with vegetables, and mashed spinach for dinner.
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He had a brother who was also working as a cook in Malaysia, well known and well regarded by many of the Pakistanis we encountered on our journey. Some had friends or relatives who had been or were working in Malaysia, and a waiter once thanked us with “Terima kasih”.
We left Gahkuch the next morning, travelling on the almost empty road in the river valley. Our destination was Gilgit, about 90km away. The river ran beside us — gurgling, shimmering in the early light, running over a rocky bed — with its broad sandbanks. The valley had rugged and rough terrain rising steeply on either side. It was postcard-magnificent country, empty and hauntingly beautiful.
Traffic was very light: the occasional passenger van, with some passengers clinging to the back; a motorcycle or two; and a few garishly-decorated lorries. We stopped at a small roadside tavern in a sunlit, grassy meadow. Within the building, people were cleaning trout freshly caught from the river, so we had grilled fish in the shade of trees in a field by the river.
The only other visitors were a few local families. Natural curiosity and hospitality collided with deeply conservative values. The womenfolk retired when they saw strange men, but they were very friendly and welcoming to the women in our small party, sharing food and banter with them farther away and out of sight.
Journey to the past
In the late morning, we turned onto a rutted road and passed through small villages, bound for a vestige of a distant past. Several kilometres later, the path ended at a cliff face. High up on the rock wall was a 15m-tall bas relief. The figure was standing, with one arm partially raised, the other arm to the side.
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The face was broad, with elongated earlobes. It was the Kargah Buddha, estimated to be from the 7th century CE, when Buddhism was prevalent in this part of the world.
According to an information board at the site, the figure, also known locally as Yatchani, represents the Maitreya Bodhisattva, with the only other figure in a similar style being found in Ladakh, India. The board explains that the carving was believed to represent a fierce demon and notes its differences from Gandhara art, a Greco-Roman style of Buddhist art developed in the 7th century CE and named after the Gandhara region in northwest Pakistan.
We continued on our journey to Gilgit, the largest town and administrative capital of Gilgit-Baltistan territory. The ancient city was once a major destination on the old Silk Road and an important Buddhist centre, with Chinese and Tibetan influence during the 6th to 7th centuries CE.
Ancient texts and borderlands
The Gilgit manuscripts — Buddhist texts discovered in the area by cattle grazers — are some of the oldest in the world. They were written on hardy tree bark and include four Buddhist sutras, including the Lotus Sutra. Believed to be almost 17 centuries old, they are kept in India (having been airlifted from Pakistan during the Partition period) and are still in the process of being deciphered by experts.
Just before town, we stopped and walked along a wooden suspension bridge over the Gilgit River — to look at an obviously man-made cut-out in a rock called Agortham’s Boulder in the shallow water. It is thought that an ancient ruler of Gilgit, Agortham, had built an iron cage on the rock to imprison his daughter for attempting to overthrow him.
Gilgit is considered a frontier town because of its proximity to the borders of Afghanistan and China, and it felt like it.
Gilgit-Baltistan is part of the Kashmir region, which has long been claimed by both Pakistan and India. Besides the tensions with India, the Taliban were active in parts of the northern territories years ago.
The city had a noticeable military presence, with armed personnel manning checkpoints on several roads. A helicopter, marked with “Indian Army,” was prominently displayed on a traffic circle.
According to a Pakistan Defence website, it had been on a spying mission in 2011 and was captured after landing near the border.
Gilgit is also a gateway to adventure. Many travel agents advertised hiking and cycling expeditions to the surrounding countryside and beyond, including a cycling trip to Xinjiang, China, over the high Khunjerab Pass. As a result, there was a good selection of accommodation, including luxury options.
Peaks and infinite horizons
The Serena Hotel, Gilgit, was hidden behind a tall wall on a hill. A security guard scanned the undercarriage of the vehicle with a mounted mirror, a spiked metal ram barrier was lowered, and we drove through a metal gate and passed barricades in the driveway (to slow the vehicle down), before going through a metal detector in the reception area.
Inside, the hotel was a picture of luxury, with thick carpets, wooden furniture and views of sprawling gardens. Beyond, the mighty Karakoram Range loomed, with the snow-capped peak of 7,788m Mount Rakaposhi in clear sight.
The largest market in the territory is in Gilgit. Called the NLI market, it is a large sprawl of well-stocked shops with an endless array of electronics, clothes, jewellery, and toy and provision shops, with small eateries and restaurants scattered here and there. The dried fruits and nuts stalls stocked a large variety of local produce — honey, jams, dried fruits and various grades of nuts. At a jewellery store, the shopkeeper even told us he had spent three years working in a textile outlet in Bahau, Negeri Sembilan!
Fish does not feature prominently on the Pakistani food menu, but we had the unusual opportunity to have fresh trout again. We had called several places before finding the pleasant, clean restaurant, overlooking the river in a gorge below. We feasted on fried trout, with chicken biryani, chicken karahi (curry), chapse dowdo (a noodle soup with thick-cut strands made from freshly made capati, found in parts of Gilgit-Baltistan), vegetables and more tandoor-baked bread than we could possibly eat.
We flew out of Gilgit the next day after undergoing the strictest security protocol I’ve ever encountered at any airport.
The plane, a turboprop ATR, soared into the clear blue sky. The pilot had advised us to sit on the left for a view of the mountains, as we would fly over Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest peak in the world. The creased, mountainous territory of Gilgit-Baltistan unfolded below us, a seeming eternity of rocks, rivers and snowy pinnacles. Gilgit faded away into a small grey patch of clustered buildings, lost in the vast landscape, with the braided ribbon of a river beside it, glistening like silver in the morning sun.
