I spent a rest day in Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital. The oppressive heat, dust and pollution irritated my eyes, nose and throat. It didn’t lend itself to exploration of this extremely historical city. I took a bus the next morning to Rawalpindi, a city adjacent to Pakistan’s capital Islamabad. This is the foot of the Karakoram Highway, a marvel of highway engineering that winds its way over the Himalayas to China. I would travel the length of this highway by car and on foot.
Government-run NATCO runs busses from Rawalpindi to Gilgit, piloted by expert drivers who specialize in the difficult roads here. Sometimes it’s truly a miracle that the road exists at all. In places, it is cut out of cliffs, obliterated by massive rockslides, and drowned under a lake.
The road could be rough, but Africa still takes the cake for worst roads. Just like the terrible bus ride from Moyale to Nairobi in Kenya, I had the misfortune of being seated right over the rear axle, bouncing all over the place. When I made the mistake of dozing off, I’d be rudely awakened by my forehead slamming into the steel bar welded across the window. I arrived with welts on my head from a few of the more forceful collisions.
Just after midnight, we passed through Abottabad, former home of Osama bin Laden. From there, we ascended into the mountains.
This part of Pakistan is relatively arid, so there was never much vegetation beyond scrub brush. As we rose, even that became quite sparse, giving way to a rocky moonscape bisected by a grey glacial river.
This terrain continued all the way to Gilgit, and I began to wonder if traveller’s stories of Pakistan’s beauty were exaggerated. I just hadn’t reached the best part yet.
