Where the Indus is Young

by Dervla Murphy

  Mundik – 27 February

  I was comfortable without gloves as we left Marzi Gone at 7.45, having been grossly overcharged for Hallam’s fodder. The recent rise in temperature means a much longer day; if need be, one could now trek from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. But the thaw also has minor disadvantages. When we stop to picnic it is no longer possible to cool Rachel’s tea with fresh snow and I sorely miss my snowball loo-paper. Stones have quite a different effect.

  This morning was tinged with regret as we retreated down the valley from Masherbrum, yet no one could possibly feel depressed in such surroundings, breathing air of intoxicating crispness and with a long day’s walking ahead.

  By eight o’clock swarms of villagers were carrying manure to the fields – we saw no donkeys up the Hushe Valley – and the routine seemed to be for the men of the family to stand by the dung-heaps with wooden shovels, filling the large baskets roped to their womenfolk’s shoulders. The women sat on the ground while this was being done and then struggled unaided to their feet and went to the family fields. There, with a swift parody of a deep bow, they deposited their reeking load without removing the basket and at once turned back for a refill. The numbers of small children engaged in this work, wearing mini-baskets, showed the importance of child-labour hereabouts and the consequent impracticality of setting up schools which are attended only when the pupils have nothing more important to do.

  Many of the young women had beautiful faces surmounted by silver ornaments and filthy shawls. The majority walked barefooted on ground still hard with frost and were clad in rags – scraps of cotton and bits of blanket and shreds of goat-skin clumsily sewn together. Frequently people sought medicine for themselves and their children and – being used to expedition medical ‘aid’ – rather resented my inability to help. But, however young or old or ill-looking, everyone carried their heavy loads apparently effortlessly, often up mile-long precipitous paths.

  We were back on the floor of the Shyok Valley by 10.30, before it had become too mucky after a night of hard frost. Halfway through Saling we were briefly held up when Rachel took her mind off her work and the load caught on a poplar sapling and was dragged to the ground. It is not easy to ride a laden ghora on narrow, tree-lined paths.

  At noon, when we were within hailing distance of Khapalu’s Rest House, we turned west down the right bank of the Shyok. Until we get back to Gol we will be on an old pony-trail which was the main trade route before the building of the left bank bridle-track (recently converted to a jeep-track) in the early 1920s. Soon we came to another footbridge, only about two feet above the Shyok. Here I had to adjust the load again, before Rachel rode Hallam through belly-deep water, and the next stage was a toilsome trudge over a mile of soft, dry sand where ravenous and wildly irritating sand flies followed us in clouds – the first insects of any kind that we have seen in Baltistan. Near the unlikely-sounding village of Youski we picnicked by a sparkling stream in the shade of stately walnut-trees and within moments were surrounded by excited, smiling women, carrying manure-baskets and/or babies. As we ate they squatted in a row in the sun to watch us, and the nursing mothers took advantage of this lull in fertilising activities to produce breasts for the refreshment of avid infants, most of whom had infected eyes.

  Beyond Youski the track climbed and for about two miles was hewn out of the mountain. The Shyok flowed wide and green at the base of the cliff and above us towered stark rock-faces, which support neither snow in winter nor growth in summer. At no stage was this an easy route, but its initial complications did nothing to prepare us for the horror of a stretch where to all appearances the track simply ceased to exist. Here Hallam was required to ascend a steep pile of rocks on a narrow ledge overhanging the Shyok about 100 feet below. I would have turned back had we not met, near Youski, two heavily-laden pack-ponies coming from Dhagoni. As they must have used this path it was evidently the sort of thing Balti ponies take in their stride. But they had been loaded in a suitable manner, with bulging sheep-skins piled high – not protruding on both sides, like our load. So when Rachel had dismounted – on the wrong side, for obvious reasons – and been wedged into a safe crevice in the cliff pro tem, I set about cautiously unloading. Then I led Hallam over – every moment expecting him to break a leg – tethered him to a rock and returned twice for the load. My third trip was to unwedge Rachel and guide her over. This was not an alarming stretch from my point of view – there was plenty of room for humans – but it was a climb rather than a walk and I therefore judged it best to keep a firm grip on her, lest in her inexperience she might trust her weight to a chunk of friable rock. By the time I had reloaded Hallam I was beginning to feel my age.

  When the track again descended to river level it became a wide channel of deep mud into which Hallam and I sank exhaustingly at every step. Sometimes we walked on the snow where it was still firm enough to bear us, but in most places it had already thawed underneath. Then up we went again, on a gradient of lung-searing severity, to another large, straggling village. I was about to seek shelter when we were hailed in English. Looking around in wild surmise we saw a slim young man standing on the edge of a nearby roof wearing maroon and white striped pyjamas and cleaning his teeth. He waved his toothbrush vigorously and yelled, ‘Come ladies from Ireland and be our guests!’

  ‘How does he know we’re ladies from Ireland?’ marvelled Rachel. ‘You don’t look like a lady from anywhere!’

  We soon found that Liaqat Ali and his colleague, Ali Hussain (in blue and white striped pyjamas), are Health Inspectors from a small town in the Gilgit Agency and had heard of us through Mazhar. They remain in a village for six weeks, trying to teach the locals elementary hygiene, but as neither speaks Balti, and the villagers speak no Urdu, the language barrier is a serious difficulty. They are charming young men, immensely kind and clearly dedicated to their work, but conversation is something of a strain because their English is almost as feeble as my Urdu. They obviously believe in practising what they preach and are the first really clean people we have seen for a long time, with smooth-shaven faces, beautifully groomed hair, manicured hands and impeccably laundered clothes. I prefer not to imagine what they must think of the depths of personal filth to which the ‘ladies from Ireland’ have sunk. But I believe we are wise in our dirt. These two skinny young men complain of incessant colds and coughs, whereas we have been completely germ-free since leaving the plains – Allah be praised! Undoubtedly the best protection against the mid-winter Himalayan cold is that natural oil produced for the purpose by one’s own skin. Not for nothing did the Tibetans grease themselves all over instead of washing.

  Our friends share a tiny bed-sitter and it was difficult to dissuade them from sacrificing their charpoys to us. We are now installed in the even tinier adjacent kitchen, where their local servant cooks for them. He is not over-extended, their menu consisting of the famous Balti specialities of roti, onions, dahl and eggs, with rice for special occasions. This evening we had rice and dahl – about quarter the amount I could have eaten, after walking fifty-four miles since yesterday morning on three Balti shortbreads, two hard-boiled eggs and a pocketful of dried fruit.

  A narrow charpoy with sagging ropes was moved into the kitchen when the servant had cleared up after supper, and because the mud floor is so wet (post wash-up) I shall have to share this bed with Rachel. I am writing on the floor beside the glowing wood embers in the mud stove, by the light of a string wick immersed in an ink-bottle of kerosene. This is Baltistan’s most popular form of illumination – not designed for the convenience of itinerant authors.

  In some of these villages the people remind me of the Ethiopian highlanders: at first they are very wary of foreigners, but gradually they thaw out into great friendliness. This afternoon, the usual crowd gathered to stare and were initially quite dour. Yet half an hour later I was being shown the best method of removing nits from hair (which demonstration may yet come in handy), while Rachel was in one of the cattle-shelters being introduced to a
newborn yak calf, and was then given day-old twin kids to mother. All Balti women are very worried by my refusal to cover our heads. I am not sure whether this is on moral or health grounds, but if they were less rigid about keeping their cloaks wrapped tightly around their heads they might not have to expend so much time and kerosene on lice-hunts.

  Kuru – 28 February

  What a day! What a country! What a track! We covered only fifteen miles – but what miles those were!

  I had an uneasy night beside Rachel, who is almost as active asleep as awake, and we were up at dawn (6 a.m.) to get out of the kitchen before the servant arrived. I suspected from our map that the Rocky Road to Kuru might pose some problems; but it would have seemed impolite to hurry away before breakfast and it took two hours to light the stove and prepare four paratas, four hard-boiled eggs and a pot of tea.

  Our friends were appalled to discover that we had washed our faces and hands in the ice-festooned torrent behind the houses; they wait for hot water from the stove. And we were equally appalled to observe them going to the distant latrine, at 7 a.m., wearing only thin cotton pyjamas – which they were still wearing when they came down to the track at 9.30 to see us off. As no grain was available I had had to buy hay for Hallam’s lunch – very awkward to carry, but a comfortable back-rest for Rachel when at last it had been securely roped on to the load.

  At first our track was a wet mess, winding through level, cultivated land from one hamlet to another. Then it did a Cheshire Cat and we paused on the edge of a sea of mud, wondering which way to turn. I knew that somewhere here we had to cross the Thalle – at this season an insignificant tributary of the Shyok – but the thaw-devastated expanse in front of us was several miles wide and having lost the track it was impossible to guess where the fording place might be. (Our map – the only one available – is a US Air Force effort and does not concern itself with such petty terrestrial details.) However, we were soon rescued by a courteous old man who abandoned his dung-heap to lead us through acres of mud and slushy ice. We came suddenly on the Thalle – only about twenty yards wide, and shallow, but very fast and full of small boulders which made it nasty for Hallam. Rachel crossed by the footbridge of two slender, unsteady tree-trunks, not even nominally tied together, and our guide signed to me to follow her, leaving him to deal with Hallam. At the same time he tried to borrow my dula, indicating that he would need it to thrash the ghora, so I firmly took the bridle from him. As I stepped on to the bridge he looked around hastily for some other weapon, and found a branch sticking out of the water. His bewilderment was considerable when I ordered him to move away and leave us on our own. Hallam at first resisted strongly, standing on the bank with braced forelegs and rolling eyes. But he is unfailingly responsive to patient persuasion (and praise after the event) and within five minutes he was over, sans curses, kicks, beatings or stonings, to the extreme astonishment of our guide. It baffles me that a people as generally amiable as the Baltis, who live in such intimacy with their livestock, have never realised that animals are more easily controlled by kindness than by violence.

  Here our path was again visible, if one looked hard enough, and we went sliding and squelching on our way, between small fields divided by miscellaneous gullies and ditches. I had just crossed a particularly mud-slimy ditch when I heard a grunt from Hallam and an unfamiliar sort of squeal from Rachel. Turning, I saw Hallam scrambling up from his knees – and on one side of him lay the load and on the other Rachel, face downwards and completely still. I was not as alarmed as I might have been since the mud was deep and her riding-hat had been kept in place by its chin-strap. As I bent over her Hallam, too, turned towards her, with a look of almost human concern. She lifted a grinning face and said, ‘That was my first fall! Joan says you must fall off seven times before you’re a real rider – is Hallam all right?’ He was, and so was the load – when I had disentangled the jerrycan of kerosene from the bag of books, and our bedding from the sack of cooking equipment, and everything from the bale of hay.

  When our path turned towards the Khardung La we stopped for a sad farewell look at Khapalu. (But not really farewell, I feel. It is impossible that one should come to love a country as much as I love Baltistan and not return. And Rachel – entirely without prompting – announced the other day that this is her favourite place, where she plans to spend her honeymoon.)

  We were still out of sight of the Shyok, amidst level orchards of apple and apricot trees standing in a foot of snow. The track was now unmistakable but it remained treacherous until we left the broad valley floor. Although it was noon the sun had not yet appeared and snow could be seen falling over the Khardung La, while an icy wind blew against us. It reached gale-force, and stung our faces with fine sand, as we began to climb on a rough, steep path that soon levelled out to take us through an arid expanse of dark, tumbled, shattered rocks, some bigger than a barn. Under a bleak grey sky this landscape showed the Himalayas at their most grim. When we met a small herd of goats and three laden ponies the two youths accompanying them almost fell into the bottle-green Shyok, so astonished were they to see us. Then we turned the flank of this mountain and were suddenly out of the wind, directly below the Khardung La. Half a mile of level, firm sand came next – our most comfortable walk for weeks – and here we met a black woolly pony, hardly bigger than a Shetland, carrying a long-legged mullah wearing a black turban. Without halting the mullah shouted a warning of rockfalls ahead, where our path climbed to wind around a steep shaly mountain overhanging the Shyok. We found the surface strewn with small boulders – the larger ones end up in the river – but Hallam as usual picked his way cleverly between them and Rachel as usual gazed serenely from the saddle at a swirling Shyok 300 feet below. Meanwhile the sky was clearing rapidly and by the time we had again descended to river level the sun was shining. Another mile, across a semi-desert of grey sand, grey thyme and grey rocks, took us on to the base of an immense brown mountain. Then we came to a small, shadowed village enclosed on three sides by colossal rocky ramparts. When I asked for the path to Kuru the astounded inhabitants pointed silently to a 12,000 foot summit. At first I thought this must be their little joke. But, as Rachel remarked, ‘To get out of here you have to go over some mountain and that’s the lowest.’

  For at least 3,000 feet our path zig-zagged towards the sky and we soon had iced snow underfoot. At every other ‘hairpin bend’ I called a halt and we gazed down at a splendour that I cannot attempt to describe. Then we would gaze up instead, to where the cleverly packed stones that reinforced our path could be seen winding on and on, like some giant grey serpent. We wondered where it went over and down; it was impossible to guess because above us, filling the sky, was an apparently endless complex of peaks and spurs and snow-slopes. After a time we could see – far below us on the left, beyond the invisible river – that jeep-track over the Khardung La which had seemed so high when we were on it.

  Underfoot conditions became trickier as we climbed and there was only one set of footprints for Hallam to follow. On either side of these the snow was two feet deep and it was impossible to distinguish between the true edge of the track and the beautiful but menacing cornice. Then a very steep stretch confronted us, apparently leading to The Top, and Rachel dismounted as Hallam had begun to blow. I led him slowly up and we were all three ‘panted out’ by the time we reached level ground. But ‘The Top’ proved to be no such thing; we were merely standing on the uneven rim of a shallowish bowl about a mile in diameter and full of snow. It also contained gigantic time-smoothed boulders, looking like a herd of prehistoric monsters, and on the far side, where the rim was much higher, we could see our track resuming its climb.

  From the next pseudo-top we were overlooking another, similar bowl – and also the magnificent Ladak Range, lying south of the Shyok, which we had been unable to see as we crawled along its base towards Khapalu. Now the sun was shining on the highest slopes – graceful sweeps of snow below the triangular rigidity of grey and white peaks – and
on our side of the valley the immense cliffs above us glowed golden-brown against a violently blue sky.

  Having climbed strenuously out of this second bowl, we paused on its rim to rest. Thirty yards ahead another track joined ours, descending from who-knows-where along the ultra-precipitous slope of the mountain on our right. Off that track had just come a laden yak who could be seen in the distance – on our track – traversing a completely snow-covered and obviously avalancheprone mountain. I thanked Allah then for not having allowed the sun to shine this morning. And I was grateful, too, for that yak, whose owner presumably knew enough about local conditions to be followed confidently.

  Rachel remounted for the next stage, a gentle descent to the flank of a rocky mountain too sheer to be snowy. On reaching that flank, we found ourselves looking into a ravine so profound that one’s first reaction was incredulity. The shadowy chasm was very narrow and perhaps half a mile long. It lay between the brown mountain we now stood on and the white mountain ahead and at a conservative estimate it was 1,500 feet deep, with absolutely sheer sides. This scene was the very quintessence of Himalayan drama – vast, beautiful, cruel – belonging to a landscape that has no time for the paltry endeavours of men.

  Our narrow path was in a state of considerable disrepair where it rounded the ravine. Having ordered Rachel to dismount I remembered her propensity for achieving the impossible and added firmly, ‘We’ll go first.’ I then roped the load high and hoped for the best. As we moved into the shadow of the white mountain the ravine seemed suddenly sinister – seeing it as a threat to Rachel I could not simply revel in its grandeur. The psychological effect of height is extraordinary. If she fell 150 feet she would be killed as surely as here, yet that awesome drop, added to the friability of the neglected path (our passage sent bits of it into the ravine every few yards), was noticeably unsoothing.