Where the Indus is Young

by Dervla Murphy

  In the main bazaar I glimpsed some fine wood-carvings on the balconies of several houses. I say ‘glimpsed’ because had I taken my eyes off the mud-slippy track for more than an instant I might have broken the ten eggs I had just bought. Beyond this bazaar a pompous new notice points disconcertingly to ‘Government Servants Colony: Civil Hospital and PWD Rest House’. Looking past the pleasant little Rest House, we saw the ‘colony’ – a row of abandoned half-built bungalows. Such aborted projects are characteristic of modern Baltistan: this ‘colony’ was probably conceived by some Islamabad bureaucrat who has never been further north than Murree. But happily it is behind the Rest House and from the verandah we look towards a radiant semicircle of snow-peaks.

  One of the many small boys in our entourage was sent to fetch the chowkidar by Ghulam Nabi, the dispenser at the Civil Hospital. Ghulam in fact runs the hospital, aided by an elderly nurse who comes, most improbably, from Rangoon. To serve a population of about 30,000 there are six beds and doctors rarely visit Shigar. But some 200 patients attend the clinic daily, the majority suffering from goitre complications, tuberculosis, bronchitis, eye diseases and worms.

  It is hoped, by the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation, that this valley will soon become Baltistan’s Costa Brava. The British-built Rest House has recently been redecorated, lavishly furnished and fitted with electric switches and modern plumbing, neither of which seem likely to work in the foreseeable future. There is only one (very superior) charpoy in our room, but the thickly carpeted floor may be counted as a second bed. When the chowkidar appeared Ghulam told him to bring tea, which arrived half an hour after I had supplied it to the company. By now it takes me hardly fifteen minutes to unload Hallam, unpack, assemble and fill the stove and brew a kettle of chai. Practice indeed makes perfect.

  Shigar – 13 March

  During our morning’s exploration up the Shigar I had an unpleasant experience with quicksand: fortunately Rachel was being geological just then and failed to notice. To avoid this hazard we had to go far out of our way, until the sand allowed us to dash across it to the safety of a cliff-face – which promptly proved to be not-so-safe, for a hunk of earth the size of a cottage fell across our path fifty yards ahead. There’s never a dull moment, when you go for a short walk in the Karakoram.

  At the top of this cliff we passed a group of houses amidst muddy fields and three young women, with tense, pleading expressions, insistently beckoned us. Following them, we were led through stables into a cramped, filthy, twilit, smoke-filled room in which an old woman lay on a heap of straw, naked but for a tattered quilt and coughing painfully. Her forehead was fever-hot and her hands, when she clutched mine gratefully, were wasted and trembling. Yet as she lay there, amidst the sort of squalid poverty our affluent society can scarcely imagine, she had an air of indestructible dignity. I sat beside her for half an hour, while Rachel was fed with dirt-encrusted apricots. Almost certainly this much-loved granny was dying, but I asked a grandson to accompany us to the Rest House and gave him a dozen antibiotic capsules, hoping he understood my instructions for their use.

  After lunch we crossed the mountain torrent that races past the Rest House and followed narrow pathlets above irrigation channels, stopping often to gaze on the ferocious, jagged, glistening beauty of the Karakorams, with just an occasional plume of cloud floating near their summits. We returned through a huddle of ancient houses and saw many diminutive donkeys, and also quite a few dogs – collie-sized but more heavily-built – with short, off-white coats, blunt muzzles and cropped ears.

  Shigar has always been the most prosperous of Baltistan’s major valleys and some of its domestic architecture is slightly more sophisticated than the average – influenced perhaps by those Kashmiris who came to work on the town’s main mosque. This was built ‘a few hundred years ago’ and the delicate open-work of the cornices is unexpected in a region where crude improvisation is the architectural norm. The pyramidal three-tiered roof looks incongruously pagoda-like and I am told the interior is impressive. As the locals are strict Shiahs we females were not allowed even to peep through the doorway.

  Shigar – 14 March

  Overlooking the bazaar are three rock-peaks – named ‘The Three Bears’ by Rachel – and the tributary that passes the Rest House comes tumbling through a cleft between the small bear and the middle bear. We took off early to explore this narrow side-valley and near the edge of the town came on a novel (to me) anti-erosion device. Where the summer floods are at their most violent, scores of giant wicker baskets – about eight feet high and five or six feet in diameter – have been placed against the substantial embankment and filled with stones to break the force of the water. Immediately above these is a small pagoda-type mosque, very decrepit and seemingly inhabited by large numbers of quarrelsome poultry. Nearby, on higher ground, stands the Raja’s old palace, a grey, four-storey, fortress-like building, overshadowing the impeccably traditional new palace – a two-storey, whitewashed structure with an outside wooden ladder-stairs and a simply-carved balcony facing south. Nobody can accuse Balti potentates of pampering themselves.

  When our path entered the cold, shadowed cleft between the ‘bears’ we were amidst an intimidating conglomeration of boulders. Looking up, one could often see from where, exactly, a certain chunk of rock had fallen. The summit of the small bear seemed to overhang the path and I said, ‘Doesn’t it look like a bear’s head sticking out!’

  ‘It doesn’t to me,’ replied Rachel. ‘It looks like a bit of mountain that’s going to fall down any minute now.’ And we both instinctively quickened our pace, though that ‘bit of mountain’ may not fall for another 500 years.

  Beyond this short gorge the path climbed gradually towards a towering glitter of snow-peaks. On our right, across the torrent, smooth white slopes led up to a long line of rugged rock summits; and on our left were gentler, boulder-strewn slopes, already snow-free and flowing with thaw-water. This valley cannot be one of Shigar’s summer pastures for only a few patches of land promise to be grassy. Yet the path is surprisingly good for much of the way, which puzzled me until we came to the remains of many little terraced fields, far below us. This evening I was told vaguely, ‘There used to be a village there – we don’t know what happened to it.’ The Baltis’ lack of interest in the past, either recent or distant, can be maddening. That village must have existed within living memory, as here neither paths nor fields survive very long unattended. Of course the path is not consistently good; in several places it has dwindled almost to nothing where it overhangs the deep gorge carved out by this nameless (on my map) torrent.

  For five hours we saw no other creature, though beyond the nullah many animal tracks were visible in the snow. We often looked back to where the mighty peaks beyond the Shigar rose shining above the darkness of ‘the three bears’; but luckily I was not looking over my shoulder when the track ended abruptly on the edge of a profound chasm, evidently recently created by some slight shudder of these restless mountains. Here we seemed very close to the snows at the head of the valley. Judging by the wind’s keenness – despite the hot noon sun – and by our sense of intimacy with the surrounding heights, I would say we were at about 11,000 feet. It is unusual to find a completely unpeopled nullah, so doggedly do the Baltis make habitable the most unlikely places, and I relished the vast solitude. Yet those tiny deserted fields were rather poignant, as was a grove of gnarled fruit-trees opposite our enforced resting-place, where the vanished village most probably stood.

  I should of course have said ‘my resting place’. Even after a six-mile uphill walk Rachel is not prone to immobility and while I sat she pursued stones; by now the Rest House looks like a badly-run geological museum. On the way up we had passed many expanses of multi-coloured, shattered rock – great chunks of red, green, white, pink, orange, black, purple, and huge blocks with several colours in layers. Large lumps of white marble lay beside the path, as though some Renaissance palace had collapsed nearby, and mica glitt
ered everywhere like gold dust. We paused by one of the many soft, rust-red rocks and literally took a boulder to pieces with our bare hands.

  Truly that lonely valley was perfection, with its long, graceful snow slopes, and its arid sweeps of grey-brown scree beneath soaring buttresses of tawny rock, and its all-dominating snow-giants. What an incomparable place Baltistan is! And how futile are all one’s attempts to describe it! A pen can no more than hint at its glory.

  Shigar – 15 March

  Today was rather disjointed, in a very pleasant way. After breakfast Ghulam Nabi begged me to inspect the hospital and as we had been invited to lunch by the Tahsildar there was time then for only a short wander around muddy fields. We saw the first ploughing of the season, on an exceptionally sunny terrace that had been spread with manure by women. Two yak-cow cross-breds were pulling the crudest possible wooden plough, without even an iron tip; leather thongs held it to the bamboo yoke and the ploughman had to exert considerable force to make any impression on the new-thawed earth. As each strip was ploughed, four men, wielding wide, clumsily-made wooden rakes, broke up the large lumps. Then the women reappeared and used bare hands to blend the manure with the rich brown soil, as though kneading some gigantic cake. Meanwhile the rakers had joined a small group of men at the edge of the field and were enjoying a few drags on a hookah and keeping their hands warm over a tiny fire of twigs and grassroots.

  To enter the Tahsildar’s house we had to climb a steep ladder and struggle through a flock of dark brown mini-sheep who were lunching on the sun-warm roof. Then, in the entrance-hall, our way was blocked by two billy-goats fighting and a cock and hen mating. We were conducted out of the hot sun into a dark, chilly, low-ceilinged room, furnished only with a charpoy and a goat-hair carpet; it is a local status symbol to sit by a stove, burning scarce and expensive wood, instead of depending on the sun for warmth.

  The young Tahsildar is taller than the average Balti and much given to emphasising the importance of his job. His English is poor yet he insists on talking non-stop, very fast, and the results are not unlike those dotty conversations that come about with ancient deaf people.

  Self: Do fishermen here use nets, or traps, or dynamite?

  Tahsildar: Yes, Government plans a big dam to give electricity everywhere in Baltistan. To make it the engineers must use much dynamite.

  Self: When was the village up that nullah (pointing) destroyed? When did the people leave?

  Tahsildar: No, our people do not leave this valley. It is rich – all Shigar is rich. No one is destroyed.

  I acquired from our fellow-guest (one of the High School’s twelve teachers) the information that significant quantities of gold are found in the Shigar every summer. It is melted in the villages and sold (at night!) to smugglers who take it to Afghanistan via Chitral. I cannot help feeling that our informant was exaggerating the significance of the quantities, but it is a good story.

  To entertain us during a prolonged pre-lunch hiatus, our host suggested visiting the nearby Girls’ Primary School, founded in 1909 by the then Political Agent for Baltistan. I have never seen a more feeble educational establishment. The Tahsildar could come no further than the low door in the surrounding wall – Shigar takes purdah very seriously – and we entered unescorted to find two shy young women trying to teach thirty little girls the Urdu alphabet and simple arithmetic. The pupils sat outside a disintegrating school-building – the floors of which were inches deep in melted snow – and wrote on their dyed mulberry-wood boards with sharpened reeds dipped in a mixture of chalk and water. This chalky powder can be picked up by the handful on many mountain-sides and when the water evaporates it leaves a clear deposit – so why squander money on ink? I tried to exchange words with the teachers, but they were too overcome by this visitation from Outside even to attempt to utter. And what was the point of it all, I wondered, as we left those meek little scraps struggling with their Urdu. As Shigar’s future wives and mothers, what they most urgently need is advice on child-care and hygiene.

  Back at the house lunch was still not ready and as we waited numerous men called to discuss business with our host. Each time the door opened I could see three menservants with anxious expressions squatting around the kitchen fire. At intervals one would go out to fetch more wood, which then had to be chopped with a too-small axe; as the fire tended to go out during chopping sessions a lot of blowing was required to set the large dechi of rice boiling again. All this effort at last produced excellent thick chapattis, soggy rice, watery gravy and the toughest – beyond doubt the toughest – meat I have ever eaten. There was no question of chewing it: one simply gulped the hunks whole and hoped for the best. Yet after three months in Baltistan this meal seemed a banquet.

  On our way home we called on the Police Superintendent, who is married to the Raja of Khapalu’s sister. No womenfolk appeared: Indian tea, and cream crackers imported from Pindi in ages past, were served by a ragged, bare-footed youth who also had to attend frequently to his master’s magnificent jewelled hookah. Now and then the door was pushed open by a silken-haired young goat with glowing amber eyes who made the day for Rachel. He was a ‘character’ and plainly enjoyed provoking the Superintendent’s wrath while at the same time being thrown apricots by the bevy of children who had gathered to study us at close quarters. Two boys were ordered to accompany us to the Rest House, one carrying on his back a big bale of hay and the other balancing on his head a big basin of barley. Our host had evidently heard of my unsuccessful efforts to buy grain for Hallam in the bazaar. I am relieved that the gallant creature has had a good feed before we set out tomorrow for Dasso, and possibly Askole. As with Hushe, there is some local uncertainty about whether or not the path is at present ghora-worthy. We shall soon see. Dasso is thirty-four miles from here so we reckon to spend two days getting that far.

  Yuno – 16 March

  It is a long time since I have written my diary in such acute physical and mental discomfort. But I must try to organise my mind and begin at the beginning; and I am not complaining, for it has been a glorious day.

  Three miles from Shigar the track began to climb, but so gradually that we scarcely noticed until, looking back, we saw the town’s orchards as a reddish-brown haze far below, at the foot of bluish mountains. This valley is the least severe of all that we have seen. Its average width is five or six miles, with hamlets on both sides of the Shigar, which today was mostly invisible. The hamlets lie in hollows between the final slopes of high mountains and one switchbacks from hollow to hollow over desolate expanses of moraine. There is little cultivable land on this left bank, once the Shigar oasis has been left behind, but we could see hundreds of terraced fields across the river, where the snow remains thick. On our right, every few miles, a narrow side-valley allowed us a dazzling view of sharp snow peaks. Beyond the river an unbroken white mountain wall rose abruptly from the valley floor and was almost unbearably beautiful against the vivid blue sky. And at the head of the valley we could see other white giants meeting, where the Braldu and Basna Rivers unite to create the Shigar.

  We stopped twice for meagre picnics and sandcastle building, and sunbathing and nature-worship. Outside of the hamlets we rarely met anybody, but during our first stop a startling figure overtook us. This young man was wearing a cheap sky-blue lounge suit, a bright pink shirt and shiny plastic shoes, which outfit made him hideously conspicuous where everybody else wears garments that match the mountains. Obviously he had come off the plane we saw descending towards Skardu yesterday and was walking home, carrying goodies for the family in a bulging PIA bag. Equally obviously, he was not disposed to fraternise with foreigners. He ignored our greetings and I found his expression singularly off-putting – a hard, sullen face and shifty eyes.

  Having seen no jeep since leaving Skardu, our astonishment was considerable when we heard a distant engine at about four o’clock. (This rarely used jeep-track continues to the head of the valley.) Staring at the ridge behind us we saw a blue WHO vehicle b
umping into view and it contained two of our best Skardu friends – army doctors on an inspection tour of the area. They expressed great concern at our being twenty-one miles from Shigar and were aghast to hear that we had no idea where we were going to sleep. Then they volunteered to arrange accommodation for us at the next hamlet, but I suspect we would have done better just bumbling along on our own. The disagreeable atmosphere here is probably partly owing to our being associated with ‘interfering Punjabis’. (The Baltis seem to regard all Pakistanis as Punjabis.)

  From the top of the next hump we saw Yuno at the foot of a steep, arid mountain with snow still lying on terraced fields below the dwellings. Then we met the returning jeep, being escorted by a score of men and youths. These the doctors not inaccurately described as ‘stone-age types’ and they handed us over to the least neolithic character. As the jeep disappeared he passed us on, for some inexplicable reason, to this really rather nasty family, who had made it quite plain that they would prefer to have nothing to do with us.

  At times the language barrier gives an unreal tinge to events. While we stood under an enormous chenar, in the sudden grey coolness that comes when the sun has slipped behind the mountains, our ‘guardian’ conducted a vigorous and lengthy argument with several shrill-voiced women who glared at us from the edge of their roof as though we had the plague. Everybody spoke so quickly and vehemently that I could gather nothing of what was being said, but obviously we were extremely unwelcome. I was about to suggest to Rachel that we should push on to the next hamlet, visible three miles away, when our ‘guardian’ suddenly shook both his fists at the women and shouted some infuriated threat which abruptly ended the argument. He then beckoned us up the steep path to their house, which has a new room built on to the original structure and seems to be the poshest in the hamlet. While I was unloading and unsaddling – none of the dozen men standing around offered to help – Rachel found that the new wing is entered through a window. The men whispered and sniggered while they watched me carrying the load and tack to the room, which is about ten feet by thirty and has a big over-fed woodstove. Soon Rachel and I were sweltering, so accustomed have we become to living in cold rooms and depending on our clothes for warmth. While writing this – on the floor, by the light of my own candle, in a corner as far as possible from the stove – I am dripping sweat; and poor Rachel, though exhausted, is unable to sleep because of the heat plus noise. Everyone in the family seems to have a wracking cough – inevitably, when they exchange this temperature for the Balti cold while clad only in rags.