On the Trail of the Great Game in the Hindu Kush

 

Travelling through Northern Pakistan in the footsteps of George Hayward

Originally published in Globe, the magazine of the Globetrotters Club, May 2011

http://globetrotters.co.uk/globe-magazine.html

 

On a bright autumn morning I set out walking along the Yasin Valley, high in the Hindu Kush Mountains in the wild borderlands of northern Pakistan. Stark, iron-grey slopes rose on either side towards a cobalt-blue sky. In the lower reaches of the valley the poplar trees were flaming brushstrokes of copper-gold in the sharp sunlight, and the voices of children and the bleating of goats carried on the still air.

My destination – the end-point of a year of research and travel – lay twenty miles ahead in the little hamlet of Darkot, last settlement before a high pass that led towards Afghanistan. I was travelling in the footsteps of the 19th Century British explorer George Hayward, heading for the spot where, in 1870, he was brutally murdered while trying to reach the Pamir Mountains.

I had first come across brief accounts of Hayward’s strange story in books about “the Great Game”, the cold war of spying and exploration fought between Russia and the British Empire in the turbulent spaces of Central Asia in the 19th Century, and had been fascinated ever since. Like all the explorers who travelled in the region in the heyday of empire, Hayward straddled the boundary between espionage and scientific endeavour. But unlike his contemporaries – men with stiff upper lips and flying moustaches – he was somehow more modern, more intense. The motives for his murder remain a mystery to this day.

The first journeys in my quest to find out more about this intriguing figure had taken me to the British Library and the Royal Geographical Society in London. But once I had leafed through Hayward’s letters, squinted at the squiggles of his spidery handwriting, and rifled the reams of conflicting reports on his death, I had hit a rockier road.

For three years, in his desperate attempts to reach the Pamirs, Hayward had criss-crossed the high mountains of Asia, passing through the Karakoram in winter without a tent, being held hostage in Kashgar and falling out with the Maharaja of Kashmir, before finally coming to a sticky end in the Yasin Valley.

Over the course of four wonderful months 140 years later, I rode rickety buses through Kashmir, hitchhiked across Ladakh, crossed Xinjiang during a total communications black-out enforced by the Chinese government, and now, finally, I was approaching my goal.

I had been to Pakistan before, but this was my first return since the recent turmoil which has tipped the troubled nation to the very brink of the abyss. Coming in the footsteps of a fellow countryman who was beheaded by the locals didn’t, I had to admit, seem like the luckiest of pilgrimages, but in the ten days since I arrived on the stomach-churning Karakoram Highway from China I had met nothing but warm welcomes and hot cups of tea. The ramshackle town of Gilgit, capital of Pakistan’s far north, had been a place of firm handshakes and wild polo matches, and the Hunza Valley had been achingly beautiful. Yasin itself was a place of sharp light and gifts.

It was late afternoon when I shambled into Darkot, a cold, stony village of flat-roofed houses beneath scored brown slopes. A ragged glacier curved to the west and the trail to the pass that Hayward had been trying to cross when he was killed bent away to the north.

But today Darkot seemed a world away from the political troubles of both the 19th century and the modern era. Gaggles of friendly children led me to the house of the local schoolmaster, Mohamed Murad. He was completely unperturbed by my arrival and invited me to stay the night, though he later told me I was the first foreign traveller to visit Darkot for more than a year.

After plying me with fresh bread and salty mountain tea Murad and another kindly teacher named Abdul Rashid led me to the spot where Hayward was killed – still known today as Feringhi Bar, “the Foreigner’s Valley”. It was a strangely beautiful spot, a patch of goat-cropped grass beneath a buckled apricot tree with the mountains all around. There, in the company of Murad, Abdul Rashid and a local farmer called Badal Beg I was treated to an impromptu picnic and a taste of the warm hospitality for which the rugged uplands of northern Pakistan are rightly famous.

It was, I decided as I sipped my tea looking out across the high peaks of the Hindu Kush, a fitting end to my pilgrimage…

©Tim Hannigan 2011
 

The full story of George Hayward’s wild life and violent death – and of Tim Hannigan’s own travels in Hayward’s footsteps – is told in Murder in the Hindu Kush, published by the History Press. You can find out more about the book at www.murderinthehindukush.com.

 

A Pakistani Mountain Adventure

Travelling in Gilgit-Baltistan, Northern Pakistan,

Originally published in the Jakarta Globe, 22/12/09

http://thejakartaglobe.com/lifeandtimes/a-pakistani-mountain-adventure/348760

Another gust of turbulent wind rushed up the valley and the suspension bridge – a rickety, meter-wide tangle of frayed wires and weathered planks – swayed wildly. Far below the Hunza River churned its cold course. I clung on desperately, and for the first time since arriving in Pakistan I felt like I was in danger...

Violence and unrest in the region has seen Pakistan – once a hot-spot for adventure travel – drop off the world tourism map in recent years. But as I would discover the mountainous region of Gilgit-Baltistan has remained unaffected by the troubles plaguing the rest of the country, and the welcome to travelers there remains one of the warmest in Asia.

My journey had begun in Gilgit, eponymous capital of the region. The international news pages had been full of tales of violence in Pakistan for weeks, and after stepping down late at night from a long-distance bus from China I slept fitfully, wondering what exactly I was doing here. A stroll in the bazaar in the bright sunlight of the morning saw all my apprehensions evaporate. The delightfully chaotic streets hummed with Central Asian smells – fruit, spice and grilling meat – and an endless succession of piratical-looking men offered hearty handshakes and cups of chai (Pakistani tea). Going anywhere in Gilgit in a hurry was impossible – chai and chat at every turn were an obligation.
Until recently Gilgit-Baltistan was known as the Northern Areas; the new name was chosen specifically to distinguish the region from more turbulent spots like Swat and Peshawar. Everyone I met in Gilgit was eager to stress that this place was somehow different – there were no Taliban here!
Gilgit lies at the point where the Himalayas, the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush, the three behemoths of the greater Asian mountain system, come together. The region has the world’s highest concentration of peaks over 7000 meters. This wild geography creates a wild atmosphere, and nothing is as wild as a local polo match. The Game of Kings as it is played here is a world away from the gentile sport of British royalty. On my first afternoon in Gilgit I watched the Army’s Northern Light Infantry team beat the Police in a thunderous hour of dust and horse sweat. There are no rules in Gilgiti polo – the five-man teams simply gallop back and forth to a soundtrack of skirling pipes and drums. The horsemanship was incredible, the pace was blistering, and when the army won the crowd went wild.

Safely reassured that I was not crazy to be travelling in Pakistan I headed west to the remote valley of Yasin. The road cleaved to sheer, snow-streaked mountainsides above the cobalt-blue waters of the Gilgit River. In the villages the leaves of the willows and poplar trees were a blaze of red and gold in the autumn sunlight.
Despite being culturally and geographically separate, when India and Pakistan gained their independence from Britain, Gilgit-Baltistan was technically part of Kashmir. India still claims the region, and as a disputed territory the Pakistani government has never accorded it full provincial status. Locals complain of years of neglect by Islamabad, and it was only during the presidency of General Musharaf that there was investment in infrastructure in hidden valleys. Ten years ago only a dirt track led to Yasin.
It was a beautiful place beneath a high, clear sky. For three days I travelled north on foot, and in every village I was welcomed into homes, given a place of honor and fed to bursting on coarse bread, yoghurt and pomegranates. The idea that Pakistan was a hostile country began to seem absurd. The people of Yasin are Ismaeli Muslims, followers of the Aga Khan. Many locals like to ascribe Gilgit-Baltistan’s tranquility to the fact that it is the only part of Pakistan where Shias and Ismaelis dominate. In truth geography probably has more to do with it: Yasin is just 150 kilometers from the former Taliban fiefdom of Swat, but with ridges of sky-scraping mountains in between it might as well be on another planet.

From Yasin I returned to Gilgit and headed north on the Karakoram Highway. This fabled strip of tenuous tarmac snakes 1300 kilometers from Islamabad all the way to China, crossing the 4733 meter Khunjerab Pass en route. The road led me to Hunza, a fairytale kingdom in the high Karakorams. The Hunza Valley is flanked by truly enormous mountains – Ultar, Shishpar, Diran, Golden Peak and Rakaposhi. The light was sharper than glass. In the villages apricots were drying on rooftops and local Ismaeli women smiled and greeted me in English – a startling experience for a foreign man travelling in Pakistan.
Hunza was once the centerpiece of northern Pakistan’s tourist industry, and in the main village of Karimabad I realized just how badly people have suffered here. Suicide bombs and Talibanization belong to another world, but they have stemmed the flow of tourists along the Karakoram Highway. The handful of hardy adventurers who make it to Karimabad these days are outnumbered by empty guesthouses, bankrupt gift-shops and one-time tour-guides gone back to their fields. Over an incongruous cup of cappuccino in a cafe owned by his family a local businessman called Javeed told me how bad it has been. “People will not starve, because they have land so they can go back to farming. But it has been tough. Tourism was basically the lifeblood here and people got used to it,” he said.

From Hunza I would continue north on the Karakoram Highway, back into China, but I had one final stop to make in Pakistan. The little village of Passu lies beneath the snout of a huge glacier and a wall of glowing granite spires. Gilgit-Baltistan is famous trekking country and Passu is the starting point for one of the best day hikes in the region, a route that crosses and re-crosses the Hunza River – on a pair of hair-raising suspension bridges...
The first bridge – built to connect summer fields on the far bank with the villages around Passu – was some 500 meters long, and the construction did not inspire confidence. Lengths of rusty cable were loosely lashed together and splintered strips of planking slotted between them. There were gaps of more than a meter between some of the footholds.
With my heart in my mouth I crossed to the far shore, but when I arrived at the head of the second bridge, a few kilometers downstream, things seemed much worse. The wind was howling and I could see the bridge swaying wildly back and forth. Beside it – like a grim warning – hung the remnants of an earlier crossing, all snapped wires and dangling planks. The prospect was terrifying. I took the first tentative step. Beneath me the cold, gray water rushed past. Flurries of dusty wind rushed up the valley. The bridge lurched. Panic rose and I clung on for dear life until the wind eased.
When I finally reached solid ground I slumped onto a rock to settle my nerves. As calm returned I watched two locals trotting merrily across the bridge in opposite directions, pausing to chat midstream. As I watched them I began to feel a bit silly. The bridge had certainly looked an alarming prospect, but in truth it had carried me high above troubled waters. It was, I realized, much like Gilgit-Baltistan itself, floating serenely hundreds of meters above the troubles of the rest of Pakistan...

© Tim Hannigan 2009