6:30 am. Currently stopped at a police checkpoint. Bad night. Went to the loo at least seventeen times - and the loo was pretty disgusting too: most Pakistani sanitation seems pretty slipshod. W
orried about getting dehydrated; nothing to drink last night. T and Simon really helpful, and have had some of that orange rehydration drink. Headache. Suffering from real lack of sleep. Not much motivation left for this trip. The Karakoram Highway is certainly interesting - not so much a highway, rather a two lane(ish) rough track blasted out of the cliff face. Lots of massive drops down to the Indus river. Mountains - still only small foothills in a relative sense - are getting bigger as we head north. Rockslide halted progress yesterday - took the opportunity to go across the valley on a cableway thing - rickety but probably safe enough. 12:20 pm and we have broken down
again. Some problem concerning the brakes - or rather, lack of the brakes. Simon has complained about the brakes not working - for the last forty days or so - and I would have thought that the KKH of all places demands good brakes! The usual story - they were bad and now they don't work at all. Henry has gone off to get some bit welded up. In fact, as I write this he has just returned carrying some bodged together bit of crap. Apparently just needs another half an hour to put it back. 2:15 pm and still stuck here by the roadside. 4:10 pm and unbeleiveably we have run out of diesel. Or at least I hope that's the problem. Not that good really since when the truck engine dies the steering goes - bear in mind where
we are - fortunately we were pointing away from the edge when it happened. We have jerry cans - I think these will give us 50 litres. The really annoying thing is that ten minutes ago we stopped at a gas station to fill up - but for some reason we only had US dollars - which they wouldn't take. So, in the last 6 hours we have covered about 5 km. I think I'll get some climbing gear handy if we are going to keep stopping like this! At least there are lots of boulders hereabouts. 8 pm and we can see (I think) Nangar Parbat - a really massive mountain off in the distance to the east [Nangar Parbat is 8125 metres high]. Looks like cloud on the horizon. A beautiful sight.
orried about getting dehydrated; nothing to drink last night. T and Simon really helpful, and have had some of that orange rehydration drink. Headache. Suffering from real lack of sleep. Not much motivation left for this trip. The Karakoram Highway is certainly interesting - not so much a highway, rather a two lane(ish) rough track blasted out of the cliff face. Lots of massive drops down to the Indus river. Mountains - still only small foothills in a relative sense - are getting bigger as we head north. Rockslide halted progress yesterday - took the opportunity to go across the valley on a cableway thing - rickety but probably safe enough. 12:20 pm and we have broken down again. Some problem concerning the brakes - or rather, lack of the brakes. Simon has complained about the brakes not working - for the last forty days or so - and I would have thought that the KKH of all places demands good brakes! The usual story - they were bad and now they don't work at all. Henry has gone off to get some bit welded up. In fact, as I write this he has just returned carrying some bodged together bit of crap. Apparently just needs another half an hour to put it back. 2:15 pm and still stuck here by the roadside. 4:10 pm and unbeleiveably we have run out of diesel. Or at least I hope that's the problem. Not that good really since when the truck engine dies the steering goes - bear in mind where 
we are - fortunately we were pointing away from the edge when it happened. We have jerry cans - I think these will give us 50 litres. The really annoying thing is that ten minutes ago we stopped at a gas station to fill up - but for some reason we only had US dollars - which they wouldn't take. So, in the last 6 hours we have covered about 5 km. I think I'll get some climbing gear handy if we are going to keep stopping like this! At least there are lots of boulders hereabouts. 8 pm and we can see (I think) Nangar Parbat - a really massive mountain off in the distance to the east [Nangar Parbat is 8125 metres high]. Looks like cloud on the horizon. A beautiful sight.
1 comment:
Wow, very scary about that truck in the Karakoram highway. 5 kms in 6 hours? You'd have been better off (safer and over 3 times faster!) just walking!
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