All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian
By NITIN GAIROLA
We woke up early morning in the village of Langar and it had started to snow at 10,000 feet or 3,000 meters there. It was still dark outside and we decided to head for the Pamirs at around 6 am to get some amazing morning views of the Wakhan from higher up in the mountains. We were to reach 14,000 feet and so Anzur, our driver, cranked up the engine and off the three of us went. We knew that November was far from the tourist season and there would be no one on the high mountain passes. That’s why I had kept a lot of bread and fruits in the backseat, just in case our vehicle were to break down there. So as we started going up, we saw patches of white until it all turned white – the roads, the slopes above and the valley below. It was a magic land suddenly and the Pamir Knot almost felt like the 3rd pole – after the Arctic in the north and Antarctica in the south. In fact the Himalayas and all the associated mountains such as the Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Pamirs are indeed known as the 3rd pole, keeping in mind the amount of snow and ice they hold. Hence this ecosystem is very crucial for managing the looming climate crisis.
The next two days would be spent in traversing the high passes and the cold barren high altitude deserts and grasslands. Unlike the earlier days in Khorog, Ishkashim, Langar and other places, these days would have limited human interactions and would be all about the landscapes. So after just an hour or two of driving out of Langar, it was a whiteout. While we were having the time of our lives, we were also conscious of the reality that we were the only three souls in this vast area and at some spots we didn’t know how broad the snow covered road actually was since there were no guard rails. Luckily Anzur was a mountain goat and he knew his stuff. And when we saw him going slow, we understood that there was a need to be very, very cautious in those conditions.
Then a few hours along the mountain roads came a very surreal moment, something we are unlikely to forget. We saw this trail of 100 or 150 Bactrian camels moving along the edge of a cliff, with heavy snow falling on them. It really felt like a scene from a movie, something like in Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘The Revenant’. We got out of our car and stood there with our gaze ‘frozen’ and fixed at the caravan of camels that were pacing by, braving the extreme elements. It did seem like another place in another time, a time that didn’t move at the same pace for them as it did for us. Later we were to see many more such caravans go by on the steep mountain side and we could only guess where they were coming from and where they were going to. There was one troop which was lesser in numbers but made for an excellent photograph against the bright sunlight after the snowfall had stopped.
Another halted in its tracks when the leader saw us photographing them. He sent a horseman down to check the small bridge since that would bring them all across the imaginary border line from Afghanistan to Tajikistan (a narrow stream over few pebbles). They were probably wondering which side we were from (the answer was neither) and that’s why they were a bit hesitant to move forward. Finally all crossed the bridge when they realized we meant no harm and this was rather ironic since it was us who were scared out of our wits. Imagine seeing Afghan men on horseback with scarves covering their faces with no one else around for miles and miles. In fact I even asked Anzur if he thought any of them would be carrying a gun. He smiled back so I guessed that he had understood the question and his answer was that it was very unlikely. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in the ocular lens of an Afghan man’s gun.
From the snowy Pamirs we reached a cold desert, full of pristine blue lakes that had formed from alpine glacier melt. This cold brown desert landscape was unearthly, quite like what you would find in our very own Ladakh since it’s all part of the same ecosystem (we were just to the north of Ladakh and just to the west of Tibet). Actually we could have been anywhere at that time, but for a moment we were fooled into imagining that we had time travelled to the Ice Age of North America 12,000 years ago. Why you may ask am I being so dramatic? Well just picture yourself going through this icy desert landscape with blue lakes and bluer skies above and an hour later you find yourself in front of no less than a thousand black yaks, grazing on yellow grass during late autumn, with snow covered peaks in the background. For me these black yaks appeared like the iconic and prehistoric American Bison. Calling it a scene fit for picture postcard would both be a cliché and also a discredit to a beauty that can’t be put in words or captured in photograph. You just have to be there to know it and to feel it. And as with most places, we had it all to ourselves that day and in that moment.
But things in such trips can’t always be rosy. Something always goes wrong and for me it is part of the experience and the memory. At the highest point, at around 14,000 plus feet, we saw a vehicle that had broken down. As is the case in these remote locations, you always stop to help and we rightly did so. But after helping the stranded souls and getting their motor running, Anzur realized our 4*4 was stone cold and didn’t want to move an inch forward. It was so cold outside that when Anzur was working on the engine he had to come inside the vehicle every few minutes just to thaw his hands and face. Finally he got the Toyota humming and we heaved a sigh of relief. We were glad to leave a location that was both as hostile and as stunning as Siberia. The ice on the roads, the heavy trucks and the falling snow – it had Siberia written over it. There was even a truck that had its face stuck in the wooly snow on the mountain face. We were glad there was snow to cushion the crash.
Being stranded for a long time at this height with our frozen vehicle had its impact on us however. When we reached Jelondy, a village at a height of around 11,000 plus feet (3,400 meters), I started feeling unwell. We ate a lot but then I had a severe headache. I had the telltale signs of altitude sickness since I was quite dehydrated during the day. Upon checking my blood oxygen with my handy oxy-meter, I saw an alarming reading of 84. It wasn’t the first time that we were at this altitude since in the Andes (Bolivia and Chile) we had been to 18,000 plus feet as well for a good three days. But that was almost a decade ago in 2015 and the Pamirs surely made me feel my age that day. I didn’t get much sleep and just wanted to leave as soon as possible, missing their wonderful hot springs, snowy slopes and the faint hope of witnessing a snow leopard (it was advertised as such). But honestly I couldn’t care less and just wanted to go down in a hurry to the lower altitude of a valley. Richa got Anzur to move early next morning and we were soon on our way down.
After two hours I started feeling better and rolled down the window to view the gorgeous scenery again – this time the winter whites had turned back to the autumn yellows, the sun was out and all were happy again. But I look back at the Pamirs with the fondest of memories, and do not think much of the pain and discomfort of that one night. That’s the thing with the natural world – more the beautiful, more the hostile. Millions of years of plate tectonics, mountain formation, glaciation and wind erosion has made these alien biomes of cold deserts, ice and tundra what they are – beautiful but hostile to life. An epic landscape and an epic adventure in the Pamirs was about to conclude and another in the lowlands was about to begin. I truly breathed a sigh of relief and lovingly placed the memories in my vault.
Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and has travelled the natural world more than almost any Indian ever. He has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, and holds National Geographic conservation certifications. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. More than anything else, he loves his Himalayan home. Reach him at: www.facebook.com/MostTravelledIndian/ ; www.instagram.com/MostTravelled_Indian/; nitin.gairola@gmail.com
