When trees cry

A proud pine tree, marked to be cut.

This will be my last entry from Pakistan, and perhaps the last entry all together. During the next few days I will cycle to China, and in China googleblog does not work. Or so I've heard. Perhaps the party has eased it's restrictions, but I don't think so. I could go and search for free gate software - like I had to in Iran, which allows you to use an IP address from outside the country - but to be honest I feel more for cycling and enjoying the last month of the trip. (Who reads this anyway? Hello, is there anybody out there?!)


(Picture: Kalash girl disappearing for the photo.)

I spent the lion share of my travel in Pakistan, so I feel I should do a recap of some sort. Pakistan, it's difficult to say anything that hasn't already been said, or that makes any sense. When I was thinking about this during the last cycle rides I concluded that it is a country without moderation. Things either go way too fast or way too slow. Food often is prepared with too much taste. People are very convinced or completely unmoved. And nature helps a bit in this regard. It's often too. Something Pakistanis who speak English have adopted in their speech. "It is too much hot yaar!" and "You're going to the northern areas? Ah, it's too much beautiful there!" As a 'forner' - foreigner in Pak-English - it's often difficult to deal with.
I wrote a little rhyme about this.

This is to Pakistan

Too much heat
Too much rain
Too much steep
Too much plain

Too much insecure
It drives you feeble
That's for sure

Never alone
Too many people
Getting in your comfi-zone

Too many cars
Too little sense
drivers that should be behind bars
but 'forner', don't be tense

This is too Pakistan

(Picture: too much water, it finished the bridge near Burawai.)

I had in mind to speak about the paradisaical beauty that the North of Pakistan has shown me the last month, but now that this area is in such trouble, that seems out of place. Pakistan is in a deep crisis, with thousands of people killed, a much larger number displaced, and an entire harvest gone to waste. So this is not just a flood, this is a full-blown food crisis that will effect millions.


(Picture: guy making chapati on a hot plate in Jalkhad.)

Personally I've had an incredible amount of luck. I cycled with sunny weather up until Gilgit, while elsewhere bloated rivers were washing away houses and roads. Ines and I took busses to some of the areas that would be hit by the disaster days after. We crossed the Swat Valley to get to Chitral, the only limitation being that we had to wait for daylight before we could enter otherwise the police deemed it to be too dangerous. We took the Karakoram Highway back to Pindi, which partly collapsed a few days later.
Now that the main road has been blocked for more than a week, you start to notice that the distribution lines have been broken for too long. Petrol is running out, vehicles come to a standstill. Certain foodstuffs become scarce.


(Pictures: men in the Kaghan Valley hauling down trunks. Logging happens on a huge scale, with whole slopes being cut bare. When I took these photos they were in a festive mood, with loud yelling every time they managed to shove it down a bit.)

Part of the problem is the massive deforestation that is characteristic for the whole of Pakistan. Trees hold the soil porous and in place and absorb water. I wrote earlier about Sindh and how it used to be a forested province. No more. Most of it is gone, and the soil is overburdened with agriculture, tube wells that distort the ground water and fertilisers.


(Picture: a boy carrying firewood near Babusar Top, 4000 metres high.)

When Ines and I were in Rumbur, one of the valleys where Kalash people live, we saw tree runners running down trunks that they tied with a rope around their shoulder. We saw how the river is used as a firewood speedway and how jeeps are loaded with enormous logs to be rumbled out of sight, downhill where brick ovens and roti bakers eagerly wait. Or where people want to build or rebuild their house.


(Picture: guys in the Nooristani village in Rumbur, 40 km away from the Afghan border, directing the trunks down stream.)

But when we saw all that, nobody was even thinking that the few days of rain that would follow would have such a massive impact. We participated in traditional Kalash dances and made walks with the local policeman, a great guy with a rather lenient approach to the law. He guided us tirelessly through valleys, across slopes, smoking spliffs and drinking wine, which he was happy to share.

The racial characteristics of Kalash people and people in the north in general are different from the Pakistanis on the plain and plateaus. You could say that people look more 'European' and you will hear often that they are descendants of Alexander the Great and therefore some sort of half Greeks. More probably, they come from Indo-Aryan tribes that moved into the Subcontinent. But that these people have lived closer to the sea than they do now, can be understood if you look at the beautifully decorated head dress that Kalash women wear. Plenty of shells adorn their crown (which is really heavy to wear!).

(Pictures: Kalash girls are used to 'forners' wanting to take pictures of them. It was nice to turn it 'round and give them the camera.)

It was a relief to spend time with the Kalash, who are not Muslim and have a lifestyle that is much easier for us to relate to. Not only because they drink wine every once in a while, but more so because of the role women have in society. In short, they do take part in public life and don't have to hide themselves from strange men. I can't help feeling very strange if I pass some Muslim village and see all the women turn away because of me. And for foreign girls it's much worse, with men gazing at them all the time.

The Kalash live in a beautiful world, but it's a world that is remote. We thought we would miss a telephone connection and access to the web; a Japanese lady that we met who has been living there since the last two, three decades (she also got distracted on a travel that was suppose to take her to Lisbon) misses fresh vegetables mostly. When things are out of season, they are out of season.

After Ines took the plane back to Europe, I started what will be the finish to my ride. From Islamabad I made my way through Murree and the Galis, small resort towns in the hills north of the capital. The first day I climbed more than 2000 metres with a broken pedal, but that's a long story that I'll spare you. One that riffs off the time that my bike was stolen and that frustrates me still. So okay:

you cannot find proper bicycle spare parts in the whole of Pakistan (170 million people, not a single dealership) and people will sell you crap if you do manage to find something. You have to check everything, even if it is really a left and a right pedal in a set.

Stayed the night in Changla Gali at the police station and cycled to Balakot the next day, where I could camp with the guys from the Edhi Foundation, a first aid network that has about as many ambulances as the state itself. Here the Kaghan Valley start and I cycled up to the Babusar Pass in two days (staying the night in Kaghan, where I could camp at the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council and a charpoy hotel in Jalkhad, where guys treated me on freshly fried trout, straight from the river, and delicious fish curry). Then down in half a day and a sweaty, dusty afternoon ride to Chilas, where I stayed at the Blue Sky Hotel for 200 rupees including bicycle carry up service to the second floor.


(Pictures: vistas from the Karakoram Highway, or Karakoram Dirt-track as I prefer to call it (closer to reality), blobs of green that seemed to have dropped from a big tin of paint and rambling trucks that temporarily replace the fresh mountain air with diesel fumes.)

The road is often made more difficult by its inhabitants that like to tease 'forners', especially when they are weird and appear on a cycle. Things that were thrown at me: rocks, the core of an apple and a maize stalk - although that might have been accidentally as it came from a minivan that passed me at high speed. Which reminds me, I was also hit by a car that didn't stop.
I often curse the people when I cycle, but the contradiction comes when I take a break and sit down for a tea or snack. Often this leads to nice encounters that make me forget all the nuisance that frustrated me just before.

(Pictures: my afternoon and night in Talechi. I did not plan to stop here but the request of the boy on the bike if I could fix his bicycle made me stay. His big brother then let me camp in their garden, where I had a five star spot with a view on Nanga Parbat (more than 8 kilometres high).)

Another thing that annoys me sometimes is that many guys don't seem to be too bothered to do something for the greater good, be it paid or unpaid. They do however have their comments ready for anyone that passes. And sometimes you reach a top, completely out of breath, and the first thing the locals do is ask you for money.

I really liked the beekeepers though, who could be seen at work all along the Kaghan Valley. Delicious honey too.

For quite a while there was an open end to the travel. I would use the visa time given, and let myself be distracted. Now, I've decided to celebrate my birthday (30) with family and friends, which means that I'll be back in Europe before the end of October. Hope to see you then.


(Pictures: an October tree in August at the NLI basaar in Gilgit, and a fascinating flower, who knows what kind, in the garden of the Madina Guesthouse, also in Gilgit.)




To end, one of the most stunning landscapes I've ever seen. Closer to the moon than this I won't get. Minapin glacier in the morning.