Wednesday 27 August: Karimabad – Gilgit

It’s only a 3-4 hour drive to Gilgit so we spent the morning in Karimabad. It was a lovely sunny morning, and the scenery doesn’t get any less beautiful.

At the main school the children were all lined-up in the square by the fort for assembly and to repeat the pledge to Pakistan, There were one or two late-comers.

Going back down the main street we called in at the Threadnet Hunza gem school which is sponsored by the Aga Kahn foundation and the EU. The school has 10 young men and 10 young women who learn how to cut and polish precious and semi-precious stones such as rubies, garnets and quartz. Finished items are sold in the school’s shop and other shops in Karimabad, and the students learn a trade which they can practice locally or further afield.

Further down the hill we met an old man sitting in front of a shop. In the shop window were many photographs of him as a young man when he had been in the British army and when he had been an army boxing champion. We stayed talking to him for a while; he was a remarkable old man, and must have been about 80 years old.

At the coffee and walnut cake café we again met the Australian/South African from the bus the day before. He had got to Karimabad about an hour after us – the bus had dropped him at the bottom of the hill on the KKH and he had hitched a ride up, I mean, it’s not as though he was a young hippy – he was in his 50’s. Mad.

It was a beautiful day for the drive back down to Gilgit. Again we stopped at the Rakaposhi Viewpoint café for mutton biriyani – excellent. We met a group of Italian cyclists who, however unlikely it sounds, were cycling the length of the KKH from Islamabad to the Khunjerab pass. In stages of course (!), but completely bonkers!

Nearer Gilgit the weather deteriorated and we had some rain – everyone agreed that the monsoon should have been well finished by then, and then muttered something about ‘global warming’. Who knows! Anyway, Eshan knew an alternative route into Gilgit which involved crossing the Hunza River further upstream and winding its way through lots of villages built on the river gravels. At the entrance to Gilgit is a statue indicating the importance of Polo to the town.

We had decided to upgrade to the Serena Hotel which is situated on a hill and has excellent views overlooking Gilgit and the river. The Serena was everything you would expect from a 4* hotel – and absolutely everything worked. Apparently all the visiting government people stay there, but even the Serena had noticed the big drop-off in tourism. Eidjan went home to eat and sleep, but Eshan came and had dinner with us. We had earlier noted that the grounds were being laid out for a formal reception for some local rich bridegroom, and as he was leaving, Eshan bumped into the said bridegroom who just happened to be an old university chum of his. Eshan is absolutely incredible in that he has relations and/or friends in virtually every town and village that we passed through. The groom and all his (other, male) guests were very smartly and traditionally attired, but Ehsan had his tour guide/driver mufti on, but was not allowed to go home to change. It didn’t seem like anyone was embarrassed – certainly not Ehsan.