Where the Indus is Young (11 page)

I am happy to report that this evening Aman found our room too cold: it is heated only by our own little oil stove. So he has taken himself off to the chowkidar’s wood-stove. There is a wood-stove here, too; but firewood costs Rs.40 per maund and Aman is fanatically parsimonious.

Today’s weather was only slightly less ferocious than yesterday’s. Blizzards were visibly active on the high peaks and though the sun appeared occasionally it was unable to thaw anything. The
high-altitude
pony therefore remained inaccessible, but at noon another animal was brought from Ronda village for our consideration. This retired polo-pony is aged ten according to his owner and fourteen according to Head Constable Ghulam, who is determined we shall not be cheated. His long winter coat is what I call ginger, though no doubt horse-wallahs have another word for it. (I seem to remember being told once that white horses should be called greys – or is it the other way round?) He has a most endearing disposition and accepted our saddle, and Rachel in it, without demur. But clearly he has been half-starved for months. When Rachel rode him up and down the level space in front of the Rest House he went well enough, but on my leading him up a steep stretch of track he slowed ominously. His owner is asking one thousand rupees, which is absurd. A first-class polo-pony in good condition will fetch four or five thousand locally, but this poor creature is not worth more than a few hundred. If we do buy him he will have to be put in good condition when we get to Skardu – a considerable expense, at this season – before being required to transport Rachel and our kit across the length and breadth of Baltistan. I have offered five hundred and at
present his owner is feigning horror at the insult implicit in such a figure.

The above is a drastically condensed account of negotiations which took up most of the day. I spent hours drinking tea in the Hotel while discussing everything except ponies with the pony-owner, a group of his henchmen, Mazhar, Ghulam and an assortment of ragged Ronda villagers who for some reason – probably connected with village politics – are obviously on my side in the bargaining. This evening Ghulam tells me that by playing it cool I am likely to get the pony for six or seven hundred. He advises me to go to the high hamlet tomorrow, weather permitting, and enter into negotiations about the other pony – but on no account to buy it, as it is not accustomed to jeep traffic.

Aman is still with us and has been trying to sabotage my good opinion of Mazhar, whom he calls ‘that Punjabi’. I have discovered that this ‘Incharge’ is not popular locally. It seems he should reside in Ronda District, according to the terms of his appointment, but he sybaritically refuses to do so and comes only once a quarter to pay coolies who are entitled to a monthly wage.

A triangular feud is in progress between Mazhar, Aman and Zakir, our shiftless young chowkidar. It came to a head today when Mazhar told Aman, whose department is responsible for the staffing of this Rest House, that Zakir should be sacked – a conversation on which Zakir was eavesdropping from our bathroom. It then
transpired
that in fact Zakir was sacked a month ago for incorrigible inefficiency and laziness, but he refused to accept dismissal since a new two-roomed hut goes with his job. So he was reinstated by Aman the other day, presumably because our room-mate couldn’t think what else to do, or whom else to appoint without starting a serious feud between Zakir and the new employee. As Aman plaintively pointed out, it is almost impossible to find normal chowkidar material in a region with no dak-bungalow tradition. He then withdrew from the fray to warm himself at Zakir’s stove and the chowkidar turned to Mazhar and passionately denounced the Incharge’s meanness, accusing him of not paying for his food and expecting free warmth. He certainly uses up a lot of our
kerosene to heat water for his frequent pre-prayer ablutions, so on this issue I can sympathise with Zakir.

This morning was windless, though a good deal of cloud still hung about the peaks. After breakfast we started out for the pony hamlet beyond Gomu – a 4,500 foot climb which proved almost too much for Rachel. Had the gradient been less severe she could easily have coped with both distance and altitude, but the last 1,000 feet were up an almost vertical stairway of boulders, made treacherous, and sometimes completely obscured, by new snow. Mercifully, however, there were no precipices to fall over. (Or at least not what count as such hereabouts; after a fortnight in Ronda one simply doesn’t notice a few drops of fifty feet or so.) Just below this stairway was a brutally steep pathless slope of soft, loose, sandy soil – at 11,000 feet as exhausting as anything I have ever ploughed through. Leaning on my
dula
with one hand I helped Rachel up with the other and we could almost hear each other’s hearts hammering.

We tackled the snowy stairway separately, Rachel following in my footsteps, and about halfway up I heard an unhappy sound and realised that my gallant companion had had enough. She looked at me with brimming eyes and said, ‘I’m panted out. I can’t go up any more.’ So we sat on dry cushions of thyme, all the rocks being
snow-covered
.

I considered the summit of stark, grey-brown cliffs and felt irresolute. To force a wilting six-year-old up that last demanding stretch would be sheer cruelty, yet the idea of retreating when almost there went totally against the Murphy grain.

Then Rachel said, ‘I wonder what we could see from the top?’

Inwardly, I rejoiced at this manifestation of classic travellers’ curiosity, but I replied casually, ‘Nothing much in this weather.’ About half an hour earlier it had begun to snow lightly and we were surveying the world through a haze of tiny flakes.

‘But I’d
like
to see over the top,’ continued Rachel. ‘I wish I didn’t feel so tired! It’s not really tiredness – I just feel too panted.’

‘No wonder,’ said I, listening to that distinctive silence which rests
like a blessing on high places. Far below us was spread a sublime panorama of gorges, cliffs, valleys, escarpments, ledges, ravines and minor mountains, a view made all the more awesome by the thin drifting snowfall.

‘I’d
like
to get to the top,’ persisted Rachel. ‘Could you help me?’

I stood up and took her hand and we struggled on together; because of the new snow it was becoming increasingly difficult to discern the path and twice we went astray. ‘This is
worse
than a nightmare!’ wailed Rachel, when we had another hundred feet to go; and I didn’t disagree. She is a solid chunk of humanity and she really was too ‘panted out’ to be more than one-third self-propelling. Moreover, at that height the snow was freezing as it fell.

Then at last we were on level ground and I saw that we had conquered a gigantic escarpment rather than a mountain. Above us on our right rose another fifty feet of rocky rampart – the true ‘summit’. It would have been possible to climb it, but I did not propose so doing.

Rachel was wildly elated, though there was little to be seen through a curtain of thickening snow. Looking both ways, she said, ‘I’ve really got quite high up for someone who isn’t even six
and one month
!’

‘You have indeed,’ I agreed.

The blurred bulk of several snow-giants loomed directly ahead to the north and we could just see, about half a mile away, a group of fruit trees marking the pony hamlet – a dozen hovels in the shadow of another mighty escarpment. I had doubted the place’s existence on the way up, so improbable did it seem that anyone should have chosen to live at the end of such a path. Now I reluctantly decided that we must not risk continuing to our final goal, with a full-scale blizzard possible at any moment. If our tracks were completely obliterated we might never find the path down, and if we spent the night at the hamlet all Ronda would be in a frenzy of anxiety about us. So we sat cosily in an empty stone animal shelter behind the rocky rampart, drinking our kidney soup while gazing over a glittering expanse of new snow, eighteen inches deep and flawed only by our own trail. Within the past quarter of an hour the
temperature had risen abruptly as the snow thickened, and now the air felt almost mild. Outside the shelter was one stunted,
wind-deformed
poplar on which a tit perched and sang for a moment – to us as astonishing a sight as the dove’s branch must have been to Noah. This is the only bird song we have heard here, though Ronda has a colony of squalling, squeaky choughs and many crows and magpies.

We started down at two o’clock and had to go very cautiously on the slippery boulder stairway. Then came that long slope of loose soil, which from Rachel’s point of view was enormous fun to descend. To her delight I repeatedly skidded and either sat with a bump or went rolling uncontrollably for ten or twenty yards. When we had regained a reasonable path she proved that she had not really been tired by leaping around me like an ibex while conversing enthusiastically about such diverse subjects as erosion and haemophilia. She has entered this dauntingly scientific phase at just the wrong time, when there is no library within reach.

On the Rest House verandah we were greeted by a tense-looking Aman. ‘You must take your baggage now,’ he said, ‘and move to the kitchen quarters. I have news our Chief Engineer is coming on the ninth for four days.’

I stared at him in astonishment and then edged past him into our room, which I hardly recognised. It had been cleaned for the first time since we came on 26 December, though Zakir is supposed to clean it daily.

Aman followed us, waved a hand eloquently and said, ‘It has all been cleaned, you see, so it is better you take your baggage and stay out of here tonight.’

I was in no mood to appreciate this superb
non sequitur,
being tired and hungry and thirsty and able to think only of brewing a
dechi
of tea and enjoying it in peace. All my suppressed irritation of the past four days erupted and I furiously told Aman that we would move neither ourselves nor our baggage until tomorrow morning when we leave for Skardu. As I spoke he nervously backed away from me on to the verandah, whereupon I shut the door firmly and lit our stove. I could see how his mind was working. He also plans to
leave for Skardu tomorrow and he doesn’t trust an unsupervised Zakir to make the VIP suite as it should be for their boss, who may then punish Aman for not having replaced Zakir by some more industrious individual. But I fail to see why we should be the victims of this situation.

Some time later Aman reappeared, followed by Zakir with the register. I had Rs.120 on the table, ready to pay for our twelve nights, but as I opened the book Aman leant forward in his chair and
half-whispered
, ‘You must not pay so much! Zakir cannot read – put ‘1 January’ as your arrival date – then you can save Rs.60.’

This adding of insult to injury was of course meant to placate me. Aman looked genuinely bewildered when I replied frigidly that it is not my habit to sign false statements and that if he wished to ease my financial burden he could pay Rs.5 for each of the nights he had been sleeping on the bed. He then claimed that government officers are not expected to pay for accommodation in Rest Houses, though a notice in English on the verandah declares that government officers must pay Rs.5 per night and other travellers Rs.10. I’m glad I didn’t know, before we used the
ghrari
, that this bone-headed creature is responsible for its maintenance.

Mazhar and Ghulam have just been in to give me pony advice. The Ronda pony-owner has already been told by Ghulam that I have no interest in his expensive bag of bones and he is now repenting his cupidity. A dramatic fall in the price of horseflesh may therefore be expected tomorrow morning. Mazhar says I must go early to the Hotel and ask for a seat in the next Skardu-bound jeep that stops there, and Ghulam says I must at the same time announce that I have decided to buy an animal in Khapalu, where ponies are very cheap.

Poor Rachel – a naturally truthful child – was scandalised to observe her mother becoming enmeshed in such a web of lies. ‘They’re not really lies,’ I explained disingenuously. ‘This is what’s known as wheeling and dealing.’

The wheeling and dealing worked: by ten o’clock this morning Rachel was in possession of a fourteen-hand, Rs.700 pony, at once named Hallam after her favourite man friend. He came complete with bit, bridle and
namdah
. The
namdah
has a sewn-on covering of what must once have been pretty flowered cotton, and the
disintegrating
but still serviceable reins are made of soft plaited leather with a filling of cloth.

As we concluded the deal it began to snow lightly and there was some doubt about whether or not we should leave. Finally it was decided that whatever the weather did we could make this tiny hamlet, which is only eight miles from Thowar. Mazhar also left for Skardu this morning, in a merchant’s jeep.

Zakir carried Hallam’s load to Dambudass; with the advent of tipping-time he had become a model of zealous endeavour and solicitude for our welfare. In the bazaar I bought a worn old sack for Rs.8; absurd prices are put on all objects that come from
down-country
. I then divided Hallam’s load between the sack and our canvas bag, keeping the bag lighter because to it was tied our kerosene
supply. A local expert judiciously adjusted the load and showed me how to tie it across the saddle, which has special iron accessories for the purpose. My own load consisted of our bedding and emergency high-altitude tent, while in her mini-rucksack Rachel was carrying a first-aid kit and Squirrel Nutkin. The capacious pockets of my parka held map, compass-pedometer, diary, pen, handkerchief, thermos of tea and the sustaining dried apricots without which no one travels in these areas.

It was noon when Rachel mounted again, to the cheers of the populace, which had assembled, seemingly in its entirety, to see us off. Already, without any load up, Hallam had proved incapable of more than 2 m.p.h. – half my own normal walking speed – and I had reckoned, correctly, that it would be about 4.30 p.m. when we arrived here.

A mile or so from Dambudass we came on three coolies ‘tidying’ the track; because of frequent landslips and rockfalls this is a daily task. They were Hotel friends who greeted us warmly and downed shovels to escort us across a long stretch of ice just ahead. One man lifted Rachel down while another took Hallam’s bridle and the third firmly held my arm. We could easily have managed on our own but I appreciated this farewell gesture from people among whom we had been so happy.

We saw no further trace of humanity for over two hours. Then we came on an improbable youth sitting wrapped in a blanket by the edge of the track. He looked so like a large clump of thyme that I noticed him only as we drew level and his astonishment on seeing us rendered him incapable of returning our greeting. The weather did not deteriorate as expected – the sky even cleared a little for a time – but the afternoon wind blew sharp-edged and remorseless and one could sense snow in the air.

Hallam goes slightly less slowly if left in Rachel’s control.
Unfortunately
, however, he has been trained (or prefers) to walk on the extreme outside edge of the track and this did the maternal nerves no good at all, with the Indus racing along anything from 100 to 1,000 feet below his neat little hooves. So I led him, taking care that the inner half of the load was not damaged by protruding hunks of cliff.

[Here I had to pause to thaw my hands over our oil-stove, though while writing I am wearing ski-gloves. The cold is so intense in this shack I can scarcely think through it.]

For much of the time we could see the mountain-wall at the foot of which we have come to rest. A tremendous wall it is, of pointed, oddly symmetrical peaks well over 20,000 feet but so sheer they have only a light covering of snow – just enough to enhance their austere, cruel beauty. For miles the brown cliffs on the far side of the Gorge run towards this wall at right angles, rising straight up from the water and looking as though hewn by man, so regularly are they formed. Despite their steepness, two isolated and quite tall pine-trees have somehow found root-holds, hundreds of feet above the river, on ledges that were invisible to us. These were the first green things we had seen since leaving the plains and they looked like mistakes – as if Nature had absent-mindedly put something down in the wrong place.

On our side of the Gorge numerous buzzards and eagles strutted and squabbled among colossal boulders and shattered rock-slabs on the slope above us. Their colouring blends so well with the
grey-brown
-black of this landscape that often one doesn’t notice them until they move. Some were splendidly unafraid and perched twenty yards away to watch our passing. They seem to commute frequently to the far side of the Gorge, which is doubtless stocked with all sorts of unsuspected delicacies, and Rachel was thrilled to see their majestic wing-span as they planed close overhead, with great trousered talons spread for the descent.

It suddenly gets very cold at about 3 p.m., even on a day when the noon sun has been warm, and at 3.15 I suggested to Rachel that she should walk the rest of the way. Being obsessed with the joy of riding her own pony she vigorously denied feeling cold, yet when I insisted on her dismounting she was so numb she could scarcely stand up.

We saw Byicha from some way off, as a brown smudge of leafless trees relieving the desolation. Here trees always mean people. At Byicha the Indus swings west and on its right bank, where it curves, the Gorge widens for about a mile, allowing some cultivation; enough, apparently, to sustain life for the inhabitants of a score or so of stone hovels that seem to have grown out of the mountain and are
almost invisible from the track. As one draws near, tiny fields and frozen irrigation channels and wildly writhing vines appear amidst the trees. A few goats, sheep and dzo, and one magnificent yak, were diligently searching for dead leaves; in Ronda they would all have been stabled by three o’clock but the poorer a settlement the more self-sufficient its animals have to be.

We were now at the foot of that symmetrical mountain-wall and could no longer see its peaks. The track climbed steeply for a quarter of a mile before slightly swinging away from the river to cross a nullah full of icy boulders and leaping, foaming water. We were approaching the new wooden bridge when we saw on our left, a little above track-level, two incongruous jeeps parked outside a shack in the shade of several tall trees. But for this evidence of its status, we would certainly have by-passed our hotel without recognising it. It consists of an eating-house and this store-room-cum-bedroom where we are sleeping.

When Hallam had been stabled and fed – for this I had to lead him back to the main part of the settlement – we had a surprisingly good supper in the eating-house: chapattis, curried dahl soup and outsize omelettes. The standard was much higher than in Ronda’s Hotel and having eaten nothing but dried apricots since 8 a.m. I relished every mouthful. The proprietor has not yet recovered from the shock of our arrival. A gaunt, elderly Pathan with a straggling beard, he wears a purple skull-cap that slightly gives him the air of a down-at-heel bishop. It was dark by the time we ate but the little room was adequately lit by the flames of the fire – lovely tongues of scarlet and orange leaping high around the giant
dechis
. The only other guests are the two Pathan jeep-drivers, on their way back from Skardu. I had expected them to share the storeroom with us but they are sleeping in the eating-house where the embers will remain aglow all night. They and the proprietor can huddle together under quilts on the square mud platform in front of the fire where customers sit cross-legged to eat their food. One jeep has broken down and a huge bonfire is now blazing outside to warm the driver as he lies under it, struggling with its infirmity. The other jeep is its mate and won’t continue to Gilgit without it. Many drivers prefer to do the Gorge trip in convoy.

Our room is another of those depots where jeeps can unload, before turning back to Gilgit, when the weather suddenly worsens on the route to Skardu. It is about ten feet by fifteen and piled almost to the low roof with sacks full of something hard, sharp and lumpy, and tea-chests so heavy they can’t possibly contain tea, and large cartons of condensed milk from Holland. A central tree-trunk supports the mud roof and the stone walls have been ineffectually mud-plastered by way of making them draught-proof. The floor
non est
: as in all local hovels it is untreated ground – i.e., sandy earth and pebbles. Nor is there any window at present, though an aperture blocked with loose stones obviously serves as such in summer and now admits draughts of icy air which conflict around my person with similar draughts entering from sundry other
unplanned
ventilation holes. When we were shown into our suite three charpoys were standing on end against the piles of sacks and the two put down for us took up most of the vacant floor space. Filthy but warm bedding is provided and as we ourselves are already so filthy there seems little point in being fussy and unpacking
fleabags
.

Tonight the song of the Indus is loud. We are quite close to it here though we were climbing steadily on the way from Ronda. Between Skardu and Ronda the fall of the river is twenty feet per mile.

I am dithering now about keeping our stove going all night. The temperature certainly justifies such extravagance but not knowing what situations may arise before we get to Skardu, where kerosene will next be available, I think I had better stick to my Spartan principles.

On her way to bed by the light of a guttering candle Rachel tripped over the corner of a sack and remarked mildly, ‘I don’t think this room is very convenient, do you?’ But all that really concerns me about our accommodation is whether or not one can write fairly comfortably and I have no complaints this evening – apart from the cold, which does diminish concentration. When Rachel was in bed I got myself organised by pulling a tea-chest into the middle of the floor for use as a table, and heaving a sack into position for use as a chair – with a folded quilt on top, to give that little touch of luxury
required by ageing bones. Then I placed the stove between my feet, stuck a candle on to our tin of Nivea, took my diary from my pocket and off I went …

We had a very good night, enlivened only by a little grey rat who made several heroic but unsuccessful attempts to get at Rachel’s precious cheese supply. Our crudely-made door has a wide crack down the middle and when I woke I could see that the dawn light was uncommonly bright; there had been such a heavy snowfall that no one could go anywhere this morning. The drivers were disconsolate, having worked so hard to mend that engine, but we were entirely happy to spend another twenty-four hours here. Also the delay suited Hallam. We left him all day in his snug stable – a good deal snugger than our own – and saw that he had generous feeds of hay. He really needs grain, but none is available.

After breakfast we explored the very steep nullah and glimpsed fearsome peaks with needle-sharp summits standing in skirts of vapour at the head of the valley; the map tells us that we are close to the massive Chogo Lungma glacier. At noon the tributary began to thaw; I wonder how many degrees of frost are needed to freeze a river of its volume and power. When our tiny goat-path died amidst an upheaval of rock and soft sandy cliffs, overhanging the nullah, we returned to base and enjoyed two more king-sized omelettes.

After lunch we descended to the Indus, crossing half-a-mile of pale grey sand decorated with patches of snow and strewn with smooth, light brown boulders, some so vast we felt like beetles beside them. The scale of this landscape can be very deceptive; yesterday I would have said the Indus was about fifty yards from the track, not half a mile. And it is only on standing beside the river that one appreciates its width and its speed and force, as it churns whitely down a perceptible slope between boulders the size of cottages. All those boulders were covered with canopies of ice, delicately
snow-powdered
, and Rachel noticed that
between
these solid canopies and the rocks there was room for water to flow. This observation reduced her to an agony of scientific curiosity which I was, as usual, unable
to satisfy. While we were collecting bright pebbles close to the
ice-fringed
bank we saw two minor rockfalls, one just across the river, another on our side a little way downstream. Somehow the sound of a rockfall – the thudding and bounding and slithering – is much more alarming than the sight. Again, because of the Himalayan scale, several tons of falling rock and earth look like a trickle of pebbles down the side of a sand-pit.

Altogether it was a memorable scene there by the turbulent water, enveloped in the grandeur of the Gorge. The dark rock walls showed great zig-zag scars of white – one could fancy lightning had been painted on them – and their strangely square tops, as though dressed by giant stonemasons, were in extreme contrast to the tangle of jagged summits just visible beyond. Then on all sides there was ice in unimaginable shapes and forms. The infinite variety of ice, and the exquisite grotesqueness of its formations, delights Rachel more than almost anything else here; but not more than the prodigious chenar tree near our ‘hotel’, which is
twenty-nine
of my long paces in circumference and reputed to be 600 years old. It still flourishes, though it has had its centre burnt out to make a large room, floored with dry leaves, which serves as the hotel latrine; and very welcome that shelter was early this morning, especially as our present limited diet has reduced me to an unprecedented state of constipation.