‘I loved the loneliness and the drama of this remote corner of the world’
When Scottish adventurer and author Iain Campbell was trekking up the Indus river and exploring mountainous regions of Pakistan, he found a country and people far removed from mainstream media stereotypes
My guide and two porters were convinced we were under attack. It was dusk, we had finished our supper of red lentils and rice and were washing up our plates in the nearby stream, when a fist-sized stone flew past me, narrowly missing my head and embedded itself in the silt. Immediately the three of them scrambled up the bank shouting. I followed them and stood scanning the gravelly moraine that spread all the way to the glacier at the other side of the valley. But there was nobody there. Mirza, my guide cupped his hands and shouted in Chilasi but only the echo of his voice came back. He shook his head, no one would be up here at this time of day; in one direction lay the Mazeno pass, a snow bound 17,000ft pass that we had spent all day abseiling and climbing down, in the other was a two hour walk down to the next village. There was only one explanation. He looked me sternly in the eye. We had been attacked by fairies.
I was two months into my journey up the course of the Indus river, a journey which would take me from its mouth in the mud flats and mangrove swamps of coastal Pakistan all the way through Kashmir
to the Tibetan plateau. Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain in the world, is important to the course of the Indus because it acts as a sort of axle to its course, it is here that the river which has run west across Tibet and Kashmir finally meets one of the great fractures of the Karakorum mountains and turns resolutely south towards the Arabian Sea. As part of my Indus journey I had decided to spend ten days trekking round Nanga Parbat, keeping as close as possible to its glaciers and massive faces by tackling the high passes of the inner circuit.
“Fairies?” I chuckled. But this was not a joke. For Mirza and the porters there was simply no other explanation. This place, high on the glacial moraine where the pasture ran out and the land was covered with debris and ice, was well known as a stronghold of the fairies. The people round here who make a living herding yak and sheep between the valleys and the high pastures believed that the fairies used to live closer to the villages but have now moved further and further into the mountainous areas because they dislike the modern sounds of vehicles, televisions and machinery.
We retreated to our tents, and without planning it none of us sat with our backs to the moraine slope. We sat until we couldn’t even see shapes in the rocks anymore, just an inky blackness. I brushed my teeth at the tent door; I didn’t want to go down to the river again. When I got into my sleeping bag I wore my helmet and kept my ice axe beside me in the dark.
People often asked me what drew me to Pakistan. At first it was the mountains, the fractured folds and cracks of the lithosphere where the Karakorum and the Himalaya emerge from an endless subterranean collision. I loved the loneliness and the drama of this remote corner of the world where Pakistan, India and Tibet meet and I loved the freedom I felt walking and climbing among all that austere beauty. But it was more than that which kept bringing me back; It was a growing fascination with Pakistan’s complex culture and a love for the people of this country whose kindness continually amazed me.
I eventually decided to write about my travels in Pakistan, in my book From the Lion’s Mouth because I felt that the essence one has from reading about Pakistan in the mainstream media paints a largely negative picture. The legacy of the War On Terror, and the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden to his compound in Pakistan, is an image of a country that is dangerous and if not extreme then at least religiously dogmatic. But the Pakistani religion and culture that I knew, far from being monotone and puritanical was fascinating and complex like the layers of some ancient embroidery. In Sindh and the Punjab I had visited Muslim saints’ shrines where men and women danced ecstatically to drums and pipes and where offerings of meat were made to holy crocodiles. And here in the mountains of the north, among men who prayed five times a day, there was an unquestioning acceptance that fairies lived in the mountains. Far from being bound by the strictures of their religion, most Pakistani religious observance seemed to build on their faith incorporating older stories and traditions.
I was glad to wake up the next morning. The anxieties of the night had left with the darkness but it was still bitterly cold and the sun had not yet reached our riverbank hollow. We set off after a quick breakfast, ascending to another pass that opened up a new view of the mountain. For several days we had walked beneath the Rupal face, often referred to as the highest mountain face in the world, an immense wall on the south of the mountain but now we could see the westfacing Diamir face, its rocky edge and central snow field, puffy with sculpted meringues of re-frozen spindrift laid down by layer upon layer of storm. For the first time too we could see the summit of Nanga Parbat, the steep final cliffs
The Pakistani religion and culture that I knew, far from being monotone and puritanical was fascinating and complex like the layers of some ancient embroidery
bare of snow, and protected by acres of high altitude snow fields.
The glacier gave way to firm ground and then there was dusty earth between the rocks and as the slope grew shallower the earth bore flowers and scrubby grass. It was still barren, but after two days above 13,000ft it was like a garden, full of colour and the smells of life and safety.
It was easier going now, we had crossed the high passes and the rest of the trek around Nanga Parbat was through the pine forests and high-pasture settlements. At last, nine days after setting off, we reached the mini tourist resort where local visitors walk up from the road on day trips to take in the view. Now that we were off the mountain, sleeping in beds, taking showers, drinking Pepsi, the fairies were unbelievable and I examined the fears I had had a few nights earlier with bemused curiosity.
Beneath Nanga Parbat where the road runs along the banks of the Indus river the rocks are covered with petroglyphs, carvings chipped into the brown rocks leaving yellow images and inscriptions. Many have been identified as Buddhist or Scythian, made when different religious waves swept over these lands, but some are much older, faded now almost to invisibility and give us a window on ancient folk beliefs thousands of years old about which nothing remains but these carvings. There is a figure with human and animal features, possibly a weapon and clad in a loincloth. It sits almost beneath the suspension bridge that connects Chilas to the Karakorum Highway, the main road north to China. I stared at the carving for some time trying to imagine what it might represent and was reminded of staring into the dusk at tumbled rocks around our campsite a week earlier.
A Jeep roared past on the bridge above me, building up speed for the slope opposite with a wrenching crunch from its gearbox. It was just the sort of loud noise that angered the fairies and had pushed them to their high-altitude sanctuaries.
● Iain Campbell is the author of From the Lion’s Mouth: A Journey Along the Indus published by Bradt at
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