Karimabad

As you all should know by now, because I keep harping on it, I was sick in India. I view that as a little Karma pre-pay so that I am free to do basically anything I want to without fear of negative effects. I went ahead and cashed a little in on my trip from Gilgit to Karimabad. Much of Pakistan is quite poor and therefore does not travel very often. Since I am used to cars I don't get motion sickness but that doesn't really apply to most of the people here. At first you just get grossed out when you realise that out of 20 people on a mini-bus 6-10 get car sick. It doesn't help that at every stop they run into restaurants and pound greasey food. Anyway let me explain the rules of mini-bus Roulette.

First off you must have another westerner with whom to play. Pakistanis seem to not find it quite as amusing as I that their countrymen (remember women don't matter here) have weak stomachs. Like roulette you can play by row, by column, light or dark (based on clothing, I'm not a racist) or you can pick individuals. The odds and the amounts of bets are left up to the individual. Unfortunately for me, I lost. My first ride in which no one got sick. Usually women are the easiest to bet on because they travel even less than the men. One got pretty close but our driver took enough breaks to lose me my investment. Only about 20 cents, but still! Anyway I owed an english Law-professor a few cups of tea to settle the score.

Karimabad is amazing and beautiful. There was a little disconcerting sound yesterday evening, muffled crumps up the canyon which sounded like outgoing artillery in conjunction with someone yelling on a bullhorn. Of course I did what any sensible person would do, order a pot of tea grab my sunglasses and run up to the roof to see what was going on. No worries though just some blasting for mines further up. And the PPP the people's party of Pakistan. No it's not communist. My trip got a little exiting yesterday when I looked up a nice hike here to see a meadow above karimabad. The hike is listed at 3.1km. Which for me is usually no big deal. What it doesn't say is it's straight up after navigating a veritable warren of a village. Seriously though the village is all stone walls and water channels. Karimabad gets less than 150mm of rain a year so all agriculture is by irrigation from Glacial runoff. Lonely planet states it best when it says the water looks like velvet running along. The silt is mostly mica so it catches the light as it swirls around. Unfourtunately I bathe in it as well. Anyway the hike took us along a water channel carved into the cliff face with the path being the wall of the channel and a 500+ft drop off. In some places the path was only 1 meter wide. Pretty hairy. The meadow was amazing and I managed to get sunburned for the first time on the trip. I found out shortly thereafter that we were up above 10,000ft. Little wonder. Oh yeah and 3.1 km took 3-4 hours to get up there and we were too bushed to attempt the 1km vertical gain to the pass. Anyway I found out this morning that the road to Kashgar is still blocked so I'm going to have to get inventive in my travels. As of now the plan is to get as close as possible and then walk. For those of you familiar with my Africa trip this is no new thing.

Ian, whom I'm meeting in shanghai, has said that I have to shave and look presentable when I arrive in Shanghai so that I can hopefully stay in his dorm. On that note I went to the local barber shop and had a shave. My first ever with a straight razor and it was quite the expierience, it felt great and I didn't get cut or anything. And now I look like I'm 12. Give it a few days and I'll just as scruffy and mean as usual. Sometimes very strange things happen while travelling. two days ago I was walking through the main bazaar and I passed a man who seemed quite familiar. I smiled and said hello and kept walking. Then I heard my name called and I looked back to see the man I just passed and I realised who he was. Jon Brock. A man who came up through the same Boy Scout troop as me. It was after a slideshow of his travels returning from Antarctica that I found a passion for travel. Very strange to see him on a side road in a pretty remote area of pakistan. Second strange thing: A polish chap I've been traveling with lost his wallet with 30,000Rupees in it. About 500USD. Last night at dinner the driver of the bus on which the wallet was lost returned the wallet with nary a note missing. That would have never happened in India. Needless to say drinks were ordered for the house. By drink I mean green tea, this is Pakistan remember, and green tea is cheaper than black up here. This will mean nothing if you don't have access to a map, but tomorrow I leave Karimabad(Baltit) and go to Sost from there to the landslide and from there to transportation on the other side to Tashkurgan, then to Kashgar. Anyway sorry to re-write the Illiad here. I hope all is well.

W.