Off To The Mountains

I woke up feeling energized and hopeful that these my new buddies would legit and would come pick me up at 10:00 AM. Tony and I had a nice breakfast, although I did not have fresh jam this morning, something I will have to remedy tomorrow. I received a message at 9:00 that they boys would be there on time (they were late trying to find my hotel) so it looked like it was game on. I had not idea what the plan was but that sure as hell did not matter.

The well worn, black Toyota Corolla pulled with four smiling faces. The driver, whose name I was never told was just referred to as driver. He was small, shorter than me and could have been a hippy anywhere in the world. When he did not wear his headscarf, his long 60s hair was all over the place. His Pakistani clothing and sandals were well worn. He had a shit eating grin and the way he pulled up was even energetic. This I found out later was because he was constantly smoking hash. Doh! I was told to jump into the front seat as I was the guest and off we went. Within 30 seconds I realized that "Driver" was another fucking madman behind the wheel.

The Madman Driver

Our first stop was going to be Attabad Lake which was about 25 minutes down the Karakoram Highway. The highway was fully constructed by the Chinese, including the tunnels along the way. The guys talked excitedly in the back, asking me questions about my life and I did the same in return, while keeping a wary eye on the corners we took along the mountain road wondering if we were going to continue to challenge the laws of physics. Anyways, Attabad Lake was formed by a massive mountain rockslide into the Hunza River in 2010, displacing over 35,000 people of the area. Now, it is a "tourist destination" with coffee shops, rental boats, Jet skis and a short zip line just to name a few things available. It is odd how natural disasters can become tourist attractions, you see it all over the world. We had some tea and odd delicious chicken wings, took a ton of photos and shot some videos and basically hung around for about 90 minutes. It was a good start to the day.

Tourist sign with the first of many tunnels

The busy lake

We love you China

Next up, we were going to blast our way to Passu and enjoy the changing mountain views along the way. Well the boys were correct. The Karakoram wound around the mountains, through tunnels and into gorgeous green valleys, which were now surrounded by snow capped peaks. There are 7 peaks of over 7000 metres in this area, the most prominent being Rakaposhi at 7788 metres. The drive to Hunza was about 2 hours and we made plenty of stops along the way to shoot "promotional videos". Passu is a small village known for its landscapes and views of the 7,478-meter (24,534 ft) Passu Sar mountain, the Passu Glacier, and the Passu Cathedral (Tupopdan) 6,106m (20,033 ft). - wiki 

To say it was impressive is a complete understatement. Naturally photos never do a place any justice and I do not shoot much video, but I do love the view of a long highway heading into and surrounded by mountains. This was a busy area with cars stopped all along the side of the road with people taking photos completely oblivious to traffic. It is a Pakistani thing really, go where you want, stand where you want and walk where you want. Everyone else be damned. We stopped a a small cherry festival along the side of the road and devoured delicious sweet cherries and dried apricots. It also gave the boys time to roll up some hash and smoke with driver. 

We spent quite a bit of time in the area which was great. My original plan was to come to Passu for 4 nights and maybe do a bit of hiking. Man did I dodge a bullet there. One night would have been sufficient but no nights was working out even better. Stomachs full, hash smoked, cold water chugged and with snack in hand it was time to turn around and head back to Gulmit, home of some type of bridge that spanned the river. Off we went, I was still in the front seat but slowly regretting it.

Gulmit was another small village but this bridge has made it another traffic disaster because people just don't care. We found our way to a parking spot and purchased our tickets. The walk was downhill and busy with people rushing to the bridge. I have never met a people who are so eager to be first, at anything. They will butt in front of you at shops and even ATMS. 

Here is the thing about the bridge. It is slatted making the average walker go slowly. They only let so many on the bridge at a time and as we were watching the return time for most people seemed to be about 30 to 45 minutes. It was long enough  but it was because of a few reasons. The first being every person stopping to take photos and videos, or waiting for their friends to catch up, or people being completely terrified. We calculated, with the crowd of people waiting, that our wait was no less that three hours. The photos we took were good enough. The Gulmit Friendship Bridge was sexy and everything but we took a hard pass. The highlight was Ahad arguing and losing his shit trying to get the money back for our unused tickets. He provided a Master Class in Pakistani determination. I did not like that security showed up but they did nothing. They were just being nosy.

All in all, this was an excellent day. These young guys are full on, with energy to spare. The phones were constantly out and everything deserved a video. Camera Man had a real nice Nikon 35 MM with a few lenses and his photos were great. They needed to make "content" so they could compile it and make a few great promotional videos. I did not care, and played along doing interviews and posting for photos. it was all good fun, BUT, and yes that is all capitals, I am not sure how I will handle 5 or 6 days of it. I will need to embrace the fact that the universe dropped these guys in my lap and just "embrace the suck" when it happens.