📷 The Land of High Mountains: Pakistan. Day 14. Trucks, Marmots and the Border with China

In the morning, when I got up to meet the dawn, it turned out that the sky was overcast, dark and generally raining very hard. We were lucky - before that, all the days of the journey, the weather was excellent, except that sometimes it drizzled, but it was just a trifle. It's good that such a rain began already here, in the Passu village, and not yesterday, when we crossed the glacier!

We had breakfast, Rahim (owner of one of the previous hotels and a really good man) arrived from the Eagle's Nest over Karimabad town, and we went to see the Pakistan-China border.

Huge stones periodically hang over the road, which can easily flatten our minibus, turning it into canned food "little men in their own juice".

From time to time we see road workers dismantling stones that have flown from the mountain, or building new road barriers from the same material.

At the entrance to Khunjerab National Park, there is a huge poster informing that the use of drones is prohibited in the park. Eh! Although the weather is still bad.

We drive past a gas station and see dozens of Pakistani trucks around. In one voice, the whole group began to ask for a photostop - such beauty should not be missed!

Trucks and buses are painted here, hung with multi-colored lights and all kinds of overlays with curly carvings. Pakistani drivers spend all their spare money on their cars - it costs several thousand dollars to completely decorate a truck.

Artists who decorate cars receive much more money than the drivers themselves, but this is not an obstacle, because drivers, customers and passengers alike believe that a richly decorated car serves as protection against accidents.

At the entrance to the park entrance fee for foreigners is $8, for Pakistanis - 100 rupees. But you can bargain :) Still they copy and take pictures of everyone. The guards flaunt with Russian-made Kalashnikov assault rifles chambered for 7.62 and Chinese ones for 5.45.

We drove up to 4000 meters above sea level, it is already much cooler here. Yaks graze high on the slopes. From the road, they look more like dots. It's said you can see leopards and ibex there, but we were not so lucky.

But at an altitude of 4600 we saw marmots. There are a lot of them here, on both sides of the road, they dug a whole underground city with a bunch of burrows-entrances.

Well, at least we photographed them a little. It's good when you have a telephoto lens, and you don't have to be afraid to scare away the animal by approaching it closer.

The Pakistani-Chinese border greeted us with snow at an altitude of 4700 meters. Probably, here, on Khunjerab Pass, there is one of the highest mountain border points.

Nobody interferes with crossing the Pakistani border - there is not a single soldier or policeman, but the Chinese side of the border is closed. I wonder how often it is open?

Pakistanis are not at all upset, they are photographing at the Chinese gate. There are quite a few people here.

They look at us with interest. The superstar was, of course, Oleg Big Boss, who wore a T-shirt and shorts, we took a picture with him too :) (photo by @kibela)

It's pretty cold for us, for the Pakistanis too, and for Oleg it would be good.

The female part of the group looks a little unhappy with the unexpectedly cold and humid weather :)

And here is our whole company together with some Pakistanis, who also love to be photographed.

And of course take a selfie! Local men, I noticed, really love to do it.

When we drove back, the weather began to improve rapidly, and soon it became hot as usual.

Everyone drank too much mango and guava juices, and they began to beg to go outside. The closest toilet we knew was in the Passu valley, so we greeted its approach with double enthusiasm.

Even with a triple: we arrived at the cafe of Bayram, our guide through the Batura glacier. It is located right here in the valley. It turns out that he is not only a guide, but also a businessman.

We were fed with Biriani pilaf. What is the difference between it and the Afghan pilaf, I still do not understand.

Either the difference in spices, or the rice is different. In general, it was very tasty, although the Uzbek or Tajik version of pilaf is still closer to me.

But the view from this cafe is breathtaking, just on the Passu Cones. Not all restaurants with a good view can boast SO good views :)

Rahim learned a few Russian words - "thank you", "how are you", "everything is fine", "hello" - and now he uses them all the time. It is especially funny when he just shouts out the window from the minibus: "Everything is fine!" - in Russian, of course :)

On the mountain road opposite us, across the river, there was a traffic jam. People are crowded and waiting for help. Something happened, but we can't see what from here.

We say goodbye to the Passu Valley and drive to the Bualtar Glacier. On the way to the hotel, we picked apricots right from the trees in the garden of Rahim's stepfather. It's good when everything grows right at your fingertips!

We passed some kind of sports match in a small village. So many people gathered! It seems that spectators came from all the surrounding villages.

We live today in the Hilton, or rather the Hoper Hilton Inn Stay & Dine :) Nice name. Just near the observation deck to the glacier Bualtar. We arrived late, when the sunset was over and the sky was overcast. A generator generates electricity and it rumbles quite loudly and periodically turns off, then the whole Hilton plunges into darkness.

Today is the eclipse of the Moon and the great opposition of Mars, but I'm afraid that we will not see this, because it is raining, soothingly tapping on the roof.

Tomorrow we will go to Gilgit town, from where we will fly to Islamabad, but for now we will enjoy the evening at the Hilton.

To be continued...

Parts of the journey:

Camera: OLYMPUS E-M1 Mark II

It's better to watch the photos in high resolution — just click on them and open in a new window.

You can also see my photos in my blog LJ and in my profile on NatGeo

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qurator (79) 3 years ago

Manually curated by ackhoo from the @qurator Team. Keep up the good work!

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sharker (74) 3 years ago

Thank you!

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sjarvie5 (76) 3 years ago

Wow colorful trucks, fun selfies and pictures at the border and yes I would say that restaurant has the best view!!

The man taking the selfie is great, I really like this photo :) And we couldn't take our eyes off the trucks when we met them, it's something amazing (and even more amazing is the way they drive with this additional load).
As for the restaurant, besides the view, it also serves great food, I would give this place a Michelin star :)

robvector (50) 3 years ago

fantastic story and pictures, thank you so much for sharing

Thank you for the reading! :)

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daveks (80) 3 years ago

Sent you a message on Lensy

Oh, I'm sorry, I haven't seen - I've been on the trip for a couple of weeks, and I haven't visited Lensy in a while. There is almost no time to look even here on the blog :( I'll take a look today!

Good, thanks