I was surprisingly well rested when I awoke; the lodgings for the evening were not clean at all. It was like the place had not been cleaned between guests (apart from a change of sheets on the bed); bins were not changed, toilets were not cleaned, and i found other people’s hair on the sheets.

I guess this is the price of flexibility; it forces compromise between where I want to be and how I want to stay.

I had planned to go all the way to Raikot yesterday, but threw in the towel around 10pm at Jaglot (30km away) because I was starting to get tired, and mountain roads are no fun when tired.

Morning in Jaglot; they put blankets on my bike again! So nice

The reason why I wanted to go to Raikot (and why I pushed on ~130km further than i needed to after dark) was because I have had a desire to spend some time up close to some of the mountains here. It was also part of the reason I went to Skardu, after all, I wanted to ride the Karakorum Highway for the mountains!

I was sold on a place called Fairy Meadow yesterday, where I could get a nice view of Nanga Parbat, which stands tall at 8126masl. It is the second highest mountain in Pakistan (after k2) and the ninth highest in the world (92% the height of Everest).

Today’s route to Fairy Meadow

To get to Fairy Meadow, it was supposedly a 1.5 hour jeep ride from Raikot, then a 4 hour hike to the top. Based on this, I arrived at Raikot at ~9:30am, spent 1.5 hours at a local hotel (the Shangrila) to have breakfast, coffee and to change and organise my things (including acquiring more PKR), and eventually set off towards the mountain at 11am.

first views of Nanga Parbat

On changing money, I have intentionally not been too judicious with my planning on currency (I feel like it takes a lot of time to go to the bank or find a money changer, and then go through the process), and this has come to bite me. I have found myself short of PKR at petrol stations, and today, at the hotel. I have not yet decided whether my approach was worth it or not; in all of these situations I’ve been able to change mine eventually (or pay in dollars). However one thing it has helped me appreciate is what makes currency valuable. Here it is about a 10% discount to change money, which i find reasonable because (a) no one commonly uses dollars here, (b) the closest place to change money is Gilgit, which is ~130km away, and (c) i assume there is a meaningful liquidity drain on those changing money due to (a), (b), and not having a large bankroll (relative to tourist spending) to begin with.

My driver, Namad

The jeeps brought me to the first stop, about 20 minutes before the village of Tattu, which was about half way to Fairy Meadow. This was along one of the more treacherous roads I’ve been on; a single lane jeep track climbing the mountain with sheer drops centimetres from the passenger window. I did some riding along “death road” in Bolivia, and this was about the same (if not worse).

Photo stop halfway up the mountain Don’t look down!

From there, there was another jeep ride to Tattu (charged at additional cost), before the hike commenced.

Jeeps in the distance

The jeep track

At the start of the walk, i discovered that they had horses to transport people up to the top (~6km away). Because my plan was to go up and down by nightfall (and it was already 12pm) i thought that going by horse would be the best decision.

Face off!

For some reason, all the horse rides I’ve been on, the horses have generally been demotivated, and require a lot of “encouragement” (threat or rather realisation of violence), and i generally regret my decision to go by horse. I think it might be because I’m heavier than average, or that i tend to get to tourist destinations later in the day (so the horses would have done most of a days worth of work by the time I get there), or simply a small sample size (n=~10).

Nanga Parbat

And so my horse plodded along, at slower than walking pace, while being veritably abused by its handler. This kid was most probably a sociopath; he had a certain delight in harming animals. Whether this be excessively hitting the horses he was handling, or throwing stones at other people’s horses who got in the way. This definitely wasn’t the standard way the animals were getting treated!

Second jeep ride

After riding and some walking (to give the horses a break), I reached Fairy Meadow by 3PM. The view of Nanga Parbat was breathtaking. I hadn’t seen any mountains >8000m until now…but they definitely look pretty special!

Selfie!

Nanga Parbat from Fairy Meadow

After seeing the mountain, and realising that there was a lot of accommodation up here, I decided to stay the evening here. I think I’ve been seeking this sort of experience all along (being somewhere remote, surrounded by beautiful views, staying the evening in the cold, and warmed by fire), I just wanted to get there (i) in a spontaneous manner, and (ii) without much compromise to my trip plan. This was the perfect opportunity; my schedule would remain as is tomorrow, and i would get everything I wanted under the view of one of the world’s highest mountains.

A gift from Zacariya, and some hashish

Also this is probably the most accessible location where you can spend time underneath the shadow of a mountain >8000m; it is half a day away from the highway, about 1-2 days away from Islamabad. To do the same for K2, it is a multiple day hike from a town 2 days ride from the Karakorum Highway. It gives me a lot of joy to have stumbled upon this.

Hashish preparation

I stayed with an operator named Zacariya, who was still building his lodge of ~8 rooms. I was the only guest so I hung out with him, drinking tea, eating halwa, and fixing things around the property. He told me about how in he winter time, he mines for gemstones in the nearby mountains and sells these in China via a business partner.

More Nanga Parbat

Fairy Meadow

Dinner was chicken kadai, cooked on a woodfire oven in front of me, along with Chapati, with his family. After dinner, they smoked hashish (once the elders had left) while I watched on.

Dinner in the kitchen

My travels to date have given me a bit of a sense for the distance between civilisation (as you and I likely experience it), and wilderness. The pure basics for a “civilised” lifestyle is running water, shelter and energy (for heating, cooking etc)“. Then come niceties like electricity, waste disposal (imagine all the waste that would accumulate if you couldn’t throw anything away), plumbing. Then comes internet and high standards for cleanliness.

Fairy Meadow to me is a frontier settlement where they are building tourism ready experiences from scratch. Shelter and energy comes from the nearby forests, where trees are felled to build lodges, to heat and to cook. Plumbing is courtesy of the mountain streams which provide ample water pressure through a series of disorganised and informal pipes. As is electricity, which is generated with a small 5kw hydro system. They even have internet, which is powered by a nearby cell tower which is solar powered (and thus goes out after dark).

Solar powered cell antenna

The only things which are brought in and out are tourists, food, and supplies (cooking oil etc). I haven’t figured out what they do with the trash yet, although i suspect it is either burned or tossed aside.

It is also a good example of how distance in absolute terms is not super relevant to development, and how infrastructure is the primary determinant of this. It is only 12KM from the Karakorum Highway, but supplies take 4-5 hours to make their way up the last mile, at a cost of 100 rupees per kilo. This is also volume constrained (only what can fit on the back of a mule and the back of a small jeep). Contrast this to cities which are quite literally on the frontier and hundreds of kilometres from the nearest city (eg Nura, which is probably one of the most remote places by distance of Kyrgyzstan), but are very accessible by road, so can import items in by the truckload.

All of this said, in both Nura and here, there have been two things both present; everyone has phones, use WhatsApp, and watch Facebook reels.

Tomorrow; Naran!

Some stats:

• 31 KMs traveled
• no fuel added
• 20g coffee consumed
• 11 unique interactions

Part 2 route to date

Complete route to date