PAKISTAN AUGUST 16-SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

 

PAKISTAN

AUGUST 16-SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

 

2021-08-13 TO 08-15: USA TO LAHORE, PAKISTAN

“She is my love!”

We are 7 miles from Kabul, Afghanistan.

We don't see or hear sounds of the Taliban sweep to victory. It's 4am. Those 7 miles are straight up into the night sky above that sad city as Turkish Airlines 714 begins its drop to Lahore, Pakistan. Down there, people awake to a nightmare, worse off after 40 years of misguided, misinformed, arrogant invasion by Russia and the US (plus allies), to the Taliban promising fundamentalist cleansing.

It has been 39 hours since I woke in Florida nine time zones to the west. Truth in Disclosure: I, aka He Who Can Sleep Anywhere, nodded off between the last bite of the ‘chicken or pasta' high altitude special somewhere off the coast of Nova Scotia, and landfall over Cherbourg. The plane is full, though we each have an empty seat as neighbor. Everyone is masked. No one rants about the Covid masks. Maybe we all get it: the masks are not a plot to make us look stupid or deprive us of our freedom. They are our effort to protect one another from the Covid invasion. It's a small deal really, this shift from ‘me, me, me' to ‘us'.

Unloaded, in-processed, re-hooked with friend Elfie from amidst the crowd of masks, re-tested for Covid, we walk into Pakistan. From behind the bobbing bubbles of dark hair, rise waving arms attached six feet plus many inches of Adeel, our Bollywood heartthrob guide for the next few days. “Hungry?” “Lahore is food city. Breakfast starts at 3am". Half an hour later, startled awake by the energy of Lahore at sunrise, we’re hunkered around a table on the side of a narrow street lined with food stalls. We smush pieces of hot sesame crusted pita, fresh from the tandoor, through chickpea stew, grabbing chunks of meatballs on the way from bowl to drooling lips. It’s sublime. And surely a better choice at 6 am than the upended herd of Roasted Goat Feet and bowl of floating Unknown Innards on offer at the next stall. We slurp hot milky tea, not that stuff that hires the middleman of hot water to coax the leaves to give up the goods before mixed with milk but the real deal tea-wise, ‘doogh pa-ti'. The tea is brewed in the milk, no watery middleman needed. It's creamy, silken on our tongues, instant addiction, reviving. The cooks, passers-by, other morning munchers, wave and smile. Pakistan is famously friendly. Check!

Batting a thousand with our al fresco breakfast, Adeel leads us on for “a walk in a park". Shalimar was the private garden of the emperors of several dynasties, most famously, the Mughals, and of them the next to last emperor, Shah Jehan. He filled Shalimar with pavilions, fountains, vistas to entertain his court and wives. A compulsive builder, his other ‘bauble’ is the Taj Mahal, memorial to his beloved favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Rumor has it that when she died giving birth to their 14^th child in 19 years his hair turned white and he never fully recovered and devoted his life to creating the Taj instead of governing. The man had love…and taste. Shalimar’s gardens, fountains, and vistas are worthy of the Taj.

By noon we are in our 46th hour since that last bed in Florida. It is 100 degrees. We slouch through the Lahore Museum, fading seriously by the 16^th century, but holding on to a few memories of Buddhist images, faces and bodies stone witness to the cultures that have swept through Pakistan… Hindu, Greek, Roman, Mongol…

We awake at seven. On our own we leave Al Safina Hotel, turn left, then left again onto the main drag. Like most streets we see today, it is one long food stall. A couple of guys are flipping floury frisbees onto a flying saucer grill. Buddies mix a vat of ‘chicken biriyani'. Think ‘arroz con pollo' dressed to go with the spices of Asia. We order three batches, three breads, three teas, and a fourth biriyani to go for an old woman who stares and holds out her hand. The food is delicious. The bill is 515 Rupees, a smidge over three dollars. Total.

Waves and smiles send us off further down the street, swirling around and through motorbikes, rickshaws, cars, trucks. Sidewalks are a murky concept, richer in imagination than execution. We plop at a table about where a sidewalk could be. “Three teas, please". No tea here says the guy, but his jaw juts towards the guy across the street, hands tell us to stay put, feet cross to bring us tea. We wait, watching Lahore explode around us. People wave, smile, flash thumbs up.

“Can we sit here?” His smile could cross continents. He hops off the motorcycle and helps a slight figure wrapped in black off the passenger seat. She sits, unwraps her face scarf, her smile hooked onto his. They share the job of offering up their English, both enthusiastic, she more confident. Details flow. He teaches the Holy Koran in a religious school. Hadeir and ‘Princess’ have been married four months. He takes her hand. “She is my love.” Princess looks a bit shy, then beams. “Arranged marriage", she says, and she looks at him, her smile deeply rooted.

That look is worth a Shalimar or a Taj.

2021-08-16 LAHORE

Breakfast is early---before the heat descends-- and in Old Lahore, the heart of the city, beating still well into its third millennia. Our slab of pseudo-sidewalk is in front of Adeel's favorite breakfast place, a few tables in front of a wading pool of oil and two guys rolling dough, flattening it and flinging into the hot oil. It explodes into puri, sublime crispy wisps of fried clouds. We slurp regular milk tea, thicker doodh pati not on tap. Our puri descend onto our table. Torn into pieces, they scoop up chickpea stew, then sweet halvah with nuts and dried fruit, the sensual combination rich and complex, like the street scenes wrapping us in Old Lahore. Bikes, motorcycles, rickshaws, trucks, crowd the food stalls and the fruit and vegetable venders. People smile, wave, and press right hand over heart in a gentle greeting. Then move on, swept by mayhem. We slurp tea and moan over the flavors.

We finally meet Ishfaq, the guy at the other end of the chain of emails and WhatApp messages that got us here. He's maybe 5 foot four, an eruption of energy, the love child of Jiminy Cricket (size and pizzazz) , the Energizer Bunny (non-stop motion), and the Geico Gekko (smarts). We're family at first hug.

The day heats up, too fast, too hot. Lahore Fort is worth the long walks in the heat. In the Indian continent ‘forts' are self-contained cities, festooned, not austere, with gardens, ponds, and pavilions for frolicking potentates and the ladies of the harem. We walk through the arched gates tall enough to welcome a royal elephant in full sail, from painted toenails to feathered headdress and jeweled throne. I lose track of the succession of dynasties and emperors, good, bad, and truly awful who preceded us through the gates, but a few stick. Shah Jehan, a moderately good one by the standards of the day, had great taste, and built the Taj. His son, the awful Aurangzeb, murdered three of his brothers to get to the throne, deposed his father, and imprisoned him for years until the old man dies, neglected, in prison. Aurangzeb had a shred of decency. Shah Jehan could see his Taj from his cell, and his fratricidal son buried him next to his beloved Muntaz in the Taj. Aurangzeb was the last of his dynasty, unbemoaned.

A hundred thousand men can fit in the stone courtyard of the great Badshahi mosque. Crossing it---barefoot--at noon is torture. The stones are griddles. Water and canvas carpets help. A bit. The sole searing is worth it. The interior is rows of cool arcades their walls and arches skimmed with mosaic gardens, Shalimar brought to Allah.

Neither Englishmen nor mad dogs, we leave the mosque and the glowing anvil of midday Lahore for shelter in the Al Safina until dusk.

Night is still hot in the old bazaar, the streets twisted, the shops overflowing with color, jumbled baguettes set around the central gem, the great mosque. We cross under a graceful Mughal arch, turn down the spice alley, then dive underground to wander the reconstructed ancient baths, a subterranean city of sybarites for the dynasties---who washed, then housing for the troops of the British Raj---who probably didn't.

The mosque is closed but our guide ‘knows someone’. Elfie has forgotten her shawl. My neck bandana unwraps into a culturally acceptable head cover. Vogue Magazine will not be calling. A jolly gaggle of clerics ask for a selfie, but politely exclude Elfie. We pass into the inner spaces. Kids sit at tables in two long rows, one for boys, one for girls, leading up to their teacher, who smiles at us. We easily upstage the Holy Korans open on their desks. He knows he's lost his audience and invites us to take photos.

Outside we sit in the jeweled maelstrom of the bazaar, drink tea, and chew ‘pan' , betel nut mixed with fennel and other sweet spices and wrapped in a leaf. It all goes in at once, a significant mouthful. It’s tasty but gets the salivary glands into overdrive and colors our saliva crimson. “Swallow is good. Spit out is Ok". I go for Option Two.

Dinner is outside the city with Ishfaq's friends, one a software designer, the other a GREAT cook, welcomed as we are everywhere and by everyone.

Tomorrow we leave flat Lahore for the hills, then mountains north and west.

Lahore, Food City, will be a tough act to follow.

2021-08-17 TRAVELING NORTH

The highway is a neat, crisp, cement ribbon, grey and colorless, up to international standard. The rest stop is significantly beyond that. We skip the pre-packaged choices at the invading global franchises to top off our tea with thick, fresh mango juice at a ‘pop and pop' fruit stand.

The highway is grey. The traffic is not. ‘Truck Art' reaches its apotheosis here. Trucks are massive mobile theater sets, motorized heaps of color, lights, baubles, jewels, mirrors, things that bobble. Our sedate sedan is their stodgy maiden aunt, but she is comfy…and air conditioned. Outside lead melts in the sun.

Today and tomorrow will be long drives. Ishfaq plays his hand, dropping morsels to lead us on. The salt mines at Khewra sweep us back to Pakistan's millions of years beneath the sea. At Katas Raj Temples the biggest Hindu temple in Pakistan, Buddhist stupas, and mosque cluster on hills, a silent jumble left from the sweeps of peoples and faiths through this link between Central Asia and the sea, and between South Asia and Europe. Many are still in use. ‘Monk tourism’ from Buddhist countries is a big business. His Holiness The Dalai Lama has come. The history takes hold in us and prepares us for Ishfaq's next treat. Joulian in Taxila is the first documented ‘university' in human history…or at least western and Asian history. Africa may have surprises in store.

 Joulian's roots are Buddhist. Many of the original sculptured Buddhas were desecrated by subsequent invaders. A few remain. Some show clear Greek influence, still lurking in the art 500 years after Akexander passed through. The earthquake resistant stone walls and facilities of the ‘campus’ are clear, revealed, but not prettified. The place has a ‘feel' to it. We touch the walls. 56 students lived 2 to a room in the dormitories above the ‘quadrangle. Maybe I hear them chanting their lessons, racing across to meals, laughing. Student life can't have been so different back then.

Night is in a lovely hotel overlooking a lake and hills. The architect probably saw ‘Gone With The Wind' too many times, but it has its charms: hot water, and ‘English toilets', sitters, not squatters. We're not expecting a big supply of either from here on.  We are the only guests in the cavernous restaurant.

Tomorrow is a long drive, “maybe ten hours, maybe 12".

We leave at 06:30 for Kalash, up along the border with Afghanistan.

2021-08-18 TO KALASH VALLEY

It's cool at 6. As we rise out of the roasting plains, we sweat but don’t boil. Ishfaq hires drivers familiar with each territory as we go north. Today our driver helps us navigate the checkpoints, though as usual they are hassle free before the avalanche of documents in ‘hundredstuplicate’ Ishfaq unleashes from his plastic carrier. Only once are we asked for proof of Covid status.

Only once are we asked if we want an armed escort.

Four burly guys in uniform, smile, wave, hop into the back of a jeep. They are impressive. So are their weapons. They look like rocket launchers. Two guys ride facing out the back of the jeep, keeping us in sight.

They wave from the jeep, smile, and lead us out of the checkpoint. If another vehicle looks about to get between us, they wave them off with a finger flick. No one contradicts them.

We all stop for lunch, then pose for pictures. Dennis’ photo printer is a big hit. Squad leader gets it sorted out for his guys. “Four copies, please, 1, 2, 3, 4". Then we all hop into car and jeep and head out again. A few kilometers up road they wave, pull over and another jeep pulls out to lead the way. It’s a slick, practiced, maneuver. We don’t even have to slow down. We change again, and again, each time we cross into a new administrative division. The guards head back to where they met us. “They like being escorts. It’s a vacation from the hot barracks.” Ishfaq tells us, “So, I like to say yes when they offer”. We're happy to think that's the only reason he says yes.

 

The town of Dir is a long market bulging into the narrow street. Some women are in fully covered, seeing Dir through the lace of their burkas. They are the first we have seen in Pakistan.

Twelve hours into the trip promised as “ten, maybe 12 hours”, there are 3 more hours to go. We change car and driver and leave the paved road at Ayun and head west onto the very unpaved road to the Kalash Valley. The ‘road’ is a one lane tortured stitchery of bumps, gulleys, ravines, rocks, and nothing flat or smooth, hanging off the vertical wall of the mountain. We see glacial water below on the other side, then only hear it when night falls. We are not alone on road that might just carry one vehicle and frequently has to carry two, side by side as they pass. The drivers slide by, the rules of physics be damned. In the dark.

Fifteen hours after leaving the lowlands, we are in Bambouret village, in the valley of the Kalash, 7000 feet up into the Hindu Kush. Ishfaq's Mountain Guest House is five rooms, each with a private garden. We sit on the long veranda for very late dinner and tea.

The dark is filled with the sound of water. It drops from glaciers and snows on the peaks beyond, falling almost 20,000 feet to Bambouret, and carries our day into sleep.

2021-08-19 BAMBURET IN KALASH VALLEY

“Djam"

Elfie and I meet outside our gardens on the rough road that bump- massaged us to Bamburet village last night. In daylight it looks benign, is easier on the feet in the cool morning light than it was on our butts last night in the dark. We walk down the slope, the sound of water on one side. On the other side the aged wooden doors of a few shops are still locked  People wave, smile, pass their hands over their hearts in greeting. The last shop on the right is open. Two guys are turning out fresh chapatis on a flat grill. Milk tea jump starts our taste buds.

 Like most Kalash, the guys have memorable faces.

Even here in northern Pakistan, where extraordinary looks are common (“most handsome men per square meter of any place on earth” to paraphrase a few friends), the Kalash surprise us. Take skin tone from cream to bronze, hair from ginger to coal, eyes from ice blue and green to obsidian…toss all that and let it fall in riveting combinations and you have the Kalash. Our tea guys are fair. Museum guide Razi has face and coloring straight out of Central Asia. One of our drivers has ginger hair and beard and blue eyes. The kilt and bagpipes are in the trunk.

I have very few pictures to prove my case. People, not me and my camera, own their faces. We spend time with Razi in his house and walking around the village and the museum and three mornings with the tea guys. Photos are OK, and Dennis printer leaves a memory with them. None of the photos capture the sweet light of their eyes.

The anthropologist in me is in overdrive. Where does all that variety come from? Maybe some of the troops of Alexander the Great really did dally here---troops tend to--- 2300 years ago. Alex was blond, not a common look in Greece these days. The troops? Who knows? They came through Afghanistan to get here. I still remember the faces there like these from trips in 1971 and 2016.

Centuries ago, the Kalash people spread over the northwestern part of Pakistan. Now only 3000 Kalash remain in a few isolated villages in valleys along rivers in the shadows of steep mountains. Razi tells us Afghanistan is a grueling 10 hour climb to the west. The Kalash speak a language connected to Central Asia, are not Moslem, or Hindu, or Buddhist, or Christian. Their religion is the cycle of nature, and reverence for the ancestors. Kalash women stride unmasked, greet us with direct smiles, shake our hands.

Ishfaq is not Kalash. He and his family are Chitrali, people from Chitral, this region, and Sunni Moslem, but they have lived here for generations. He knows everybody and is related to most of them . His paternal grandfather and grandmother had one son and 14 daughters. Ishfaq has “maybe 150 cousins, maybe more" from those 15 aunties and uncles and their children alone. Then there is the other side of the family,

At night, Muneeb, another cousin, joins us for fat trout, some grilled, some roasted. One is about twenty inches long. Muneeb is a Major in the Pakistani military and a member of the UN Peacekeeping Force, back from Democratic Republic of Congo. We don’t ask about the two finger stumps on one hand. There are other stories. Osama Bin Laden is in one. That's for another time.

Muneeb teaches us “djam" as we lick trout off our fingers. It's all purpose Yes!, OK!, Can Do!, Wow!

Then it's dark, quiet except for the sound of water.

Djam.

2021-08-20 KALASH VALLEY

Chai with The Tea Guys down the road jumpstarts all our days here. They pass our tea over the stack of hot chapatis and out the window We are adopted by another Ishfaq relative, Haji Mir Han, long-bearded and broad-smiled, and we all head out for more house visits.

Ishfaq is a bit scary. He seems to read our minds. Always there is something memorable for us, and it always involves people.

Everywhere they greet us with guileless generosity.

Ishfaq and Haji Mir lead up and down the slopes of Bamburet and up steep wooden ladders into several Kalash houses, always welcome, our accented ‘Ishpata’ greeting close enough. We squat on stools of leather and wood in the open veranda where the women tend wood fires. All the women wear the traditional belted floor length black dresses, thick as robes, embroidered with explosions in primary colors. Long beaded headdresses trail down their backs. The men, in their plain undecorated shalwar kameez (long tunic and baggy trousers), universal for men all over the country, cede first place to the glory of the women.

We climb a ladder to visit an old couple. The grandmother stokes a quiet fire beneath a sealed cauldron of fruit mash. A pipe from the vat coils in a vat of cold water. The homemade ‘hootch’ that drips out of the other end has kick, and bite.

Later, in cousin Razi's house, we sip wine from grapes while his aunt makes fresh chapati for us over her wood fire. She mixes flour and water into paste, grabs a handful and swirls it into a thin wide circle over the hotel metal, bare-handed. A flip or two later, the chapati are ready.

Razi's sister brings a basket of fresh walnuts and dried mulberries, another of apples and grapes . The hot chapatis wrap fresh, just-made, cottage cheese. Nuts, berries, cheese, fruit, chapatis, and wine swap friendly seductions of our taste buds. The other parts of us have already been seduced by the sweet kindness of the Kalash.

We climb the hills to visit more of Ishfaq's relatives and friends. Sent off with a hint of booze and the crunch of walnuts we walk back behind the road and houses to the places away where ancestors are interred above ground in wooden coffins then to temple shrines in the heart of the village where they are revered. We're welcome in both, but not in the sanctuaries where menstruating women and new mothers are isolated.

The wheat for the chapatis grows outside the village. The fields are green now. The women bent in the green are in traditional red and black. Brilliant! The water falling from the high mountains drives the mill, grinding wheat into flour.

Bees nest in spaces created for them between the logs and stones of the houses. Ishfaq pops into one and carries out a kilo of fresh honey. We don’t mind the crunch of the beeswax.

Razi walks with us through the small, perfectly curated Kalash museum, whatever his English lacks is erased by the genius of his smile.

Late in the afternoon we visit Ishfaq's airy summer house, and the winter house, thick-walled against winter snows and cold. His wife waves, and his two tiny sons run and toddle to him. Like their father, they are in perpetual motion.

Still later, we eat fresh figs and nap under the trees.

Always, there is the sound of water.

Djam. Djam. Djam.

2021-08-21 AND 22 RHUMBU VILLAGE IN KALASH VALLEY

“My name is Engineer" greeted us yesterday afternoon at the top of steep stairs of his guest house in Rhumbu. A bumpy ride from Bamburet, Rhumbu village is ‘festival central' for tomorrow's public finale of the festival, the women's dance on top of the hill high above the village.

The steep climb in late morning gets us to the hilltop early enough to find seats next to the covered area where dance will begin and with our backs to the sun. The Kalash festivals may be Pakistan's biggest tourist draw, certainly for Pakistanis. We three are not the only obvious foreigners, but we may be the only ones without elephantine camera lenses. A few loud American accents boom complaints over the music, never figuring out that the festival is not about them. A few blondish foreign women arrive, awkward in borrowed traditional dresses, missing the grace and balance of the Kalash women, but welcome anyway.

Men on drums set the tempo. Then the women begin to dance. Head to toe in black robes, canvases for waves of embroidered primary colors wrapping their bodies and flowing down the waterfalls of their headdresses, they link arms, lean against one another and dance sideways, a tight unbroken circle. They are glorious, totemic. The circle surrounds the male drummers. More women, then some men, start another circle outside the first, all linked, tight, and swaying. People join arms to make a third. The men are in the usual dress of undecorated tunic and baggy trousers, monochromatic parentheses to the brilliance of the women. They all dance, non stop, circling, linked, one body with many heads, trailing color as they circle again and again.

Ishfaq leads us from our seats to the roof of a house. High above the dance we watch the crowd breathe in the rhythm of the circling women. Down below anyone can join---even the few foreigners--- and follow the women's lead, no matter the stumbles. The pulse of the dance spreads from the women out to the crowd. Everyone is moving. The dance rules the hill top. The drums rule the air.

We leave at the peak, satiated.

So do scores of other travelers.

We join a caravan rumbling down the string of ruts, holes, hillocks, tight turns, and voracious precipices that is the hair-thin ‘unroad' out of the valley. The landscape is cataclysmic geology, heaving mountains skyward, but granting only a thin slice of rubble to the road. At the turn-off towards Chitral, we leave the caravan to its dust and its exhaust fumes, and bump east. The drums of the festival ride with us.

2021-08-23 CHITRAL

“Road 6. Jeep 5"

Yesterday afternoon we left the festival, the Kalash Valley and the unroad for the ‘metal road' (aka paved road) to Chitral.

The ride is smooth. Our molars and vertebrae settle into their normal sockets. The landscape opens up … and up, and up to the peaks of the Hindu Kush. One sits above Chitral City, scratching the blue sky.

The city is the hub of the Chitral Region and of the Chitrali, Ishfaq’s people. It’s more town than city. And rubbish and plastic bag free. Ishfaq knows everyone and every place, and where to find anything…even sturdy replacements for our ancient and decaying 20-year old fishing vests with the many pockets that are our wearable suitcases. Stuffed, those vests permit us the affectation that “we never need to check luggage” and that “our carryon weighs only 8 kilos”. If we ever fall over while wearing them call a crane. We find ours. Marked XXXL. Alas.

In-vested, the next item on our Sartorial Search is a salwar kameez, the tunic and trouser combos all women and most men wear. Ready to wear versions are a tight fit over all those chappati, curries, biriyanis, and milk teas. Ishfaq ‘knows someone' who sells cloth, and he knows a tailor. For about $35 the two of us get our cloud-soft cotton salwar kameez in colors we choose, custom-measured, impeccably made. The readi-made vests cost more. Maybe it's all those zippers

Chitral has always been a crossroad. The domes of the great mosque curve sinuously like their relatives across the mountains in Central Asia. In the museum, Buddhas from the Gandhara period sit on stone stelae carved in repose… under Greek Corinthian columns.

“Local food, local food" and Ishfaq points downstairs, below street level at Chamani Café. The dahl (lentils), rice, chapatis, all have a Chitrali twist, and are delicious.

Pakistan's iconic animal is the markour, a mountain-scaling antelope/goat/sheep with spiraling horns and a taste for fresh glacial river water and posing for portraits. Ours blur against the rocks and ignore the water and us, too busy scraping dinner from the sparse veggies on the steep slopes. One goaty gourmand climbs up a tree for a tastier main course.

Our dinner is much later, and on the flats, across the garden, past the zinnias and marigolds, and up the steps to the cavernous restaurant, empty but for us.  ‘Dessert‘is delivered by the sweet faced tailor. Elfie's pants and our shalwar kameez are scrupulous, tailored, ironed, folded, packaged…and perfect fits.

Chitral is a watershed. Ahead are the mountains. And mountain roads. High mountain roads. We are so hyped and so prepared. From now on we travel by jeep. Our new driver is the funny, jolly, Rauf, genius driver extraordinaire. He tells it like it is about the roads to come. “Road 6. Jeep 5". That's feet he means. Translation: six inches of road on each side of the jeep. Right. Tomorrow will tell.

2021-08-24 CHITRAL TO HARCHIN LASPUR

The water runs out of the pipe, then into a cup, then into me, straight from the glacier hanging above the valley. Apricots, apples, grapes, peaches are local, everywhere, and ripe. The apples are small, heritage varieties, not the bloated varieties cultivated for mass markets. These apples are close to the birthplace of all apples, Kazakhstan. They go into our ‘stash'. The mangos are up from the south and perfect. We lick the juice from our fingers, then wash in glacier runoff. Above us, the mountains reach heaven and weep glorious waterfalls.

Lunch is in a restaurant, lonely on a spot between two villages. Of course, the owner is a friend of Ishfaq and the lunch in his garden under an arbor dripping ripe grapes is, of course, delicious.

Ishfaq and Rauf have a plan for after lunch….

My wayward grey locks have not taken well to a week of road dust, cold showers, and pasty bath bars. I look like the poster boy for the Gorgon Sisters Special at The Bride of Frankenstein Electric Shock Zap and Frizz Hair Salon, with Dusty Bronze Rinse. I see two broad grins cross the garden. “Sir, time for a haircut!” They are serious, wielding clipper and scissors in a fury, bypassing trim and going directly to total shear. Rauf’s tiny scissors re-educate my semaphoring eyebrows and convert my mustache from inadequate soup strainer to lip tattoo. The verdict from Dennis and Elfie? Ummm, well, uh, ….it will be practical…

By late afternoon we (and my stubbled pate) are bivouacked in tiny Harchin Larspur. The people here are of the Ismaili sect, the most liberal in Islam. Women are not covered, have equal rights with men. The Ismaili spiritual leader is Kareem Aga Khan, son of the 1950’s playboy Ali Khan, squire of many happy starlets, briefly tenured husband of one unhappy great star, the luscious Rita Haworth. Ali's father, the Aga Khan, bypassed Ali, and decreed his successor to be Ali's twenty-something son. It was a wise choice. Now in his 80's this Aga Khan has supported education—especially for women---schools, hospitals, welfare for Ismailis, and for others who share communities with Ismailis. We are not surprised, then, that the women are not covered and greet us. There are also Sunni Moslems here, much more conservative than the Ismailis. A university student--- an Ismaili--- tells us there is no conflict between the groups. Ishfaq, a Sunni by birth, something quite else by experience, doubts that.

The cultural museum, also funded by the Aga Khan’s foundation, contains artifacts and respectful cultural information from both groups. Both communities benefit from the school and clinic.

Small steps? Better than none.

2021-08-25 HARCHIN LARSPUR VIA SHANDUR PASS TO PHANDER

Shandur Pass is high, flat, dry, desolate, miles from any humans. Surely there are better places to build a polo field, but here it is, the world's highest at over two miles above the distant sea. 

This spot is midway between polo rivals Chitral and Gilgit, equally --- and ridiculously --- far from both, the distance no barrier for Boys AndTheir Toys, or for those who love The Sport of Kings. ‘Shandur Village' is a micro-mini mart, with tea, and a military barracks down the hill. It's a desolate place, but not isolated, the best way between Gilgit and Chitral. Maybe, maybe, maybe Alex the Great and Signor Polo thought so, too. Maybe they sat and drank milk tea as we do.

There are portapotties, local version, and huts, and dining halls, but like all the facilities up here they are closed for the season. The yaks don’t need them. They poop wherever they please. In the dry air yak poop becomes odorless fuel for cooking and heat. Bags of it sit across the pass, filled, waiting to be hauled to houses we can’t see. 

Ishfaq picks up a relative of the sitar and plucks out a melody, strung sparsely across the notes. He sings. His song is as sparse as the landscape, but it contains the wind. The shopkeeper dances, his feet barely moving. His arms rumple and float in the chill air.

Much later, and much lower, we walk in the lush gardens above Phander Lake. A farmer shakes an apricot tree and offers us a handful of his harvest, round, sweet fruit gilded by nature, and now by the setting sun.

 

 2021-08-26  PHANDER TO GILGIT

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Rauf Airlines Flight 664 leaving for Gilgit" announces Rauf, Driver Extraordinaire.

Gikgit sits astride the Kharga River, rushing like all waters in this part of Pakistan, from their source in the high mountains, and mumbling about the rocks in the way. A massive, flattened Buddha image, a bit curvaceous and feminine, sits carved in the stone above the river gorge. For a more than a millennium it has listened to the river and its complaints.

Our digs in Gilgit are in an elegant old family house revived as an inn, away from the buzz of Gilgit Bazaar, and set along the same river, the quiet massaged by the rush of water. A large and phlegmatic dog greets us with a sniff and mini-wag. Pet dogs are rare in the Moslem world. I get my doggy fix. This one is not opposed to an ear scratch but otherwise only marginally interested in this disruption to its routine of sniff and snooze.

Tonight, dinner is a barbecue along the river, in shalwar kameez dress-up.

Tomorrow we ride on ‘The Most Dangerous Road in The World’.

2021-08-27 GILGIT TO FAIRY MEADOW

It's 2,000 feet straight down.

All 2,000 begin one foot left of our jeep's wheels. And my seat. Its my turn to sit on the left side of the jeep. We're one passenger up. Nasser, our mandatory guard, and his gun have crowded in. No one minds. He is sweet, friendly and looks like actor Jake Gyllenhal's more handsome brother, with polished bronze eyes and a killer smile.

This ‘road' is ‘The Most Dangerous Road in The World’. We watched the video in Sarasota at sea level. In no way did it capture the, er, uh, impact of that 2000-foot drop, that one just a foot to my left, down into the Indus River, a sliver way down there. The road itself isn't any worse than other ‘unroads' we have rattled down, “Road 6, jeep 5". The 2000-foot drop is what qualifies it for the ‘most dangerous', but… frankly, if I go over the edge, the result of a 20 foot drop onto those jagged rocks wouldn't be much different than the result of a drop of 2000 feet onto the same. And I would have much less time to think about What Comes Next.

We only see one jeep that has gone over the side.

So, I am pretty composed for the two hours it takes to go the 20 kilometers.

From road's end it is a 3-to-4-hour hike to Fairy Meadow. Uphill. Beginning at about 3000 meters (10,000 feet, give or take), or 1,000 time higher than the summit of our lanai in Florida, which crests at about 10 feet, give or take. Wise in the vagaries of lungs, which are doing just fine, and legs, which are not, I opt to ride up to the fairies on a horse. Big mistake.

It is the most harrowing 3 hours of my life.

Path 2, Horse Plus Bob 1.99. Drop off? Don’t go there. I trust the horse and his guide. I don’t trust me. Only my thighs and stirrup-ed feet hold me on. My clenched hands are useless. The bumpy parts of the trail are tough. The sections down rocky stream beds are terrifying. But I trust the horses hooves more than my legs, so stay aloft. I concentrate on the reliable compass of the horse neck just in front of me. And we get there.

It's worth it.

Fairy Meadow sits under the peaks of Nanga Parbat, 9^th highest mountain on the planet. There's three miles of chilled air straight up between us, in our tents at 10,000 feet, and the 27,000-foot summits. We sip chai and watch parts of Nanga grab and hold onto then toss off wisps of clouds, a heavenly ecdysiast, never revealing all.

Fairy Meadow is the only large flat open place on these slopes, a real meadow. Wooden lodges for people like us ring it. Too many are half-finished. There are too many, period. We're glad we are here now and not in two years when the meadow will be corralled with hotels.

Beyond the hotels and the meadow now is forest, of tall pines, on the slant. Houses and corrals of stone with turf roofs are native to the people who climb up here in Spring and Summer to pasture herds of goats, sheep, cattle, and horses. In a few weeks they will all begin to move down to winter pastures. Islam, manager of our tent digs, and of the chow hall and latrines behind us, walks us through the forest. A baby goat bleats after us.

We stare at the ruins of the Nanga Parbat glacier. Climate change has reduced the front edge to rubble and silt. Ice glistens only way, way up, in the clefts in the peaks. Islam remembers when the glacier came all the way down. He is only 25.

Much, later, in the dark… the night is ripped open by the piercing sound of an explosion, then “Run! Run! Run!” And we do, a few dozen of us, up the slope, and into Islam's kitchen. More explosions pummel the dark. Then, silence. And explanation. To build more lodges, people need flat places to build on, and/or stones to build with. So, they set explosives in the bedrock around the meadow and ‘let er rip’. Most of the time, they get the charge right. Sometimes, they don’t, and “let er rip” becomes “thar she blows”. The sound tells which. And “Run! Run! Run!” comes next.

It's dark, and chill and damp. The bonfire makes us sleepy. There are no more explosions. We walk, walk, walk to our tents.

2021-08-28 FAIRY MEADOW

The night is warm in roomy mummy bags, on thick mats, in our huge tents. These are the first tents in any of our travels big enough to stand and walk around in. Breakfast is hot chai, chapatti, and fried eggs sitting on the edge of the meadow. Nanga Parbat is behind clouds and the grey sky does not look likely to be generous today.

The meadow is show enough. Early morning sheep and goats munch grass, then wander off, replaced by lazier cows. Off to the left, kids play cricket. Later, some soccer players rush over the grass, agile even in long shalwar kameez. My shy Horse Guy passes by with a friend, not shy at all to rear his horse on hind legs and wave. More horses graze. Kids run by, wave. The women are shyer.

By afternoon our choice is clearer than the sky and its clouds that are promising rain. Nanga is fickle. We will leave her to her shyness and start downhill in the morning. Ishfaq, who we suspect is not a ‘tenter' at heart, suggests we move to a lodge for the night. Ours is strung along a ridge with unobstructed views of the glacial remains and the blank grey curtain hiding Nanga Parbat. We supper with Eva and Nikolas young Belgian backpackers, and a German trekker, all bound for Nanga Parbat base camp, and maybe beyond. They won't attempt the summit. Nanga is reputed to be tougher than Everest.

We get news of the jeep we saw crashed off the road. The German guy saw the road crew hand winch the carcass from the spot where craggy rocks had stopped its plunge to the nether regions. The passengers? There were two people aboard. Both survived, though the passenger who leaped out of the jeep mid-plunge was more seriously injured than the driver, who stayed put and rode it out down until rocks caught it and held it.

Maybe we'll see it on our way down.... via the path, not via The Plunge.

2021-08-29 FAIRY MEADOW BACK TO GILGIT

Nanga Parbat, shy all day yesterday, is in full “I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille" glory this morning. Tatters of wispy clouds hang here and there, but there’s no doubt who rules the skies over Fairy Meadow. We pay homage with backward glances as we start the descent. Ishfaq encourages me and Dennis to try walking. Both of us go for it. Anything would be better than aiming downhill on that horse, knees be damned. Three hours later we reach the bottom. Except for a few minutes at the end, when wobble overtakes stride and we took to horseback, our knees and leg muscles get the job done.

Our jeep and driver are waiting for us. The Most Dangerous Road in The World is now old hat. Until we drive around the carcass of that other jeep, now hauled roadside. It's a mangled mess. Both passengers survived.

Down where we switch jeeps the eyes of some guys in the crowd of local drivers, travelers, hangers-on rival even Nasser's bronzy beauties. The only other place we have seen eyes like these was Afghanistan. They burn with the color of jeweled turquoise, of sun-lit iceberg blue, and of fierce on-fire emeralds. Of course, I have no photos.

There is more hiking to the lowland jeeps, where Rauj meets us in ‘Flight 664' then more bouncing down to the metal road, our adventure on The Most Dangerous Road in The World" over. The paved road is smooth. Molars relax.

Then we are almost killed.

2021-08-30 GILGIT TO HUNZA-KARIMABAD

Yesterday, the other car came round the curve way over in our lane and aimed directly at us. Rauf's faster than the speed of light response and perfectly calculated twist of the steering wheel saved us from certain fatal collision on one side and equally certain fatal crash through the barrier and drop to the rocky riverbed on the other. The other car speeds on. So do we, the jeep unscratched, our emotions a bit scrambled.

We owe Rauf. Big time.

Rauf is magic behind the controls of ‘Flight 664' and fun all the time, endearingly low-key and smiling. All of our pictures of him are “for my daughter”, and “she is very smart"

Ishfaq is a miracle. Every day we realize how lucky we are to be seeing his country with him. He has an instinct for what will excite and interest us. Both he and Rauf are the best travel companions. The people of Pakistan are truly friendly, with sweet curiosity about us, and easy and genuine hospitality. Their smiles are easy, launched by the graceful gesture of hand over heart, a greeting from deep in the heart.

Medina-2 Hotel in Gilgit is l famous among back-packers and other travelers down at our budget level. It's a good deal with clean rooms around a garden and its best asset, owner Yaqoob. We sip chai in the garden under a tree with Yaqoob, .He's been hosting travelers for over 20 years, first in ‘Medina', victim of the aftermath of 9/11. There were no travelers right after, then there was unrest and Pakistan became a bit of a pariah for a while. Medina was a victim.  Travelers came back, and Yaqoob created Medina-2. Then… Covid. And now worry about what will happen in Pakistan with the Taliban in control in Afghanistan. Yaqoob, Ishfaq, and Rauf are sympathetic to the refugees, but “they bring problems”. They squirm a bit when we ask what problems. Then Yaqoob says “they bring this man and boy bad thing.” We don’t need details.

Conversation shifts. The sun sets. We are glad for life for another day.

Thankful for Rauf and Ishfaq.

That was last night.

Today we are on the metal road up the Karakorum Highway into Hunza and the town of Karimabad. The Old Hunza Inn is glued to a cliff overlooking the valley. We are glued to the windows. The view is spectacular.

This place was an important link in the Silk Route to Kashgar, straight up the valley and over the high passes into China. Altit Fort has been protecting it for a thousand years, its timbers and stones layered, pegged and interlaced, insurance against the seismic rumblings of the Karakorum mountains.

It’s a dark place inside, locked up against the winter that is so cold up here at 2500 meters (8,200 feet). The rooms are stone versions of the woolen yurts of the nomads across the summits. Smoke from the cooking and warming fires exits through square holes in the ceiling. Sparse light returns, angled as the sun moves above. Wooden pegs on the walls cast shadows, capturing the place of the sun in the sky, bringing time inside. Rugs and fabric soften and warm the stone and wood. And there are those views.

Around the fort the houses jumble along narrow streets. The fort may be empty, but the town is not. Signs welcome outsiders but ask for the courtesy of privacy after 5pm. We give it.

2021-08-31 HUNZA-KARIMABAD VIA ATTABAD TO GHULKIN

 “Jeep is good. Anywhere go!”

Rauf gets that right. Today jeep go straight up the mountain to Baltit Fort, the ‘summer residence’ of the folks living in Altit Fort way below. Balti’s architects borrowed from Tibet, or maybe were Tibetan. We wander the rooms, cold and dark like those in Altit Fort way below, but the old Baltit-ans also liked their outdoor verandas and porches. They hang over the view down to the valley.

This an Ismaili community. We see women. Three welcome us to their Women's Development Café. On the menu we see for the first time 'man too’, Asia's universal dumplings, with their Tibetan name. Maybe that Tibetan architect left more than a building behind.

Rauf gets us back down to the highway. We keep heading north through Hunza towards the border with China. Ten years ago, a mountain shed most of itself into the gorge of Attabad River, taking most of a large village with it, and damming the river. Deep, deep Attabad Lake formed behind the dam. The river is silver-grey with glacier silt. The lake is an improbable color, illuminated turquoise, geological magic.

By afternoon we are walking the paths of Gulkhin village with articulate Qadir. The oldest house is 900 years old. “This was my ancestors house. Now there are 1200 of us. This is our village.” The village is free of the rubbish we see almost everywhere. Trash containers, unknown elsewhere, are bright, big, obvious--- and used--- are a project of high school seniors.

People here are Ismaili Moslems, the least conservative of Islam's followers. Ismaili women are not covered. The women we saw here greeted us openly and with smiles. One drove by on her way home from teaching, the first woman we have seen driving a car, or any other vehicle. Men and women worship together in a building that is not a mosque, but a jamatkhana. We see young men and women playing soccer together on mixed teams, in jeans and sweatpants. All are wearing Covid masks. Few, if any, of the men we see wear the traditional shalwar kameez. Ishfaq says cheap Chinese clothes are much more affordable than traditional shalwar kameez.

“80 percent of the students in my college are women. Our leader Aga Khan says women must be educated first.” A fund provides cheap transportation from the village to the college. There are 3 schools in the village and 3 credit unions. The Aga Khan promotes financial savvy as much as universal education.

A local boy now a successful artist has come home to recover from an injury and opened a studio filled with light and views from green fields to montane snows. His current work is grey and white, but massive in scale, like the landscape filling his windows.

The sound of water follows us back to Qadir's house, the Gulkh Inn. His brother, Ali, promises a dinner of traditional village dishes. His menu is a great success. At first. We lounge on thick cushions and gorge on the apricot and vermicelli soup, and on the potato, onion, egg stir fry. We slurp the thick, milk custard topped with apricot oil (?). Then, the ‘molido' comes.

It looks moderately promising with thick noodles squirming in yoghurt. We all dig in. Five pair of eyes explode open. Five mouths slam shut. Five faces search for agreement. Can this stuff really be this bad? It is. Take sour yoghurt, triple the sour. Double that. Triple it again. It looks harmless. And hits our mouths like battery acid.

It's dreadful. We all agree. Elfie and I figure we have to make an effort. Ishfaq shakes his head. Rauf rolls his eyes. Dennis pops a definitive “no”. They want no part in this, taste buds still reeling. We plop several spoons of sweet apricot preserves atop our doses, about 3 parts sweet to 1 part Whatever This Is. With kindness the dosed result can be described as somewhat edible. The rest might have a career as paint remover. All of the food we have had so far has been delicious. One molido out of a thousand memorable flavors isn't a bad deal.

And nothing can dilute the impact of this exhilarating country and its sweet, sweet, people.

2021-09-01 GHULKIN TO PASSU

Ali digs up some potatoes in his garden and transforms Ghulkin's star product into perfect french fries to send us off.

Much later we sit below the Passu Glacier on the terrace of the Glacier Breeze restaurant and eat Passu specialties. The fried noodles with veggies and chicken, chapshroo (meat pie with ground beef, onions, and garlic), and warm apricot cake are even better on the tongue than on the page.

In between, we sit and watch the sunlight on the Passu Cones. Words fail me.

2021-09-02 PASSU TO CHINA (ALMOST) BACK TO PASSU

Apple slices dry on the roof of The Shisper View Hotel just after sunrise. Side lit by the sun, the Passu Cones etch granite into the sky. Today we leave the Cones for the end of the Pakistan part of the KaraKorum Highway. The temperature goes SCUBA on us as the Highway (KKH to friends) swirls and corkscrews up the river valley to Khunjerab Pass and the border with China. Snow in the crevices on the slopes is way above us, then at eye level, then in patches at our feet.

The fuzzy bumps in the stony landscape are yaks. Bovines are not known for their pizzazz or fashion sense, with the possible exception of the Holsteins in their splashy, large, wayward, and Rorsachy polka dots. They are the Bette Midlers of the bovine clan. Yaks are more the Dowager Lady Dowdee-Dumpee type, out for a munch in last century's fur coat. They come in Basic Black, White, and Mother of the Groom Beige, all in need of a good combing. They are also the only bovines that can exist up here, way above 10,000 feet, shaggy Cowstranauts.

Toasty in their shag, they ignore us and the other shivering tourists here at the highest paved border crossing in the world. And the world’s highest ATM. It is 4,693 meters, 15, 397 feet, into the blue sky. We're not quite at the immense gate that marks the actual line on the map with typical Chinese hippodromic excess. China, in serious lockdown, bans us to a spot far enough to still see the gate (that could be anywhere short of the moon), but too far to clearly see the sign with the distance to the Chinese cities on the other side of the gate. China built the road. China sets the rules.

A snowball rides on the dashboard as we descend, growing smaller, dripping, then just slush.

Passu bazaar is a strip mall, one shop thick off the highway. In a bin under a row of Chinese made ‘real goose down' jackets with more cluck than honk in their background, I find a smushable cloth hat to replace my Florida yard sale Panama Jack straw number, long since ‘beshmushed' beyond ‘characterful' and well into ‘disreputable'.

Back at Glacier Breeze, we snarf down more warm apricot cake and chai. The Passu Cones do their magic.

2021-09-03 PASSU VIA KARIMABAD BACK TO GILGIT

“Good for sleeping going"

We continue back down the KKH, aiming for Gilgit, and tea with Yaqoob and one more night at Medina2.

Rauf turns off in Karimabad. ‘Flight 664' heads up into the stratosphere. We land at a spot so high that Baltic Fort, high above the town, is an angled speck way below us. Above us the mountains rake the sky.

Eagle’s Land Camping Site and Restaurant is maybe ten feet square but is also a ‘tuck shop' with fresh fruit and snacks., and chai. Instructions on how to brew another flavor of tea from a plant we all recognize are free. “Good for sleeping going", he promises. And other things.

No kidding. A few hours later in a small town no different from other small towns we see an unaccompanied woman in tight black slacks walking a large and fuzzy white dog on a leash through the dust. And that’s with only a whiff of the stuff growing all over the hill at Eagle’s Land a few hours ago.

 But, she, the slacks, dog , and leash are real, and, of course, she is a friend of Ishfaq. Sakina and her husband can run their business remotely and like to trek, so they moved here to be near the hills and slopes around the scorching peak of Rakaposhi, ruler of blue the skies here. The blue-eyed, all white, Husky puppy matches the color scheme. We eat among the flowers at Eden Garden Rakaposhi Viewpoint.

Traffic backs up behind the slick ‘Silk Road' bus, stuck behind a landslide, just released by the slopes above us. Passengers clear the rocks. We wait.

Back in Gilgit and at Madina-2, Ishfaq surprises us with platters of ‘man too’, meat dumplings  in the beef, not pork, version, but delicious anyway dribbled with soy sauce and vinegar. Nature photographer Nathan, toodling around the country on his motorbike, scarfs down a few, but passes on our invitation to join us in a barbeque place further in town. After months on the road, only pizza will do. Yaqoob's son can arrange that. Sort of. As we leave for our BBQ, Nathan has worked down the impressive list of pizza choices, none available, and is hopeful that the ‘Taco Style Pizza' will be. We never find out.

Yaqoob and friend Habib take us off into town for chicken barbecued over a wood fire at Paradise Garden and Restaurant (‘We Are Specialized in Grill Food'). The bubbles and tang of beer would be perfect, but … cold ‘Nestle' (aka bottled water), or 'Sprite’ will do. Habib tells us again of the second, Covid-spawned, demise of the tourist industry. A Taliban victory in Afghanistan might mean yet more negative publicity for Pakistan. These people have entered our lives with kindness, and will suffer because of events unleashed beyond their borders, some due to our countries. “Good for sleeping going"?

Not.

2021-09-04 GILGIT TO BESHAM

An arm passes one Afghan roti through the window. The roti is thin, with a rolled crust and dotted with sesame seeds. Hot, it rips and tastes like a pretzel. It's breakfast until a tea stop down river, once again at Ishfaq's friends from Kalash. At 7:30 morning in Gilgit is already in gear, as are we, heading south, then west out of the high mountains. We follow the Gilgit River until it pours into the great gorge of the Indus.

The Indus has been in a hurry for twenty million years, slicing through rock in its rush to the sea. The mountain rains boulders into the channel. The river rages over them, frothing white, roaring. We can hear it up on our ledge road. When the mountains allow it, the gorge widens into a sloping valley. Indus slows. Even slowed it cuts terraces that step up from the water. Here it flattens into a ribbon of molten silver. It could be. It's hot enough as we slide down the great tilted slab of the Indian subcontinent. The continent may tilt but we rise against the tilt up the walls of the gorge, still much lower than when we began, but high above the water. Very high. For hours the drop to the river here is as Hadean as the drop on ‘The Most Dangerous Road in The World' to Fairy Meadow. But…this is not “Road 6, Jeep 5". Jeep is still 5, but Road 12 gives us wiggle and passing room. The mountain walls above and below are as steep and unforgiving, sloughing pebbles, boulders, mountainsides onto the road. We see none in action, only the results, heaps of rocks on the road and twisted metal guard rails between it and all that space. The slopes are green, not bare. The white above is cloud, not snow.

The landscape is not the only difference. There are more checkpoints. Towns are few. They are strips hanging off the rock face. They bustle. The men, even the tiny boys, all wear shalwar kameez. No one is in the “cheap Chinese stuff” (Ishfaq) that is cheaper than the traditional dress. This is a conservative area. We see no women, not even ‘covered' women.

Across the gorge, narrow paths, mere webs for walking, link terraced fields and villages. “Nomads", says Ishfaq, “they go up to the high pastures in summer, and come down now.” I can't see cows on those paths, so it must be goats or sheep that commute here.

Twelve hours after that Afghan roti in Gilgit we drop down to the Indus, level out, and pull into our digs in Besham. The brilliant sign pulses ‘Marriott'. The one next door pulses ‘Hilton'. Rauf turns into ‘the Hilton'. We've never stayed in one of Conrad's places on our travels. And we don't now. Ersazt it may be, but our ‘Hilton' has a lovely garden, hot water, ‘English toilets’, good milk tea, chapattis, and delicious food.

None are to be ashamed of, Conrad.

2021-09-05 AND 06 BESHAM TO KALAM IN SWAT VALLEY

A troupe of middle-aged guys runs through calisthenics and exercises in the garden of the ‘Hilton' just after sunrise. They stop to wave to me and Dennis. Some yell a puffy “Good morning" or “welcome" then get back to pumping tin. The armed guards at the gate are just as friendly, and quite clear that our morning walk stops at the gate, “for security".

Hours later we thread into the narrow streets of Kalam. The Swat Valley is famously beautuful. Kalam is just famous, any beauty smudged by the crowd of chintzy hotels and tourist shlock shops, and not our style. Ishfaq, as always, has a surprise. It's up the very worst road we have groaned over, much worse on molars and vertebrae than the unroad to and from Kalash weeks ago and the cliff-hanger to Fairy Meadow. This nonroad is much steeper than both, even rougher than the unroad to Kalash, but without the distraction of the Two Thousand Foot Drop that accompanied us on the way to Fairy Meadows. Rauf and ‘Flight 664’ push the limits of jeepdom, climbing over boulders and stream beds and corkscrewing up slopes hanging just this side of vertical.

Not quite at the top of the slope Kanabadosh Resort rescues Kalam's reputation. Movish and her husband Urhan have just opened a refined aerie overlooking the valley and the peak of Falaxa way off beyond the valley of Swat. We fill three of the 4 rooms. Our balcony hangs over the slope. Tawdry Kalam is not far below, its lights cleansed by the air.

Rauf comes by with fresh walnuts, “good to eat", and cracks the soft white flesh into our hands. Two and a half hours after Movish says “dinner may take a while”, I give up waiting, give in to fatigue, and crawl under the thick blankets. The reviews the next morning are raves.

I spend the next day on our balcony staying put. Maybe my memories can catch up with me.

2021-09-07 KALAM TO SWAT VALLEY TO MINGORA

But, this is Pakistan, so….

We molar-crunch down the hill to Kalam for breakfast, golden puffs of puri, just exploded fresh from the hot oil, and sweet halvah. It's our first dose of this inspired pairing since our second breakfast in Old Lahore, 23 days ago.

Still licking our fingers we head north from Kalam to Mahudand Lake . The ‘road’ is a basalt porcupine. Rauf taxis Flight 664 gingerly over the rocks, boulders, and mountain chunks for long distances no faster than we can walk. The pine forests are lush at first then thinning, then wisps, then gone as we climb. We stop, still in the green, to watch a waterfall slice down a cliff. Kids with rifles watch us. One runs a shack with drinks kept cold by falling water harnessed in plastic. It's a glorious spot. We bounce on.

The lake is not much of a lake and a blotch of shabby tents and rickety food stalls, worn, and tired, not worth this valley or the drive through it. And not worth a stop. We drive on beyond the trees to the pure, bare rock. The river here is shallow and clear and very, very cold rushing over my toes and ankles.

Hours later, we're clear of the porcupine road, back on the level, paved road and…. BANG! The sound is definitive. The jeep just stops. Dead.

Rauf opens the hood. Ishfaq hops out. They stare. It's the Mandatory Male Motor/Mechanical Breakdown Thing. This I get. Motors I don’t. My knowledge of what is under the hood of a motor vehicle extends to the number for AAA Roadside Assistance.

Dennis, Elfie, and I all adjourn to sit under the trees on the hillside, which happens to be a graveyard. The neighbors will be quiet if we have to sleep rough tonight.

But this is Pakistan, so…

Guys, the living variety, stop, gather, moths to the flame of the Mandatory Male Motor/Mechanical Breakdown Thing. We're invited for tea, then to spend the night.

That open hood trumps all for the time being.

It closes, opens. Gestures fly. Comments follow, all at the same time, the conversation a multi-headed Hydra, overlapping and tripping, Italianate in its refusal to stop… or listen. Hood closes. It's a broken timing belt, easy job they say, a quick out and in. There's one available in the next town. Arrangements are made to get the part. We, however, are

Guy on motorcycle stops. Waves. Putt putts up the hill for help. Five minutes later he wheels the motorbike back down the hill. It's broken. He leaves it, sprints up the hill. Returns a few minutes later with a car. Someone else will get the part. He'll drive us all to our next place.

He has never met us before, doesn’t know us….

But, this is Pakistan.

2021-09-08 MINGORA

The jeep is getting what it needs under Rauf's careful eyes up north and we are down here in Mingora under the careful care of Qaleem, maybe another Ishfaq cousin, but certainly his friend. Qaleem is a bouncy cherub, sweet, and smart. He shows us his Swat Valley. And talks.

Mingora is conservative. The Taliban might appeal to people here. Everyone we meet is friendly, welcoming. We have not seen any obvious foreign tourists in days and get a lot of friendly attention everywhere, beginning with “Where are you from?” underscored with radiant smiles. Ishfaq urges us to say we are German. (Elfie will rescue us if we meet someone who actually speaks German.)

The valley has always been beautiful. ‘Everyone' has been through here. Alex and Marco moved on. Many stayed. And left proof. The Valley’s Buddhist roots run deep under its Moslem, Hindu, Sikh history. Bits are in the excellent Mingora Museum. Qaleem and driver/guide Sana take us to the real thing at the site of the Saudu Sharif Stupa. It's bare stone now, stripped of plaster and color by the intolerance or misunderstanding of those who followed, and by 1500 years of heat and rain. Our time amidst the hundreds of active Buddhist stupas and shrines in Myanmar gives us a template to add some color and a bit of life to the grey stone. Imagination provides the rest.

The Brits left their bits, too. The White Hotel hosted Good Queen Liz and Hubby Phil. Now it hosts even those short of a tiara. We sip tea and pose for pictures with members of a sprawling family arranged with us in various and comprehensive smiling combinations, doing our best to improve the reputation of German travelers.

There is also ice cream, cool balm in the heat.

At night we slither through the crowds and color in the bazaar, a blaze of life and movement. Ishfaq spots scarves to go with our salwar kameez . Thick mango juice all around celebrates the finishing touches to our outfits. We take ours straight up, without milk.

2021-09-09  MINGORA

Rauf is back!

Flight 664 is back, innards all working. All is well, but it is time to say goodbye to this deliciously charming, funny, helpful, a bit wacky, and extraordinary companion. For all that we cannot thank him enough. And he DID save our lives. Others may thank him for that. Rauf will drive north to Chitral while we go west to Peshawar. It's not jeep country, all metal road and flattish. We will miss him. A lot.

From now on we will have drivers hired for a day or two for short trips between and around Mingora, Peshawar, and Islamabad. ‘Adventure Pakistan' is behind us. We miss it, but ‘Culture Pakistan' has a grip on us already.

Sheep and goats are on the move from the high summer pastures to winter lodgings. Their wool will make another stop.

Mingora is famous for its woolen shawls. From sheep to shoulder we watch the process in Islampur village. The weavers are men. Some look in their teens, but most are older. Counting the threads takes young eyes, or at least experienced ones. I wonder what their work span is in the weaving rooms. The wool dust can't be good for lungs. The finest of the shawls are wool spun and woven into spider silk. Elfie wraps perfectly in one with a racy strip of red floating across white. The shop owner gifts us all a short-fringed shawl in the natural brown of the sheep.

Later, we drive up to Manglawar to see the largest rock-carved Buddhist image in the world, largest since the Taliban blew up the larger three-dimensional ones in Afghanistan. This one has been rescued since a similar attempt by the Taliban. We walk up the hill through a persimmon orchard. Some of the fruit is already trying on the deep red/rust color of ripeness. The walk is easy. But, my knees rebel at the last steep hike up uneven paths and steps. Dennis tries, but turns back.  We miss the Buddha. Elfie's pictures will have to take us there.

As we all walk back through the orchard, two girls offer us ripe persimmons, deep red, squishy, the flavor soft, without edges.

Den opts out of fresh persimmon, and dinner. His tum is uneasy. Green tea helps. Our food has been memorable, if occasionally a bit spicy for Dennis and Elfie. Pakistan's breads are delicious. The idea is to break off a piece and use it to scoop food, smush it a bit and pop the tasty morsel onto a waiting tongue. It's harder than it sounds. I get mostly bread and sauce, not a bad compromise, but spoons work better than inexperienced fingers, and Tongue is a lot happier.

And all that bread? The rest of my system has to work that out.

2021-09-10  PESHWAR

We head west, towards Afghanistan, but stop short of the border in Peshawar. It is the oldest city in Pakistan, the oldest occupied city in all of South Asia, here since at least 600bce and still thriving. It's close to one end of the Khyber Pass. Afghanistan is at the other, only several dozen miles away.

The city has a manufactured reputation for being ‘dangerous' in the media, and for being the friendliest city in the friendliest country among travelers. Ishfaq is cautious, reminds us we are Germans.

Ishfaq's buddy (cousin?), and Peshawar resident, Sayid, takes charge of us Germans. He knows his city and his people.

Tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. And….?

2021-09-11 PESHAWAR

Zippers and Margaritas

9/11 was 20 years ago today. The terrorists came from Egypt and Saudi Arabia but the US and allies bombed and invaded Iraq and Afghanistan for no great reason—oh wait, they bookend Iran--- and vilified Pakistan and other Moslem nations. Later, the 45^th President, the one who knew “many big words” placed restrictions on Moslems coming to the USA, unless they were Egyptian or Saudi.

Maybe this will make sense and get all sorted out by the future. Today, here in Pakistan no one mentions it.

But, the people here live with the fallout.

And still welcome us. With smiles and invitations to tea.

And zippers.

My favorite daypack, bought off street kids in Cairo, and the perfect size for my folding cane, water bottle, and the flotsam and jetsam of daily life on the road needs a zipper upgrade. Each pouch has one zipper. I want twin zippers. Sayid nods. “No problem". He leads us down an alley, then another. We duck past kids playing rugby, then down another alley, and stop at a corrugated roll down shutter door. A few bangs, the squeal of metal rollers as the door opens halfway, and some big hugs between friends and we're ready to deal in zippers. Friend makes backpacks and suitcases… from scratch, any size, any color, any material. Zippers? He rolls experienced eyes over the bag, shrugs, pops under the roll away door, pops out ten minutes later with my bag, twin-zippered everywhere, and restitched. It costs about a dollar.

Outside the city and just across Sethiyan Bridge which once marked the border between ‘British India’ and Afghanistan and which is now in Pakistan is a tent camp of Afghans, refugees from the invasions by Russia and the USA, and from the rise of the Taliban. Many have been there 40 years. Ishfaq says many were originally nomads and are used to living in tents. Grain of salt? Nomads move. These people can't.

Pakistan's trucks, peacocks of the metal roads, are the great moving canvases for a Peshwari specialty, ‘Truck Art'. Sayid takes us to two workshops, jumbles of trucks and truck parts in various stages of reincarnation as moving art. The drivers may make suggestions, but the final designs, colors, and composition are up to the tin snippers, welders, and painters who fill the huge canvases. Their art takes to the road, wild, moving canvases, free to all. And seeps down to even the pushcarts.

Back in the heat of the city, Sayid leads us through the old center of his Peshawar. Chouk E Yadgar in the heart of Old Peshawar was the Pakistani equivalent of that soapbox square in London. People could come here and spout on any subject, but nowadays, political stuff is banned. It's for kids now. Rugby balls fly instead of accusations.

Sethi House, dowager of Peshawar's Heritage Houses, presides over its narrow lane, remnant of a lifestyle elegant and privileged, but with hints of dark doings. There are ‘escape passages’ in the basement and sub-basement, and across the rooftops. The birds that nest in the eaves are the only occupants now.

The great mosque has a sinister past. After the Sikhs captured the city centuries ago in they hanged one Moslem from each of the five minarets every day.

Peshawar is just hot, blazing hot. The heat flattens our energy and concentration. The history is a soaked jumble slipping out of our memory on sweat.

Then we spot ‘Mint Margaritas', on a bold, green sign, right down the street. The drinks are heaven, a handful of fresh mint, lemon juice, ice, a dash of Sprite, pulverized and poured into tumblers. They cool us from the inside out.

Hours later, after the sun has set and the heat has seeped from the streets, we lounge on string cots away from the smoke at the city's most famous barbecue place and eat tender chunks of fat-tailed sheep braised slowly in tomato and onion sauce. Lamb belongs trotting off after Mary and not on my dinner plate, but this is delicious. My claim that “I do not eat meat" is rapidly losing street cred.

 We share our section of the crowded restaurant with one half of a jubilant rugby team, fresh off victory and now Swat’s official representative in the next game, against Peshawar. If this were not a Moslem country, they'd be dousing with beer and champagne. Here, they douse us with chai, the joy of victory, and the sweet smiles of genuine welcome.

Sayid is right about his town.

AND, NOW A BONUS FOR THE LADIES

 

BONUS POST - A question for the ladies and an apology to the gents

Elfie is disappointed that I have not included in the blogs any mention of her Long Distance Highway Flirtation, from her seat in the front of the jeep, through the windshield, across a dozen meters of metal road to the back of the military jeep and to the well-equipped military escort, ‘He Who Shall Be Named The Highway Hunk’, ‘HH’ for short. Even from my backseat I could see the play of his smile dazzled through the dust in our direction. Elfie has no clear pictures of the HH. She blames that on the windshield. Drool is another possibility.

Now I remember something Habib told us in Gilgit. Pakistan's tourist industry has had a major upbump from Malaysia, and specifically from Malaysian women, who flock in droves. A few years ago, the first group of Malaysian women sent pictures of “handsome boys" back home. Bim Bam, Thank You Ma'am and a new industry was born.

So, ladies, are your Malaysian sisters on to something? Here are some pictures some of our guards, and drivers. I don’t poke my camera in the faces of strangers, faces, but these guys were with us, some for a few days, so it was OK. Elfie rates them with high on her ‘Wow' and ‘Oh, yeah!’ scales. Me? All the guys here look like this., so “average", I guess. And, gents, we never see women, so imagination is in order.

By the way, the anthropologist in me is still trying to figure out how these eye colors (polished bronze in Bachelor Number One, deep teal in Bachelor Number Two, and turquoise in Bachelor Number Three) wind up here.

 

 

2021-09-12 PESHAWAR AND TAKHT-E-BAHI MONASTERY

The monks knew what they were doing 2000 years ago. Takht-e-Bahi is monumental, hewed stones in tiers rising over the green slopes leading us to plazas still thick with the bases of beheaded stupas, it’s a place, not a ruin. And both the most impressive of Pakistan's Buddhist temples and the most evocative of the power of faith to cover, if not move, mountains.

Peshawar has a similar effect on us. It reeks history. Its people are gracious, inheritors of millennia of civilized life, ingrained with civility. They are friendly, easy smilers, hand over hearts as they acknowledge our walk through their city. They beckon us to have tea. We share a sidewalk with men on Story Teller's Street.

Sayid leads us through his alleys, making us look up. The balconies of heritage houses, thick with the designs of ‘Peshawar Then’ bump out over the hum of ‘Peshawar Now’, mules, motorcycles, rickshaws, cars, walkers, riders. This city pulses, electric. Real electricity is another matter. Wires festoon and drape, lights flicker. We drink tea.

Peshawar is famous for its chappals, leather sandals. Elfie never finds her red ones, but I find a pair in deep cordovan, then another in black and beige, too special to abandon on its rack. This requires celebration, aka Mint Margaritas.

This is Day Two for us in the shop behind Mint Margaritas sign, old friends in Peshawar time. “I'm a good artist" says Margarita Guy and proves it with photos of his paintings.

Back at the hotel, the armed guards at the door ‘rip Sayid a new one', then another. Foreigners must have a guard. 

The only things we have met on the streets of Peshawar are smiles and invitations. 

But, tomorrow, we ‘Germans’ will have one.

2021-09-13 PESHAWAR

Ishfaq promises that we will like his friend, Prince. “He's a little bit, you know, like crazy.” Yes, and Yes. Prince collects old gramophones and gramophone records, all piled in planetary level disarray in his ‘studio’. He tells us a story, which we can’t follow, while a plummy British voice tells another, equally impenetrable, from a warped vinyl LP. Prince doesn't notice, happy to have an audience visiting his world. He leads us through the alleys to old houses. Everyone knows him. We get street cred as ‘’riends of Prince’. Our mandatory armed guard follows our parade, sure we will never need him. We're with Prince.

Everywhere people smile at us, invite us to sit, have tea. Ishfaq is protective, so we don’t. But, the people of Peshawar melt our hearts.

The heat melts the rest. We ooze through the alleys of this city. We watch a guy roll a tube of wool into a traditional Chitrali hat. Elfie buys one, sure to be a hit next winter in Vienna. The photo of device he uses to roll the hats will explain why we noticed his shop.

Fresh pomegranate juice gets us part way to cooled.  Mint Margarita Man gets us the rest of the way.

2021-09-14 PESHAWAR AND TAXILA

Peshawar has captured us. Its streets have character. Its people have confidence gifted by an ancient history, and the open and genuine hospitality gifted by that confidence. Never have we felt anything but welcomed.

Our three Peshwari armed guards, in and out of mufti, are eating breakfast at the street café next to the hotel. Selfies fly. Ditto smiles.

We leave Peshawar for the easy metal road drive to the non-identical twin cities of Islamabad, the manufactured capital, and Rawalpindi, the old city that Islamabad is absorbing. This is the last leg of our 36 days in Pakistan.

On the way we get another history fix at the ruins of Surkat, more evidence of Pakistan's long Buddhist history. It's a neighbor of Joulian, the monastery/university with walls that spoke to us a month ago, but any message from the regular grid of Surkat's low stone walls is flattened by the glare of the hot sun. Only one rounded stupa and one platform, and a few dessicated and blackened trees, rise above the heat waves.

Ishfaq, as always, has a surprise It's a cool garden surrounded by fields, and Sayid Gul. She is not a cousin. She is his ‘best friend since childhood', a Kalashi woman now in charge of archeological sites just across the provincial border from Surkat. Uncovered, of course, as are all Kalashi women, she is super- bright (PhD in Indigenous Anthropology is in the works), and articulate. Her place has room for guests, quiet except for bird songs.

We sit in the shade of her garden, then over breakfast. Gul speaks of the cost of being an educated woman. Yes, international travel is exciting. Yes, protecting Pakistan's heritage is important. But. She is away from her family for long periods. And there is the ‘guy problem’. “I met a nice guy who wanted to marry me, IF I change my name. My parents gave me a boy's name (Sayid). I don’t know why, but it’s my name. He can change his name!!”

The next morning,Gul takes us to some of her sites, then leaves us to work and sends us on to the Taxila Museum. The Buddhist sculptures in the quiet museum are not overkill. They are beautiful in inspiration, execution, and presentation. White now, they were once painted. One fragment has remnants of color on its eyes and lips. In real life they were part of a community, with kids who played with clumsy, clunky, funny animal figures. 

 In real life they were part of a community, with kids who played with clumsy, clunky, funny animal figures. My favorite is a cross-eyed cow.

2021-09-15 RAWALPINDI

Her eyes are hard, calculating, in a face too rigid and in a dress too obviously colorful and opulent for a twelve-year-old. She watches me reach the top of the escalator. Her friend, older, harder, is about 4 feet away. I know how this works: divert and strike. My stuff is safe, so I'm not worried. The younger one grips my arm. I yell NO as loud as I can and break the grip. No woman would touch a man like that in public. The two faces screw up in rage, illusions of youth…and gender… gone, gone, gone. They're not as young as they look. Or female. They run.

Later in the market, another hand grips my arm. He's sitting in a doorway, ravaged looking beyond the powers of his troweled make-up. I shake him off, gently. Maybe these guys hope foreigners won't notice or will scare easily into dropping a few rupees into their claws. I just feel pity. Life can't be easy for these guys.

We move on. I forget about those hands until I write this blog.

Rawalpindi is busy, frenetic, crowded, like Peshawar. The narrow alleys have heritage houses, the bazaars vibrate. Late afternoon light gilds the crowds that pass a back to back twinning of Hindu temple and mosque. On its own terms Rawalpindi is a winner. But we have been to Peshawar.   Pindi but does not have Peshawari style or gracious civility. Still, this is Pakistan. The people are friendly and welcoming.

The night is almost cool. The cloth seller measures. The tailor writes. My vital statistics are going to reappear in a thin white cotton overshirt. The tailor will reincarnate Elfie's favorite travel-savvy cotton blouse three times over, in different colors. The cloth seller is maybe a cousin, but hugs Ishfaq like a friend. Shirts will all be ready overnight.

We are wiped. Bed is super comfy in Grace Crown Hotel. We sleep.

Until next morning when Dennis says:

“I think I have Covid”

2021-09-16 RAWALPINDI AND ISLAMABAD

“I think I have Covid”

Now THAT announcement from Dennis in the other bed sure jump starts my day.

And Ishfaq's. And Elfie’s.

“I have sneezing, occasional cough, slight sore throat, 3 of the 5 symptoms of Covid.” And of lots of other things than the Big C-19, but we're taking no chances. We could wait until tomorrow, the 17^th, and take the PCR test that will get us into the USA on the 20^th, but… We'll get the quickie antigen test today. If positive then the departure on the 20^th is a no-go, and we need to plan.

Two hours later the techie in serious head and ‘haz mat' gear is exploring our nasal passages. “Results in 4 hours" is the promise.

We fill the day.

Faisal Mosque is inescapably large (Number 6 in the world). A gift by Saudi Arabia, it looms over Islamabad, big, and all opulent, angular and pointy, but pointless, stylistically irrelevant architecture. It reminds me of those unfortunate ‘modern' churches built in the flurry after Vatican Two in the Sixties. Worse, it misses the gentle softness of traditional mosques, perhaps the most feminine of religious structures. And there are those acres of hot stone tiles to cross barefoot. We non-Moslems aren't the only people hopping across the huge spaces, gridirons of marble frying our feet.

At the National Museum Ishfaq’s friend invites us to his film-making class. The students interview and tape us. Then we turn the tables if not the cameras and ask “What would you like to say to the people in our home countries?”

“Tell them to come to Pakistan.”

We will.

Ishfaq leans into me. “The test results are ready. We will get them at the lab.”

We do. Negative.

Munip, Ishfaq's articulate cousin---"a real first cousin"--- and major in the Pakistan military, lives here in the cities. We're ready to celebrate seeing him again, the day, Pakistan. Rawalpindi makes it easy. One of Pindi's best fish places is right next door to our Grace Crown Hotel. From the row of whole fish draped over the counter, chef Babaji selects two kinds, cleans, chunks, fries, and delivers two platters of Marine Marvels to our table on the street. Both are delicious, but the pomfret is memorable.

Talk of Peshawar and Mint Margaritas gets Munip into high gear. He knows a place. Half hour later we are walking through a very upscale street scene in Islamabad, many, many income levels above the crowded streets and bazaars of “our" Pakistan so far. Islamabad is the designed capital, tree-lined Embassy Row. Opulence does not guarantee Mint Margaritas. Munip can't find his place. Fall back is the Pakistan Army Officer's Club, gated, elegant, willing to give Mint Margaritas a try. They're good, a bit light on the mint, and a tad salty.

But good enough to seal the day.

2021-09-17 AND 18 RAWALPINDI

Ishfaq knows his travelers. These last days are low key. He moves us to a quiet street in Islamabad and an inn that promises a garden.

I “Who Do Not Eat Meat" loves our lunch of tender lamb and yellow rice in quiet Said Pur village in the hills just outside the city. Later, Ishfaq takes us to more quiet place even further out of the cities. This is Budha Caves, once a ‘community of hermits’. We shrug off that oxymoron, and enjoy the songs of a turbaned singer and his harmonium, and the crunch of crispy, deep-fried veggies.

The helpful ladies at our clinic wade through the administrivia cluttering up the Covid PCR Travel Test procedure. We have passports and plane reservations, but there are airline, flight number, departure time, ticket numbers and other fine print details to mine from our Turkish Airlines printouts. Noses now familiar with the routine, the medical procedure takes a nano-second.

Mango juice, hot bread, semi-spicy garbanzo beans, then chai get the day on track.

Our inn has no garden and the neighborhood is manicured into featureless, uninteresting elegance. It doesn’t hold us. Ishfaq and Elfie reconnoiter the youth hostel. It's a deal, with a garden, spacious rooms, and near a market. The electricity is a sometime thing, but, oh well…

In the market, the guy pulls us our packages of Pakistan's Chili Garlic Sauce and Tomato Ketchup, both essential to life. The bags of massala and chili powder that have added a whiff of the exotic to our luggage since Peshawar are no-nos in carry-on. Our history with checked bags is not a pretty one. Hope triumphs experience, so we go for it. The extra bag to check is a deal at eight dollars. We'll fill it with stuff we don’t mind losing. The luggage locks are probably only decoration, but are cheap at 60 Rupees, 40 cents. They may be useful wherever in the solar system the bag, the spices, the sauces, and our dirty laundry wind up.

The luggage guy fixes the handle on Dennis’ rolling backpack and won't accept payment.

One more mango juice ends the day.

Tomorrow we pick up the Covid PCR results. There should be no surprises.

2021-09-19  LAST DAY IN PAKISTAN

“Welcome to Pakistan"

There are no surprises at the clinic. Covid hasn’t invaded us since the other test two days ago.

The vote is to take it easy today, our last. But we're in Ishfaq ‘Slowly, slowly’ territory. Nothing here is ever slowly slowly. We opt for a valedictory wander through the color and energy of a market, today's Sunday Market. Elfie could use some colored shoelaces, and there's a tickle in my brain twitching “padded vest, padded vest, padded vest”, as in what to wear this winter to stay warm in the snowy mountains of Iraq. Even though the temperature here rarely drops below the boiling point of water --- today the mercury is pushing way beyond that --- we all assume this is not a Quixotic quest. Markets here have everything. We drip, and wilt. And have faith. Then, there it is, too small, padded with nothing but Derivative of Dead Dinosaur, but a padded sleeveless vest (waistcoat to Ishfaq) nevertheless. Faith is rewarded, if not needed, waistcoast-wise. Alas, we draw a total blank on shoelaces. Shoes of every size, color, stylistic success (and opposite) are everywhere, but if you need a shoelace, you're outta luck. (This reminds me of The Great Comb Quest in North Macedonia. Macedonians have hair, headsful of pelt-thick glorious hair. But combs? Zippo. We finally found some in a pharmacy, but the druggist had to retrieve them from dusty box stored in a back room.)

Mango juice is salve on our disappointment

We're rather the hit of the Sunday Market. Everywhere, people stop, smile, and say "Welcome to Pakistan!” and they mean it. Hand over heart.

There's one more stop on our last day. The Pakistan Monument is on a high hill, overlooking Pakistan's capital city. Its tall leaves encompassing the country's provinces is a design that works, and makes a point. Way across the city, the Faisal Mosque scratches the view.

Just in time for sunset, Muneeb and Ishfaq take us even higher, way up the corkscrew road to Monal Restaurant. Elfie and I trot out our shalwar kameez. My feet are happily festive in the black and white swirls of my spiffy new Peshawar chappals. Many of the men in Monal are in jeans. The women are uncovered. Many stop by to say “Welcome to Pakistan".

The conversation turns sartorial, passes over salwar kameez, goes down to new shoes, then up to our neck bandanas. “They keep our collars clean", say we”. “Yes”, says Muneeb. “Twenty years ago a neck bandana meant you were a gangster”. Now he tells us.

Ishfaq orders quintuple mint margaritas. They are good, maybe a 9.8 on the Peshawar Streetside Mint Margarita Scale. A 98 percent full moon rises over our hill and Islamabad, now is a Milky Way of lights below us.

The two lamb dishes, one barbecued, one braised into moist, silken softness, force this erstwhile lamb-o-phobe into an irrevocable admission, non-verbal, but clearly audible and visible. I almost forget to eat the hot garlic naan.

Ramazan, cloth merchant and designer of my new white shirt comes, late because of traffic and an accident on the corkscrew road. This isn't just a send-off anymore. We talk of a next trip, a return to Kalash, then to the mountains in the southeast for the Fall fruit harvest, and to hot Baluchistan in the far southwest, near Iran.

The guys drop us back at the hostel. Hugs and handshakes aren't enough, but that's what we have.

Ishfaq will take us to the airport in 4 hours. Saying goodbye to this amazing man, now an irrevocable friend will be very difficult.

2021-09-20 ISLAMABAD TO MIAMI

Islamabad airport is easy, even for the somnolent. Saying goodbye to Ishfaq isn't. A hug doesn’t even come close. The trip he created for us is indelible. So is he. And Rauf. And this surprising country and its sweet, kind, friendly people. How do we top this? Ishfaq, we have to come back.

Islamabad airport is beautiful, easy, and efficient. Dennis' expired visa gets a shrug and a pass. There’s no food available, but Turkish Flight 711 fixes that. Istanbul is a quick 5 hours straight westward, but we curve southward first, then turn west over southern Afghanistan. Is it to avoid flying over Kabul?

I think they have stretched Istanbul's famously immense airport, perhaps into the European Union. I look for the English Channel on the way to our transit gate. The layover is long enough for the looooong trek, a few sandwiches and big cappuccinos. We miss Pakistani chai. And liquid mango.

“PCR test, please" starts our process before we are admitted to the seating area at Gate 13D. It's required to enter the USA. Everyone on the plane must be negative … so, why must we mask? We all do.

Even my immense seat mate.

She is Himalayan, great Nanga Parbat come to earth, wrapped in acres of black robes, not white snow and diaphanous cloudshe plane is full. I have an aisle seat across from Dennis, seat 10D. The other two seats in my row, E and F, are empty. She flashes a boarding pass. 10E, my neighbor. There is no way she can squeeze past 10D on my side or 10F from the other aisle. She can barely walk. The flight attendant plays tugboat and steers her back, then around the bathrooms, and up the other aisle to 10F, lifts the armrest between F and E, rotates her, and gently maneuvers her into the row. She smiles at me, descends onto F, spreads well into E, but not over to me in D. There's even half of E left as border territory. She fills the space from seat to TV screen. There is no way she can open the tray in front of her. The plane is completely booked. 10E is the only empty seat. Then I get it. She has bought both seats. She'll have 10E for the overflow. Between us there is plenty of room. She smiles again, leans forward, and falls asleep. Until the food comes.

We roar down the runway, lift, and turn. Miami is 9854 kilometers westward from Istanbul. It is 15 hours since the alarm groaned us up at 01:30. It's another 12 hours to Miami.

There's lots of time to eat, watch a predictable sci-fi film, clone of the great film ‘Alien’, and Turkish Airline's fun 2-minute travelogues about the country's towns and cuisines, all experience reduced to 8 by 10 and flat.

Pakistan is so large and alive for us it dims all that ersatz stuff. I remember something the young people in the film class at the museum want to say to people about their country.

“Don’t believe the media. Come to Pakistan.”

And we remember what Pakistanis said to us every day, and meant it, hand over heart. “Welcome to Pakistan.”

Thank you, Ishfaq. Thank you, the best travel companions, Dennis and Elfie.

Thank you, Pakistan.