Day 46 Ghulmat and Hunza Valley

It's 10:30 am and we are having a very nice breakfast below Rakaposhi [at 7788 metres, the 27th highest mountain in the world]. Good breakfast: omlette, flat bread and dried apricots, sat outside beneath the mountain - very alpine in style, complete with gift shops. The latter sells Afghan rugs depicting the Twin Towers attack in New York, amongst other things ($50). Rakaposhi itself dominates the view from the breakfast table. Looks do-able.

12:20 pm and we are someplace short of Karimabad, stuck on a hill in the truck, opposite the Hotel Hunza Embassy. For some reason we cannot make forward progress - fuel starvation? Odd since we have just refuelled about 2 km back. Now we are rolling backwards.

About 9 pm. Ultar Meadows, camping at about 3300 metres. Strenuous walk up from Karimabad; not helped by the unwelcome return of gut problems. Started off carrying two rucksacks - very awkward - sort of one front and one back - but then gave the smaller one to one of our porters. Four hours' walking to get here - covering something like 750 metres in height, following some sort of irrigation channel most of the way - in the higher parts of the trek the channel was often blasted out of the cliff face. Working its way up and out of the village the path takes you past numerous apricot trees. (Apricots are everywhere around here - drying on roofs.) Further up the path is quite precipitous and rough, but not too steep. The final hour was pretty bad - the porter kept saying that it was just another five minutes, but it never was. Very tired: a big problem on Hot Rock is simply the lack of sleep. Also, carried a heavy load of climbing gear - including a dozen pegs I bought down in Karimabad ($40), and a peg hammer.

The view from the tent includes the 6000 metre Lady Finger (Bubuliomoting), Ultar I (7329m) and Ultar II (7388m), plus numerous other big mountains going off into the distance.

Will try and get some much needed sleep. Eaten a few biscuits - not enough but stomach sensitive - nevertheless need to eat something before taking anti-malarials. Fingers of both hands tingling a bit - I wonder if it's the altitude?