Where the Indus is Young

by Dervla Murphy

  There was heavy traffic this morning because Khapalu’s meadows are on the highland. Fodder is stored there, in semi-underground circular stone shelters, and is carried down as required, either in wicker baskets for straw (which the Baltis call hay) or in colossal roped bundles of hay (which the Baltis call grass), worn on the shoulders like monstrous rucksacks. Occasionally yak or dzo are taken up, but it is reckoned that the extra feed they need before this trip makes their use uneconomic. We met several mixed groups of men and women coming down: they must have left home at dawn and travelled fast. The women were well-built, handsome and high-spirited, with clear skins, strong white teeth and glossy hair in many small braids. They all stopped to greet us and Rachel was given sweet juicy pears and home-made Balti biscuits disinterred from the recesses of rarely-washed garments but instantly devoured by the delighted recipient. These light-hearted women and girls were carrying loads that would prostrate the average twentieth-century European male and I could not help comparing them to their puny-looking sisters in Skardu and Gilgit.

  We were ravenous when we came out on the jeep-track, beyond which our path continued to climb steadily to the foot of the southern mountains. Before following it we picnicked near a convenient ‘summer residence’. Many of these one-roomed huts are surrounded by fodder stores which now look like ill-made igloos dotting the highland. We followed new footprints through deep snow and behind the hut found an endearing ten-year-old boy diligently feeding a flock of eight minute sheep. In the background a shaggy she-goat with a manic-depressive air was for no evident reason repeatedly ramming her horns against a stone wall. Possibly she was protesting against her lunch as best she knew how, for it seemed to have consisted entirely of dried leaves. In Baltistan there are no autumn bonfires: every leaf is hoarded for fodder. We sat on a snow-free edge of a roof to eat our hard-boiled eggs – throwing the shells to the goat – and watched Hassan at his task. First the sheep, too, were given an armful of dried leaves, and then a bundle of some aromatic herb that looks like sage but isn’t, and then a basket of barley-straw, and finally a twist of hay smelling strongly, as all the best Balti hay does, of wild thyme. It was not surprising that the she-goat felt jealous. We later discovered that Hassan had driven the animals up to feed them because all the adult members of his family are ill and he himself is too small to carry down enough fodder. While his flock was eating he set about clearing the shelter roofs of snow with a heavy shovel: otherwise the imminent thaw would destroy both buildings and fodder. This was no easy task for a little boy but he is a sturdy lad and seemed happy as he worked.

  The sun felt very hot when we left Hassan alone amidst the white silence of his fields. Rejoining the footpath, we climbed steadily towards those severe grey summits whose snowy skirts merge into the highland. As we approached the base of the crags the afternoon cloud began to gather, though without lessening the sun’s power; it was just a vast, symmetrical fan of silver vapour, its handle pointing east. Rachel eyed it for a moment and then observed, ‘I suppose that’s the mist we saw being drawn up from the Shyok this morning.’ It is odd how unalike we are. I revel in the morning’s mist and the afternoon’s cloud formations, but left to myself I would never connect the two.

  Then suddenly, as we sat on a rock amidst all that brilliance and stillness and changeless beauty, I thought for some inexplicable reason of ‘Outside’. And I felt an absurd spasm of disbelief in the existence of that busy, noisy, ever-changing turmoil from which we have now been completely cut off for two months. Never before have I felt so detached from the rest of the world and from my own past and future. Here the present is so simple and satisfying and undemanding – and so full of peace and beauty – that one is more than willing to pretend nothing else ever has existed or ever can exist. Each day I seem to feel more deeply content and inwardly stronger, as though the uncomplicated joy of travelling through these mountains were a form of nourishment. If we settled here I suppose I would eventually become restless and anxious to be reinvolved with all the people, places and activities that make up my normal life. But as yet I feel only enrichment.

  On the way down to the jeep-track junction we were accompanied by five young men carrying fodder. Then Hassan joined the party, driving his little flock home and staggering under a load of ‘grass’ as big as himself. He was finding it hard to manage his heavy shovel, too, and to keep pace with his flock, so I took the shovel over my shoulder and Rachel went bounding ahead of us down the path, shouting Balti swear words at any sheep who showed an inclination to stray from the straight and narrow. (Actually it was crooked and narrow.) The sun still shone warm on our side of the valley and in places the path had become a shallow stream. Twice I slipped and sat down hard, reducing our companions to paroxysms of mirth. My pidgin Balti provoked more laughter and when we were joined by the singing goatherd his obstreperous animals occasioned further mirth by repeatedly trying to steal from Hassan’s load. One could not wish for more accepting, heart-warming companionship. As I deposited Hassan’s shovel outside his home Rachel received three precious little pears from a gnarled and half-blind but very gracious grandad.

  Khapalu – 19 February

  Today we returned to Bara and found our friends sitting on their roof in the sun, guarding an expanse of golden-brown barley which needed to be aired before being ground. Nearby their daughter-in-law was shelling apricot kernels while a granddaughter – aged nine but smaller than Rachel – knitted a balaclava for her baby brother; she was using home-made wooden needles, so progress was slow. Balti females of all ages are ceaselessly industrious. Tiny girls wash clothes in icy streams, and spin wool or knit while sitting on sunny roofs laughing and chatting. Opposite our friends’ roof half-a-dozen young women were struggling to mend a primitive loom which hung from the next roof up, where several men sat weaving wicker pannier baskets. As always, animals and poultry scampered or flew from roof to roof, being formally abused by everyone but never ill-treated. And amidst the goats and sheep, and the newborn kids and lambs, and the coy hens teasing randy cocks, wandered innumerable human young with bare bottoms and runny noses. I could have sat there happily for hours but the object of the exercise was to repay hospitality, not to receive it, so having presented our little gift of biro pens we stayed only briefly lest a meal might be prepared for us.

  Near Bara we saw a magnificent woodpecker – olive green with a crimson head and speckled breast. He flew just ahead of us, from tree to tree, tapping experimentally – the picture of a harassed house hunter, with his mate impatiently scolding him from a tree on the other side of the track.

  Every day now the sound of water is louder throughout Khapalu as the ice relaxes its grip on countless streams and torrents. This afternoon we followed tumultuous irrigation channels, bridged by great slabs of rock, and then penetrated a labyrinth of old houses and stables and granaries and mills – such an unplanned jumble of stones that the buildings seemed an integral part of the mountainside. Three of the young women we met yesterday on the highland path invited us into a ‘Wendy-house’ mill, fragrant with the aroma of roasted barley. We were given fistfuls of satu, which can enjoyably be eaten dry – a little at a time. Then a small girl came forward from a shadowy doorway, slipped three bracelets off her wrist, presented them to an astonished Rachel and ran off smiling shyly over her shoulder. The generosity of these people is very moving. Round the next corner a toothless old woman, with a gay sparkle in her eye, signed us to wait and reappeared a moment later with two new-laid eggs; and from the kerosene merchant Rachel received a handful of walnuts.

  On our way home we met Raja Sahib, strolling through the bazaar with his elder son – recently appointed a police officer – and followed at a respectful distance by a group of elderly henchmen. When I told him that we were planning a trek to his ruined ancestral fort he said the path would be too difficult for Rachel and invited her to spend tomorrow at the Palace.

  Khapalu – 20 February

  As it was a grey morning, with m
ore snow threatening, I postponed my fort trek and instead we explored Saling village, north of the Shyok.

  At this season animals ford the river about a mile downstream from the Rest House, while humans use the two low footbridges which are constructed in September and dismantled in May, by families who have been responsible for the task from time immemorial. The larger is near the Rest House, a swaying contraption of rounded tree-trunks that seem only loosely tied together. It is long for a home-made model – some forty yards – but on the way over Rachel was taken pick-a-back by a young man who crossed specially to help us. This was a great relief: I found it difficult enough to keep my own balance while seeing the clear green water racing beneath my feet. (There is a six-inch gap between the tree trunks.)

  Saling is on the sunny side of the valley and today, for the first time in six weeks, we saw snow-free acres of brown earth, over which flocks of crows and choughs circled and squabbled, swooping down at intervals for feasts of worms and giving a novel air of animation to the scene.

  At some time in the past this group of hamlets seems to have been much more important and prosperous than it now is. There are some half-ruined but quite elaborate fortifications, a few handsome though decrepit mosques, numerous substantial dwellings and the Raja’s winter residence. This fine house is the largest in the village but has not been used for years though it must be incomparably warmer than the Palace.

  On our return Rachel went first over the bridge while I firmly grasped her left hand. The worst moments were at the maladjusted junctions of tree-trunks where one had to manoeuvre on to another level while the whole wretched device swayed like a hammock. ‘Isn’t this fun!’ exclaimed Rachel delightedly. ‘Great fun!’ I agreed hypocritically between clenched teeth. As we landed a little group waiting to cross to Saling cheered ironically before briskly tripping over with enormous loads on their backs and awkward bundles in each hand. ‘Aren’t they clever!’ said Rachel.

  Khapalu – 21 February

  Today’s climb towards the old fort was not really difficult, apart from one stretch where the neglected path was crumbling over snowy rocks a hundred feet below. I certainly could not have faced that with Rachel. I never found the ruins, which presumably are now under snow, but they served their purpose by giving me an excuse for climbing the mountain. From river level it looks a mere hill, because of the surrounding giants, but when one is on it it feels what it is – something the height of Mont Blanc and very steep.

  Much of the path is vague, but the Raja’s younger son had showed me where it should be and I lost it only once, which led to an exhausting scramble through waist-deep snow, as fine and dry as caster sugar yet hard to manage on such a gradient. At first the Palace was visible, shrinking to doll’s house proportions with tiny dots watching my progress, the tiniest dot of all being Rachel. Then I rounded a rocky bulge and was out of sight of spectators, which was rather a relief.

  The gradient became easier as I passed – even here! – a stairway of mini-fields. No one can accuse the Baltis of wasting land; they manage to grow crops where even the Nepalese would give up. The path crosses this mountain by a saddle some 200 feet below a craggy, snow-free, brown summit and a rounded snow-laden summit which this morning bore the neat tracks of ibex. From the saddle one looks down into a high, shallow side-valley, on the lap of tremendous peaks and approached by a precipitous stairway of boulders covered with thick glassy ice. Two hamlets are visible, one near the foot of the path and the other high up on the opposite mountain.

  This valley must contain a pocket of Shiahs: in the first hamlet all the women fled before I had been identified as female. Then I was recognised as Raja Sahib’s new friend and everybody wanted to know where my bungo and ghora were; I had to promise to bring Rachel another day, by the easier track that runs around rather than over the mountain.

  From a little distance the higher hamlet looked a mere huddle of heaped stones, with handfuls of mud shoved into the larger crevices. The permanently-shadowed passageways between hovels were stairways of frozen snow, neatly shaped by shovels, and so many tree-trunk ends were protruding from the walls that I had to walk bent almost double. It was hard to distinguish between the ‘public highway’ and the corridors that lead from one part of a dwelling to another, and for once no curious inhabitants appeared. Yet I was all the time aware of being watched as I hesitantly made my way through the twilit passages, towards the snow slopes beyond. I could not, however, get very much further. Soon the path petered out, amidst a strange array of weirdly shaped snow-drifts, and icicles like cathedral pillars, and to have gone on without mountaineering equipment would have been unwise.

  On the way down I met three worried-looking elders who had decided it was their duty to warn me against going higher. Having established that I was female they led me on to a rooftop – one of the few in this bleak hamlet to get some midday sun – and invited me to rest on a goat-skin. An ancient woman with black teeth and dim eyes abandoned her weaving the better to study me: and then suddenly a mob of excited women and children came swarming on to the roof from every direction – several small boys along the branches of a tree, out of which they dropped like so many monkeys. At once the women began to laugh and joke with me as though we were old friends; amongst these extrovert Baltis the language barrier is not allowed to matter. Everybody looked filthy, but healthy enough apart from eye diseases. (I have seen few goitres around Khapalu.) A saucer of neatly-shelled walnuts and apricot kernels was produced and the party continued for over an hour, watched by half a dozen men who sat on adjacent roofs attending to their winter chores of basket-weaving, spinning, kernel-pounding (to extract oil) and felt boot-making.

  On the way back over the saddle I made a detour to follow the footprints of an ibex-hunter. These led me up to the rounded, snowy summit – where I would not have dared to go had there been no prints – and at the highest point I rested on a flat rock littered with apricot kernel shells. (Blessed is the country where litter takes this form!) As I was relishing the luxury of unbroken silence I noticed a diverting phenomenon. I was pouring sweat after the hard climb and in the cold air the hot sun was drawing clouds of steam off me, so that I looked like a boiling kettle.

  The descent took longer than the climb: every step had to be carefully judged on rapidly thawing snow. As I came into view of the Palace a faint yet very clear call floated joyfully up through the stillness – ‘Mummy!’

  Salted tea and crisp paratas were awaiting me and Raja Sahib had hot news from the high village of Hushe – our next objective. Much of the path is still under four feet of snow but the thaw has started and it should be possible to take a ghora to the village within a few days. So I have decided on the 26th as our departure date – In’sh Allah.

  Khapalu – 22 February

  Another hot spring day, though in shady places the slush had frozen anew by 3 p.m. I can easily believe what the locals say about Khapalu’s average summer temperature being between 80º and 90ºF.

  Today we again visited Bara and saw how the thaw at once brings the Balti landscape to life. A few days ago the only visible activity was the noon watering and airing of cattle; now there is a positive bustle of work, all centred on fertilising the fields. By the side of the track stood many mounds of manure seven or eight feet high and thoroughly mixed with wood-ash. Hundreds of tiny donkeys were carrying this mixture in wicker pannier-baskets to the flat land by the Shyok, where it is again piled in mounds ready to be spread on the fields the moment the snow melts. No time must be lost if a crop is to be harvested from the rich river soil before the summer floods. This enormous donkey population astonished me; I have never seen them out with the other animals. Many are jet black, while others are a most attractive smoky blue and all are as furry as cuddly toys.

  Small children drive the donkeys, leaving their elders free for the heavy shovelling work which is done by both sexes. Obviously everybody was rejoicing to be out and active after months of enforced idleness. The very smell
of the manure was springlike, though not exactly fragrant, most of it being human excrement. Baltistan in winter is strangely odourless, apart from an occasional whiff of dried thyme in some areas.

  Khapalu – 23 February

  This has been a foul day, most untypical of Baltistan and hard to describe. It was not exactly snowing, or raining, or hailing, or sleeting; a very fine snow, which seemed to melt as it touched the ground, probably best describes it. We walked to the bazaar at noon, through a pale grey twilight, and when I called to the Post Office for aerogrammes I found that it was Sunday. But a cheerful little boy soon located the Postmaster who says he will probably be sending a bag out next week – by mail-runner to Skardu, where it will await a plane to Pindi.

  On the way home we met a young teacher from Saling – he entertained us there the other day – and got into conversation about what passes here for ‘local politics’. Our friend lavishly praised Mr Bhutto for helping the Northern Areas in practical ways and declared that his is the first Pakistani government to take any real interest in Baltistan. I don’t know how true this is, but most Baltis seem to be enthusiastically pro-Bhutto and those not impressed by his efforts belong to the tiny educated class. Elsewhere one would say that this is because his reforms have interfered with local vested interests, but no such interests exist here. Some critics argue that subsidised foods sap the peasants’ pride and could – as with aid to refugees – quickly get them into the way of regarding cheap food as their right. However, having glimpsed the extremity of poverty that prevails in most Balti villages, one cannot but commend any effort to relieve it by any means.