📷 The Land of High Mountains: Pakistan. Day 15. Bualtar Glacier and Souvenirs from Pakistan

Morning near the Bualtar glacier, and around it was foggy and a little rainy, there was nothing special to photograph at dawn, in my opinion, so I slept peacefully until the breakfast. It seems that we have slept enough, but fatigue has accumulated and doesn't want to leave. From our house we can see the neighboring hotel, it is bright and colorful — pretty.

We have breakfast in our Pakistani Hilton (the name of the hotel is Hoper Hilton Inn Stay & Dine) — a Pakistani omelet with tomatoes and peppers, and chapatis. They forgot about the forks when setting the table, Oleg asked for a fork, and they brought one. Eh, our Hilton hardly has much in common with its famous international namesake, the service here is a little simpler :)

Approximately from here — and we are now on the outskirts of the town (or village?) Hopar, in the Hopar Valley, a part of the Nagar Valley — trekking to the highest alpine lake in Pakistan and one of the highest alpine lakes in the world — Rush lake begins. The lake is located at an altitude of 4,694m, and at least for this reason trekking there is not the easiest (although not very difficult either). It's a pity, but it is not included in our program. To get to the lake, you need to cross two glaciers: the one over which we are now, Bualtar Glacier (by the way, it is also referred to as Hopar or Hopper Glacier.), and the second is Miar glacier.

We have time, we are not in a hurry to go further today, so we went to explore the surroundings. Found a goat — yes, another beautiful goat, well, what can I do if they are so cute? :)

We gazed down at the Bualtar glacier from above. And again, it's beautiful. A dusty stone, as if turning into marble, which of course is actually ice, dotted with dark cracks.

Finally, we bought some souvenirs, since one of the shops stands right on the observation deck: it is visible, a staircase leads to it. The prices there, as it turned out later, were about 2 times higher than in the shops below. By the way, looking at the map now, I saw that last year a panorama was uploaded to Google Maps directly from this point, from the observation deck near our hotel — if interested, look here.

Well, okay, we went downstairs and bought more souvenirs there :) From Pakistan you can bring all sorts of shawls and blankets, there are both bright and colorful, and in restrained colors with a small number of drawings or embroideries, or even from plain fabric — I like these more than flashy-colorful. There are many handmade wool fabrics, which is understandable with so many sheep and goats in these places. There are clothes and rugs, a lot of things.

Jewelry and crafts made from semi-precious and precious natural stones are also very common. All kinds of beads, earrings and so on — in thousands. I was told that in Pakistan it is possible to buy samples of gemstones of excellent quality of commercial or even collection value, much lower than their market value, but since I do not understand this topic, I did not check.

These two photos were taken on another day (and on the phone), i.e. not here, but in Karimabad town — but the assortment is generally similar. Except that in the town there were more different bright embroidered or knitted things, while here, in the mountains above the glacier, there are more things of more restrained, natural colors (with regard to clothes, hats, etc. .). And with jewelry, everything is rather similar, and semi-precious stones in bulk are also sold.

The girls, of course, bought jewelry for themselves and for gifts: earrings, bracelets. Even if this is not a delicate art of jewelry, there are also interesting and pretty, authentic ones. We also tried on different hats and costumes, it's nice that the sellers are quite calm about this.

Olya liked this bright women's hat, but she did not buy it — after all, she will hardly wear it at home, and taking it to just lie in the wardrobe is not very interesting.

You can even bring such a head home if you are interested. Oleg just took a picture with it.

Due to the fact that the terrain here is uneven — hills and slopes — the roofs of houses often turn out to be at the ground level of the next house, or at the level of the road, or even much lower. But at the same time it is convenient to use the roof area, walk on it, sit there. It’s like you’re not sitting on the roof of an ordinary flat house, you don’t need to climb up there by a ladder, but you can just go around the house on the other side and go up the path.

While we lingered in souvenir shops, our friends scattered somewhere. Where are they all?

Ah, here they are! The whole team, without saying a word, gathered on a small observation deck at a distance from our accommodation, on the bend of the trail uphill. There is a cafe here, so in order not to offend the owners, they bought a big bottle of cola.

We look at the glacier, I don’t want to talk, and somehow sad in my soul. All trekking is over, we will go home very soon and it’s not a fact that we will see each other later. Well, the time has come to put emotions and memories in the soul and in the memory, to be silent and look into the distance.

Well, time passes and it's time to go to the Gilgit city, where our journey began. Another packing of backpacks, farewell to Hilton (by the way, it was not at all bad here and the territory was very nice), the usual throwing of our things on the minibus, and let's go!

A piece of territory — everything is very green, many flowers. The houses were quite cozy, and the noise of the generator was compensated by the presence of the electricity which it generated.	Our minibus and driver Amin, who accompanied us from Karimabad town. Photos from the phone, kindly provided to me by @kibela

On the way we meet local women. They hide their faces from us.

As we pass by the river, Rahim (our excellent local acquaintance and host in Karimabad) points out the tents near the shore: it's a camp of people washing gold. Yes, indeed — someone in the old way here gets it by washing stones and earth.

It’s about 100 kilometers to go to Gilgit, we get comfortable on the seats and just look out the window at the scenery passing by.

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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