Skardu(sty)

We're now on our way from Skardu, the capital of Baltistan in the far NE of Pakistan, to Karimabad on the main Karakorum Highway to China.

I've been to some dusty towns, but Skardu beats all of them. The Indus river makes a wide meandering river bed in the Skardu valley and, between the time that the valley itself thaws and the snow and glaciers high in the mountains start to melt, it leaves hugh expanses of sand and silt exposed. This gets whipped up into the air by the wind for a few hours every afternoon, blocking views across the valley and covering every surface. Really unpleasant, especially for contact lens wearers.

Its not like there is much to see in the town, either. The bazaar is at best passingly interesting and the local beauty spot, a lake in the hills above town, has been disfigured by the ongoing construction work for a Chinese-funded dam. The lake was pretty enough if you only looked in one direction and the trout and chips we had for lunch were good. It's quite a conservative shiite town and there were no women around at all, so Gemma wore a head-scarf for the first, and perhaps only, time in the trip. The rest of the places we're heading to in Pakistan are largely ismaili muslim and supposedly she won't need to cover her head.

The main attraction of Baltistan is the scenery. The area is home to something like 5 of the world's 20 highest mountains, and the views are awesome. There are also some nice villages nearby, with old forts and wooden mosques, and good walking. Balti food has nothing to do with the dish of the same name in UK Indian restaurants, but is really good. My lunch yesterday was the best of the trip so far, despite the unpromising menu description: "Local bread cooked in mutton broth". It turned out to be tasty pasta-like pieces in a spicy and nutty sauce with pieces of meat.

Baltistan became part of Kashmir when the British sold it to the Maharaja of Kashmir after capturing it during the Sikh Wars, and Skardu is only a couple of hours away from the Line of Control between India- and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. Surprisingly, there is not a heavy Pakistan army presence in the area - in contrast to the other side of the border in Ladakh and the Kashmir valley itself. I guess that, unlike the Indian army, the Pakistan army have got bigger problems. The locals here have some strange ideas about the Taliban (although people in Islamabad were well informed). One of our fellow bus passengers today, like many Europeans, thinks that America is to blame for all the world's problems. Our American friends will be glad to know that I lept to your country's defence; pointing out that at least Kashmir isn't America's fault. He claims that America are both (still) funding the Taliban and the Pakistan army. He didn't have a particularly strong view on why America would want to do this. I guess general malevolence would need to be invoked. More extraordinary was the owner of the restaurant we ate in a couple of days ago. He told us that his 'friend in the Pakistan army' had told him that the insurgents he had killed in Swat are uncircumcised and therefore obviously Indian soldiers pretending to be Taliban. The Indian press have claimed things at least as extraordinary as this about Pakistan, so perhaps this kind of thing is to be expected here also. I was more concerned about the removal of enemy casualties' undergarments. I doubt this is specifically covered in the Geneva Convention, but it is clearly against the spirit of the agreement.

Getting to Skardu ended up being a bit easier than we'd feared. The landing involves circling down within the valley and has to be done visually. It wasa tterrifying. Sensibly, they cancel the flight when it is windy or cloudy, and the flight had been cancelled on 5 days of the week before we wanted to travel. There was a big back-log of people with tickets wanting to travel. Luckily, we got chatting with the manager of the main PIA ticket office in Rawalpindi and she managed to find 2 seats on the next flight.

Finally, apologies for the title of this post. Gemma insisted and I'm an indulgent kind of guy.

We've now enabled comments on this blog. This is somewhat ambitious, given that we only have one reader that we're aware of (hi, Vanessa!)....

T.