Carved in Stone - Reflections from the KKH

"This is pretty scary, right?" I said as the crowded bus swerved to avoid a gaping pothole in the middle of the dirt road, the leftmost tires gripping pebbles and nothing. I contemplated the possibility that this imported Japanese schoolbus could careen off this mountain pass into the river below as I spoke aloud: "our lives are entirely in the hands of our driver."

"First they are in Allah's hands... then our driver's," the young man of 25 to my left assured me.

Unassured, I looked up to notice a brilliant moon illuminating the night sky in a gradient from white to black, but never touching gray. The other stars, normally radiant, glowed dimly, jealously. The moon set late in the night to reveal the same night sky that compelled Gallileo to wake up and say "I must invent the telescope." I remembered seeing the Milky Way from a similar viewpoint some nights before, during the new moon after Eid-al Fitr. Silhouetted mountains were peperred with the earthly stars of little houses in even smaller hamlets with juniper wood fires for brewing tea. It was then that I noticed that Allah's outstretched hands had guided us safely into Chipurson Valley.

The Karakoram Highway (KKH) is about 40 years old and is currently being renovated. There are 4 to 5 thousand Chinese laborers hard at work connecting China's cheap goods to Pakistan's cheaper markets. It is the major artery that connects western China to Pakistan and far northern Pakistan to Islamabad. The snaking road that hugs the side of the karakoram overlooking the Indus river is only ever as wide as to allow the width of two cars separated by just enough space to keep the paint from scratching off two passing cars. One learns to accept potentially near death experiances as commonplace. In the three weeks I spent in Pakistan, about 40 hours were clocked on the picturesque and oftentimes periloius KKH.

Most human transportation between cities on the KKH is done with old 15-seat toyota vans. These vans will only leave the depot if there are at least 19 passengers in the seats, sometimes with more hanging off the back or sitting on top alongside the luggage. The ride is cramped and hot. Women and children usually sit in the first row behind the driver.

Driving in the daytime, the road is enveloped in a couldren of mountains. As the path winds, the mountains cleave from one another in an ever-widening "V" (or lowercase "y") reavealing new titans, each one more spectacular than the last.


Even though the ride from Shonas to Gilgit may be uncomfortable, sometims you get to meet some fun characters. Afsar and I had a conversation about Pakistani hiphop - his cousin "Bee Jay Hussein" was the most famous "northsyde" rapper in Gilgit-Baltistan (formerly the "Northern Areas" or "NA"). He told me how much people liked Lupe Fiasco here because he was a muslim rapper.

The 25-year old going to Chipurson with us was trying to secure support for his "Walk 4 Peace" from "Khunjerab 2 Karachi." The 100-day walk would try to raise awareness of the Pakistani domestic problems in Swat and Tribal Areas and show that the majority of the Pakistani people are against the Talibanization of their people.

My conversation with Afsar was interrupted by the sight of some viscous orange-brown liquid creeping down the window. It was local apricot jam and I just hoped none of it jammed my bag stored up top. I drifted off to sleep and expected to wake up covered in jam.


I had just begun to doze off when I was abruptly roused from my slumber by a terrible noise. A brilliantly adorned sphinxy painted in the brightest greens and yellows had honked its horn. On the KKH, the sounds and sights of these hulking iron beasts on wheels are quite common. The passing of a truck is always accompanied by the blast of its horn or, when there was no need to honk, by the gentle sound of chimes followed by the roar of a diesel engine. The truck is truly a product of a failed "Pimp My Ride" episode where Xzibit takes some redneck's pickup and comes out at the end of the episode and tells the owner "Aight, your trunk can hold 50000 kilos of potatoes now. We set you up with a horn that is as loud as it is obnoxious and sounds like mo'f'n' Flash Gordon's lizardman-blastin' lasergun killing an elephant." Some of them have decorative Ben Hur-like charriot spours. Dick Dastardly is the driver while Muttley rides shotgun and operates the smoke screen and oil slick.


On the 16 hour busride from Gilgit to Mansehra, in addition to stops to let people off the bus, we stopped four times. The first stop was right outside Gilgit for lunch. We stopped in Chilas for a tea break. At about 6pm, we stopped for evening prayer, which conventiantly gave the bus driver enough time to change a tire. The last stop was my favoirte and always is on these long rides on the KKH: dinner at a cliffside restaurant. Lit by Christmas lights and propane-fueled lanterns, we're presented with a plate of roti(bread), daal(lentils), and gosht(beef) as we sit on a rope-mesh bench as a tributary of the Indus rushes beside us.


The KKH is an unforgiving mistress, but at least I'll have Allah on my side the next time I'm on a shaky 40-year old rope bridge when it snaps.