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?

Day 45 Karakoram Highway, near Dassu

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. Worried 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.

Day 44 Islamabad

4:45 am start from the campsite. 6:20 am - so much for our early start - a mechanical banging noise when Henry drove out of the campsite first thing this morning - apparently a bolt has snapped on part of the steering arm or something. So now we have done a grand total of half a mile and are currently stuck at a PSO (Pakistani State Oil) gas station. Found an electric socket so we could plug in the kettle and so T and I could make respective cafetieres of coffee. Plus biscuits. No way could you do this in the UK - I mean plug your kettle into a gas station! Not sure what the state of play is now...I think they have gone off to get a bolt made - don't see whay they cannot carry a bolt kit on the bus. And to think I was totally fed up before all this crazy business. I guess we just wait here. Not clear why we are driving to Karimabad in anycase - seems to be an awful lot of effort for probably no climbing (rock) at all.

By the way, last night had a nice meal out in Islamabad - we tried to escape the masses, but people tend to herd together. T still doesn't have India visa - seems that Hot Rock shows no real concern or interest in trying to sort this out. There's so much 'fire-fighting' on this trip. Total lack of planning, e.g. truck maintenance, or lack thereof is a good case in point.

This gas station has its own security guard - like the banks and similar operations in Pakistan. The guard has some sort of shotgun, though it looks a bit rudimentary and cheap. Probably quite effective though. 9 am and the truck is fixed - until next time! Hopefully we can get going soon. 1:15 pm just had an awesome Afghan curry; fantastic rice and beef. Bhindi / okra still difficult to stomach - but trying to eat it a bit to see if it's possible to learn to like it - there's a lot of okra around. 190 rupees. Really good idea to stop on these long drive days and get a decent lunch.

10:05 pm and we are near Abbottabad staying in some totally skanky hotel. Horrid looking loo in particular. Still a long way to go (north to Karimabad) - today we managed just 280 km from Islamabad. I very much doubt that we will reach Gilgit tomorrow. Feeling very tired. Feeling dissolusioned about climbing even. That's not a good thing.

The interesting thing about Abbottabad is it's where the Karakoram Highway, or KKH sort of officially starts. The KKH goes north following the Indus river to the Khunjerab pass between Pakistan and China. Basically we are going to drive up the KKH as far as Gilgit and thence to Karimabad.

Day 43 Islamabad

6:15 am. Just woken up - Shell gas station. Very western looking. Think / assume we are near Islamabad. Odd, after weeks of hot weather and no rain, we have skies which are grey and laden. Usual traffic noise and some guy sweeping with a besom type broom. No queues for gas here. Should be staying at a campsite near here I think. Very few road signs in Pakistan - so never really sure where we are!

10:15 am Hotel Crown Palace, room 309: rented for the whole Hot Rock crew: we camp at the campsite, but get showers in the hotel room. Watching Star Trek. Lots of unrest amongst Hot Rockers: feel sorry for T -she's invested a lot of cash and time in this; trip lacks leadership. Rained earlier - very British. I think we are now free to travel without the police escort. Had a bit of a walk around the city: a much 'nicer' place than much of Pakistan which I have seen; but still much poverty too.

Day 42 en route to Islamabad

No real idea where we are (we are heading towards Islamabad), it's 5 pm and we've been driving since 4 am(!). We stopped once at 9 am - for a bit of crappy bread which looked - and tasted- like a chamois leather. Apart from that all I've eaten today is that and half a dozen cookies. The organisation here is totally appalling, and the usual blame game is being followed: it's always the customers' fault. Despite driving along a main road with lots of services we have stopped at the only services which doesn't have a shop. I am told it is impossible to stop elsewhere. We have a police escort - but since this is typically behond us, I think we could stop anywhere we liked. Nothing to drink apart from coffee at 3:30 am plus one swig of fizzy pop. Really annoyed. Some background to why I'm annoyed: this morning, for reasons I cannot fathom, we followed a totally crap road for about 90 km, taking something crazy, like five hours. Perhaps to be fair this was indeed the only road - but perhaps not. I cannot help feeling that it might be worth Hot Rock buying a few maps of the areas we are traveling through. Last night we stayed in a police compound at a place called Loralai - difficult to sleep because of the mosquitoes - tried sleeping on the roof of the truck - but too hot in sleeping bag; my fault - should have put up my tent. But we arrived pretty late and I knew we had a very early start - plus it's virtually impossible to open the tent locker anyhow, what with the truck being unmaintained. In the end, Simon, T and I just abandoned trying to sleep and chatted to the police who were on duty for most of the night. They took us out on 'patrol' - in reality they called in at some street vendor to buy us a bottle of coke, after driving around the streets a bit.

Day 41 en route to Quetta

Just spent a hot and mostly sleepless night on the roof of the hotel in Dalbandin; apparently what little sleep I managed to get was through the most interesting bits - there was gunfire (automatic) and there were light signals (red flashes with white flashes responding); ad-hoc commotions in the streets below. But I slept through all of this. Set off really early in the morning, still dark. Road pretty crap: something of the quality of a residential driveway which badly needs resurfacing. Stopped for breakfast in a town called Nushki. Just 20 km or so south of Afghnistan. Got a very nice plate of spicy rice from a street stall. We create a lot of interest wherever we turn up, and Nushki is no exception. One of the most noticeable things about Pakistan so far is the almost complete absence of women.

Evening: just stopped to get a meal in an unlikely looking roadside building: mud bricks, single story. Red plastic Coca Cola crates stacked outside. Again lots of interest and attention from the locals: I was shown one guy's prized camel collection (he had about seven camels). During the meal we all sat on the floor of the place and were served up okra, rice and chicken legs, with all the locals looking on. I have real difficulty with okra - I believe that the technical term which describes cooked okra is mucilaginous. This leaves little to the imagination.

Day 40 Zahedan

Parked up outside a police compound in the city of Zahedan, about 50 km from the border with Pakistan. It's 5:30 am. Worried that I am not eating enough: crappy kebabs last night (again). 8:10 am and we are still here. 27 degrees C. Henry has turned up from Tehran - he'll be driving. Should be heading off to Mir Javeh, on the Pakistan border.

11:05 am and sat in the customs' hall on the Iranian side of things. Cannot change Iranian money here - don't have very much but might be able to change it on the other side. Bought several small bottles of some cola drink - yuck. A big customs' hall -much more modern than the one back at the Turkish border crossing. The building is called the Mir Javeh Border Terminal. 11:58 am and we are no on the Pakistani side of things. Crowded, but some organisation. Lots and lots of people. Lots of dust blowing about outside. Hot winds blowing fast across the desert. 3:25 pm - we've been driving some time but now stopped at a police roadblock - we have to write all our names and passport numbers in a small ledger being passed around the back of the bus. Sand blowing about - gets all over the place - and in between one's teeth - gritty. Something like 500 km to Quetta in north-western Pakistan. 7:45 pm - we've stopped for the night in some small town about 300 km from Quetta cheap hotel. The town is called Dalbandin. Walked along the town's main road (a linear town - like a cartoon strip - watermelon shops repeating every fifty feet). Stopped by the police - very professional - had Simon, T and I surrounded. Grabbed Simon's arm - lots of guns (AK47s); ubiquitous pickup truck, complete with man in back behind electric window (lowered), wearing dark glasses: told in no uncertain terms to return to the hotel and not to walk about the town - for our own safety. At this point we were about 500 metres from the hotel, walked back - all okay so far. Tonight we sleep on the roof of the hotel - I think simply because it's very hot and there aren't enough rooms in anycase. Wish I was climbing. Long drive day tomorrow - talk of 1000 km to beyond Quetta: but there's no way we will cover that sort of distance on these roads in one day. For the first time since leaving Turkey we can get beer: available in hotel; incredibly no beer bought for Simon by Hot Rock - despite him having driven for something like 36 hours. Appallingly rude.