📷 The Land of High Mountains: Pakistan. Day 13. Trekking to the Pa...

At night, after an almost thirty-kilometer yesterday trekking, I slept badly — one by one mosquitoes flew in and buzzed over me. I put my left cheek out of the sleeping bag as bait, waited for the moment of landing, swatted and put the annoying blood-sucking insects in a heap. For this simple thing I spent the night. Getting up at 6:50 — I woke up with a feeling as if I had been beaten all night and one, especially strong, strike hit my head.

Hot tea with ginger, teraflu, porridge with jam, and again we see Bayram's surprised eyes — he will never get used to this dish. Let's get together and go out. Today we have a way back on the other side of the glacier Batura, along a rather good path, and the crossing over the glacier in a different place: not where we crossed on the way here, but near the hut where we stopped to drink coffee for the first time. I feel uneasy when I think about the kilometers ahead.

We did a warm-up, said goodbye to the shepherd's village of Yashpert, which gave us shelter for several nights, and went out onto the trail. It is comfortable to walk, fatigue has gone somewhere, the sun is not shining much, the road is flat and goes through the trees. We go out into the open space, indented by ravines.

And then a yak comes out of one ravine towards us. Young and alone. Hey, where are your family?
He looked like he had a very fun evening yesterday, but now he doesn't really understand where he is and where everyone else is.

How good everything is around! And the road is excellent, no loose stones and slopes.

But here we passed the place where we left the glacier two days ago, and the road gradually began to climb up.

We pass the last "trees with stands".

Groves of other, no less pretty trees begin. We have not even seen such trees here before!

If they grew a little thicker, it would look like a jungle.

The flat path ends soon. Again, we have to be careful. Eh, there won't be a convenient highway up to the glacier...

The end of July, and the rose hips are still blooming here. Mountains!

They are full of all sorts of surprises, both good and not so.

On the way, stop at Ali Dad Khan's house.

This young man, whose photograph we see inside the house, died on May 15, 1999 at the age of 22. Now his house is used as a place to stay and spend the night.

In one place, the trail collapsed altogether, and our guide began to look for a new path, simultaneously laying out cairns of stones. Everyone's joy has slowly disappeared.

Bayram said he would inform the local community about the collapse of the trail and they would fix it. In the meantime, we have to go without it.

At some point, I realize that I am not looking around, admiring the beauty of the mountains, but at the feet of the one in front. The legs change periodically, but the most important thing is to see where they are coming, because the stones are very unstable, and at any moment under the weight of a person they can collapse.

Even our tireless guide Bayram seems to be a little tired.

And the rest of the participants and even more so — we use every minute to gain strength :)

Well, I never tire of admiring Elena the whole trip — how she copes with all the hardships of the way on a par with us, relatively young people. And she continues to cope with everything, well, except that she goes a little slower, but at a constant pace. That's what training and great desire mean!

It's good that there are clouds in the sky and the sun does not shine and fry us like yesterday. Having learned from bitter yesterday experience, I carry with me two and a half liters of water. Soon only a liter remained of them.

This beautiful wall of mountains is still far away: between us lies the Batura glacier.

We started crossing the glacier. It is easier to do it here than in the place where we crossed it when we went to Yashpert. There is a path here at least in some places. Soon the Germans we met in Yashpert are catching up with us: they again followed our porters — well, yes, there are almost no well-marked trails and paths here, and those that exist periodically disappear due to talus and the movement of the glacier.

In such places you feel like a grain of sand, small and insignificant, and besides, also fragile.

But still, although we are grains of sand, we have to move our feet — otherwise we will not get to the hotel, and the wind will not carry us :)

In the end, the porters went the other way, either they decided to cut it off, or they got lost, and now they have to go down the gravel. Do you see here two people?

Okay, we got back across the glacier! Here is the hut. Let's have some coffee again? No, tea is better this time. True, it turned out to be a real chifir, but it adds great strength.

Memory is a strange thing — I remembered exactly that after the hut where we drank coffee / tea, the trail is quite flat, and it's not far to go to the highway.

But the reality turned out to be harsher. Although there is a trail, it is not easy to walk. And far away. Perhaps the fact is that then we walked in the morning, cheerful and fresh, but now it is afternoon and we are walking already pretty tired.

While we were drinking tea and relaxing, the sun began to come out from behind the clouds, and beauty began around us.

The views are great everywhere you look. Sunset in action — very beautiful light falls on the rocks.

It turned out that, after all, my memories were true — now Bayram took us along a different, longer path to look at the Passu valley from a new point.

This is a really amazing view from here!

I am glad that the peaks are lost in the clouds — this adds drama to the pictures.

Shepherds' shelters are hidden among the huge stones.

I don't directly know where to look and what to shoot, it becomes very, very beautiful everywhere.

And there are nice people around, I also have to take pictures of them :)

It would be nice to still have time to look at the step ... but I just can't!

Well, at least there is more or less flat terrain underfoot. Otherwise I might not have made it :)

And I just move my legs mechanically, while my eyes and the camera try to remember the surrounding views. Still, it's good that we went this way, it's just a gift at the end of trekking adventures!

Before us stretched Passu Valley and the village of the same name in it. The greenery of the gardens and fields contrasts with the surrounding rocks and mountains.

There used to be a small village in the river on the right. But the mudflow took it down, so they moved it higher.

The walls and tops of the Passu Cathedral mountains still dominate the valley.

Still, these peaks, like towers near fortresses, are infinitely attractive to the eye.

Clouds periodically cling to their sharp peaks and tear, and scraps settle in the gorges between the them.

Sunspots playfully walk along the valley, here and there highlighting pieces of the earth, then the slopes of the mountains. And we quickly strive down into the valley.

After descending to civilization, we went on the way to the Bayram site, to his garden. Delicious apricots and apples.

We eat straight from the tree, with dirty hands, I hope that everything will work out good (I was carefully photographed by @kibela as photo evidence, where I could pick up an indigestion). So yummy!

A little more, another spurt! Just a little bit left before our hotel.

Hooray, we got there! Down there are our houses. We don't have hot water in our room, and something cloudy and cool flows from the tap. But even such a shower after several days in the mountains is bliss.

Today we have walked 21.5 kilometers, which does not sound like too much, but this includes crossing the glacier. We took a good walk, didn't we? :)

To be continued...

Parts of the journey:

Camera: OLYMPUS E-M1 Mark II

It's better to watch the photos in high resolution — just click on them and open in a new window.

You can also see my photos in my blog LJ and in my profile on NatGeo

📷 The Land of High Mountains: Pakistan. Day 13. Trekking to the Passu Valley