Holidays part 5 - Naran & Lake Saiful Muluk

Continued from parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.

One of the main highlights was this expedition up to Lake Saiful Muluk. In summertime you can take a jeep part of all of the way, but since the jeep track was buried under several feet of snow, we'd be walking the whole way.

A couple of km in, and well into the snow.  The group ahead dropped behind us,
and at some stage disappeared altogether.

Don't look now, but you're being followed by half a pirate.

Bashir goes ahead, kicking out steps for the rest of us -
in his loafers.

A long way up...

Made it! - 4 hours, 10km and 2600ft of snow from Naran.

Lake Saiful Muluk - somewhere under that lot!  (click for large version)
The big lumpy peak left-of-centre with the hanging glacier is Malika Parbat.

Lunch consisted of the day's second set of parathas with omelettes inside.

At this point Bashir handed Jenny a blanket and pointed down
the slope.  Jo's plastic bag was somewhat faster, leading to a
high-speed snowy somersault or two - like in a cartoon but
thankfully minus the giant snowball part.

The descent took just over half the time of the ascent.

The slidey-trails go back a long way up!

Next day we went for a gentler and flatter walk a little way up the main valley.
Here's the next wee village, currently deserted.

After a pause for a drink, we decided to go and see what what was round the corner
before heading back - this was what we found.  (click for large version)

An executive decision to leave on the Thursday evening instead of Friday
morning proved to be a fortuitous choice, as a storm chased us down the valley.
Had we stayed the extra night we would have had to hike over landslides to get
my parents to the airport on time!

Halfway through this glacier we met a stuck minibus.

One more reminder of the flood's toll on the road.

Holidays part 3 - Shogran

First things first - yes, we're fine, despite our close proximity to recent news headlines. Things have seemed pretty quiet so far, but we'll most likely be staying in for the next few days at least until we have more of an idea of the public mood.

Continued from part 1 & part 2.

So, on to the more spectacular stuff! After our disappointment at not making to Hunza, our Plan B was to hire a guide with a jeep who would take us up the Kaghan valley for a few days.

Looking down on Mansehra from the bypass.

View from the balcony of our hotel room at Shogran.

After checking into our hotel, our guide took us on an expedition in the afternoon,
starting with a jeep ride as far as the jeep could get - the bit I'm  standing on is a
steep hairpin bend covered in a couple of feet of snow.

Traversing a snow bank.  There's a jeep track somewhere under this lot.

Sam spent a fair amount of the trip not looking down.

Sri, where nomadic shepherds bring their flocks in the summertime.
(click to view large version, then cross your eyes and match up the pictures to see
in 3D - easier than magic eye anyway!)

The less tired explorers charge on to the next summit, leaving the others to amble
down at a gentler pace.

Paya* - at just about bang on 3000m we're merely 2.23x higher than the UK.
(*or Paye, or Pae - in this country spelling of words using the Latin alphabet
is largely up to the speller, as long as it roughly looks how it sounds!)

180° or so from Paya - click for full size.  The pointy one on the sawtooth ridge
about 2/3 of the way across the image is Malika Parbat (Queen of the Mountains),
the highest in the valley at 5290m - though that's small fry for this country...

Starting the descent.  Deep snow if good fun for this part.
Lower down there was a bit of a short cut - see video below:

A quality piece of road-building.

For those not determinedly not looking down, here's the view
out the side of the jeep.  You can see a long way down, at
angles of 60-80° below the horizontal.

Looking down the Kaghan valley from above Kiwai, where the road to
Shogran joins the main road to Naran and beyond.

Malika Parbat in the sunset.  More to come soon...

Photo post: Thandiani

This weekend we had a lovely time with our friends Jimmy & Erin (who we met at the orientation conference) who came up to visit us. They had access to a car belonging to another family who are home for a few months, so we grabbed the opportunity to take a little trip up into the hills in search of some snow. We had an early start, leaving at 7am, then after picking up our wheels stopped at a roadside eatery for naan, omelettes and chai.

On the road out of the valley, each new twist brought a better view. This is looking back towards Abbottabad (the hazy bit in the centre of this pic - click to see full size version):










The steep valleys are amazingly populous, with plenty of houses like these built into the hillside:



















Getting the materials up there in the first place must be a mammoth task!

After a while the road became a bit more like this:



















Most of the traffic consists of little Suzukis like this one:



















We'd already had two attempts at getting up this particularly icy corner when this guy came charging down. Downhill is easier than up, and 4WD doesn't necessarily help much when all 4 W's are on patches of ice!



















Pakistani roadsigns don't always tell you what you need to know. We deciphered the Urdu sign at this junction that said Thandiani 3.5km, but couldn't tell from it which direction it lay in. So we carried on for a bit straight on (behind the photographer) until we found some more troublesome patches of ice and snow. After a few tense slippery minutes we decided to turn around and try the other fork up the hill, which had obviously been cleared. A few minutes along that road the direction didn't feel right, so we decided to come back again, park the beast just before the snow started in earnest, and start our hike from there. (The cleared road turned out to be the main road to Muzaffarabad, a place where we're not supposed to go without a special permit, so just as well...)

It was lovely and quiet up here, thoroughly vindicating the early start to the day. A couple of cars (and even a motorbike!) braved the snow, the locals obviously being more determined drivers than we.

The daily commute:





































Balancing on top of the world:





































The view from the top - around 2700m (click for full size version):






We were told we could see Nanga Parbat from here, but we have no idea which bit of the distant mountain range it might have been.

A beach hut? Here?



















Thandiani town centre:



















Thandiani (literally 'cold place') is one of the old hill stations from colonial times, where people would retreat to escape the high summer heat lower down. In winter it's pretty much closed down, with few people around. All their water is brought up in tanks from a kilometre or so down the road. We stopped for some chai in this little eating place:



















Having brought his gaiters all this way, there was no stopping Jimmy wearing them. When they're all the rage next year, remember you saw them here first!





























































Crazy road-building skills once again in evidence:



















Looking back up one of the valleys on the way down: