Where the Indus is Young (23 page)

On the way home we were invited to drink tea in the Post Office, which consists of one room about eight feet by six. The Postmaster, a middle-aged Punjabi named Akbar, is remarkable for the fact that he
likes
Baltistan. Khapalu acquired a Post Office just two years ago and Akbar begged me to use it; with no local tradition of
letter-writing
through public scribes, business is very slow. So I bought three aerogrammes and spent the rest of the snowy afternoon using them.

A sunny morning, though fat clouds were still sitting on the surrounding mountains. We set off early to visit our Bara host, as we had promised, but were side-tracked on the edge of that widespread settlement. An agitated young man with severe conjunctivitis begged me urgently to look at his ailing son and though I am well aware of the futility of amateur medical intervention I hadn’t the heart to refuse. So Hallam was tethered and we followed the distraught father far up a steep, snow-slippy path. Just above an old mosque with an elaborately carved portico stood a cluster of wretched hovels, and in a cold, shadowed yard a young woman was nursing an emaciated two-year-old boy who wore only a short ragged shift. He had so many infected open sores on his face that it seemed just one big sore and his meagre buttocks were similarly afflicted; yet the rest of his body was clear and he had sound teeth set firmly in his gums. When next the father is in Khapalu he is to call at the Rest House for a tube of penicillin ointment, which can do no harm (unless the unhappy child chances to be allergic to it, as I am) and may do some good.

As we were admiring the mosque a tall young man came around the mountain and introduced himself as Ghulam Hussain, a teacher in Khapalu’s High School. He invited us to drink tea with his wife and outside his brand new house we climbed a steep and shaky ladder to a stable roof, off which were three rooms. In a corner of the smallest an eighteen-year-old girl sat on a quilt nursing a seven-week-old
infant the size of a premature baby. The mother herself looked ill and worried and dispirited but managed a wan smile of welcome. While our host was absent another young woman came in, cheerful and rosy-cheeked, with a toddler on her back and a spindle in her hand. She was quickly followed by four young men and three boys; then the door had to be bolted to keep out the curious, laughing, shouting mob who longed to examine us.

We sat on a charpoy – the room’s only piece of furniture – opposite a large photograph of Mr Bhutto – the room’s only decoration. After twenty minutes Ghulam Hussain reappeared carrying a shiny new tin tray on which were two cups of ginger tea (a most warming and refreshing concoction) and two boiled eggs on a saucer with two teaspoons. Rachel found the tea too spicy so she ate both eggs and I drank both teas while a stream of village sufferers came to the door to beg for medicines. It was hard to explain that although I happened to have something which might help one child I could do nothing for all the rest.

We spent most of this bleak grey day at the Palace, where Rachel was entertained by the three lovely daughters while I talked to the Raja, his younger brother, the Headmaster of the High School and various other callers who wandered in and out. As we were leaving, Raja Sahib unlocked the massive door of the guest-bungalow to show us around. On our first visit he had apologised profusely for not being in a position to offer hospitality during winter and now I saw exactly what he meant. The numerous, sparsely-furnished rooms seem half a mile long and quarter of a mile high and could not possibly be made habitable at this season.

As we had already deduced from internal evidence, Hallam is a native of Khapalu. He belonged to the Raja’s brother until three years ago, when he was presented to our Thowar friend. He was not a very good polo pony, being well above the ideal height and with a tendency to cross his forelegs. Moreover, he has only two white feet, which is rather inauspicious; none or four are much preferred. Incidentally, Raja Sahib says that ‘polo’ is a Balti word meaning ‘ball’. He also
informed me that during the Raj, English and Swiss Protestant missionaries operated in Khapalu for many years without ever making a convert.

One of the advantages of growing old is that I appreciate a day such as this much more keenly than I would have done ten years ago, when it seemed that the future held an infinite number of days. Now the future is felt to be finite and every flawless experience is valued all the more.

There was spring in the air as we set off to explore that high plateau visited too briefly five days ago. Suddenly the trees are budding, and a few small patches of earth, covered with short dead yellow grass, are appearing through the whiteness. On the climb out of the valley the track was a mixture of frozen snow, running water and greasy mud; but on the level ‘highland’, as the locals call it, we only had to contend with deep dry snow.

The surrounding mountains were dazzling after the new fall and, as we continued east, a long line of high, jagged, gleaming
rock-spires
came into view only a few miles away, contrasting dramatically with the curved summits directly ahead. From the edge of the plateau we could see, far below, the unfamiliar Surmo section of the Shyok Valley, where that river meets the Hushe. The descent towards Surmo was easy enough, though snow lay two feet deep. That spectacular row of rock-spires rises straight up from the opposite side of the valley – a tremendous sight – and the track was visible for miles ahead, dropping almost to river level before spiralling up to disappear around a bulky brown mountain. Three-quarters of the way down, we stopped for lunch. Behind us rose a sheer red-brown wall, from which a magnificent pair of eagles came sailing out over the glittering solitude of the valley. The distant Shyok gleamed green in its various meandering channels, which soon will have become one wide racing torrent, and on our right was the amphitheatre slope we had just descended – a wonderful sweep of smooth snow, like one half of a gigantic broken bowl. The bowl’s even rim extended for about two miles against a sky where silver shreds of cloud floated in that peculiar
high-altitude blueness which to me is the loveliest of all colours. (For some odd reason, just looking up at this sky makes me feel deliriously happy.) Beyond the rim rose curved mountains, backed by a medley of still higher peaks of every conceivable shape; and on our left, behind the spires, was an endless desolate confusion of gaunt,
white-streaked
summits – the heart of the Karakoram, beyond which lies China.

During the homewards climb up the side of the ‘broken bowl’ we saw a magical ‘rainbow cloud’ and back on the plateau the afternoon sun was dazzling. Here I dawdled, reluctant to leave the beauty of this ‘highland’, while Hallam took Rachel far ahead. Theirs was the only movement on all that brilliant expanse, which stretched away to the south until it merged with snowy, rock-flecked mountain flanks below stern grey peaks. To the north was a long wall of brown rock – so regular it seemed artificial – beyond which rose the ‘spires’. And ahead were all those radiant peaks and gloomy precipices which overlook Khapalu from the west.

The descent was treacherous after hours of hot sunshine, but in the bazaars we found the evening’s new ice already forming over fetlock-deep mud.

Today’s first task was to have a broken girth strap repaired. No problem: an ancient cobbler did the job in five minutes and refused payment. Like many local craftsmen he operates in the open air with the few primitive tools of his trade on the ground beside him. Khapalu’s scribe, jeweller, tinsmith, welder and tanner all have their sites near merchants’ stalls, into which they retreat to thaw when business is slack. The same applies to two barbers and several tailors. One of the tailors – a wizened old man who wears only cotton rags under his blanket – sits on an exceptionally exposed ledge of ground, where he keeps a small patch clear of snow, and works away with his machine as happily as though he were on
Mediterranean
shores.

I cannot understand the Baltis’ lack of adequate clothing. Even with the limited resources at their disposal, every Balti could be as
warmly clad as the poorest Tibetans traditionally were. But Raja Sahib tells me there has never been any sensible Balti national dress.

We lunched at the Palace, where a most engaging four-year-old boy was successfully provided for Rachel’s entertainment. The meal consisted of omelette, a few bits of very tough curried mutton, delicious pickled cabbage and chapattis. When I commented on the lack of dogs in Khapalu Raja Sahib explained that many years ago they were all wiped out by some epidemic (rabies?) and never reintroduced. Certainly there is no need for watchdogs, local standards of honesty being so high. But this situation may soon change, now that the region is about to be invaded by Pakistani government officials who will import the inferior moral standards of the plains. As I myself saw when working with the Tibetans, unsophisticated people are very easily corrupted, just as their bodies have no resistance to alien bacteria.

On the way home we stopped to buy new bootlaces when I saw some hanging from a nail in a tiny stall standing by itself near the track. There was no merchant in sight, but I reckoned he would soon appear, alerted by the crowd we had attracted. When he did not, I asked the crowd how much bootlaces cost and was told fifty paise; but I had no coins, so a ragged young man pointed to a tin box at the back of the stall and told me to get my own change. That box contained at least Rs.500. And when we went on our way the crowd dispersed, leaving box and stall unguarded. It is regenerating to be in a land of such innocence.

Today Hallam had a rest while we explored a short-cut footpath to my beloved highland. An advantage of having Rachel on foot is that she has less breath for talking. Today’s walk took us to 11,500 feet and though the climb was gradual enough most of it was blessed by silence.

After an hour on slippy pathlets, we came to a long stretch of treeless, uncultivable, boulder-strewn land, fissured by many gullies. We stopped often, for Rachel to rest and me to be ecstatic, and as we
sat on one boulder, sweating in hot sun, a frail, sweet sound suddenly came to us through the intense stillness of the heights. Immediately that song swept me back to the Tibetans on a wave of nostalgia, but for some moments we could not locate the singer. Then my eye was caught by the movement of distant goats, beyond a snow-filled gully, and at last we saw the goathered sitting on a rock, wrapped in his rock-coloured blanket and singing his timeless song. It seemed at once robust and plaintive, merry and poignant, and each note came to us distinctly through the thin, pure air.

There was heavy traffic this morning because Khapalu’s meadows are on the highland. Fodder is stored there, in semi-underground circular stone shelters, and is carried down as required, either in wicker baskets for straw (which the Baltis call hay) or in colossal roped bundles of hay (which the Baltis call grass), worn on the shoulders like monstrous rucksacks. Occasionally yak or dzo are taken up, but it is reckoned that the extra feed they need before this trip makes their use uneconomic. We met several mixed groups of men and women coming down: they must have left home at dawn and travelled fast. The women were well-built, handsome and
high-spirited
, with clear skins, strong white teeth and glossy hair in many small braids. They all stopped to greet us and Rachel was given sweet juicy pears and home-made Balti biscuits disinterred from the recesses of rarely-washed garments but instantly devoured by the delighted recipient. These light-hearted women and girls were carrying loads that would prostrate the average twentieth-century European male and I could not help comparing them to their puny-looking sisters in Skardu and Gilgit.

We were ravenous when we came out on the jeep-track, beyond which our path continued to climb steadily to the foot of the southern mountains. Before following it we picnicked near a
convenient
‘summer residence’. Many of these one-roomed huts are surrounded by fodder stores which now look like ill-made igloos dotting the highland. We followed new footprints through deep snow and behind the hut found an endearing ten-year-old boy diligently feeding a flock of eight minute sheep. In the background a shaggy she-goat with a manic-depressive air was for no evident
reason repeatedly ramming her horns against a stone wall. Possibly she was protesting against her lunch as best she knew how, for it seemed to have consisted entirely of dried leaves. In Baltistan there are no autumn bonfires: every leaf is hoarded for fodder. We sat on a snow-free edge of a roof to eat our hard-boiled eggs – throwing the shells to the goat – and watched Hassan at his task. First the sheep, too, were given an armful of dried leaves, and then a bundle of some aromatic herb that looks like sage but isn’t, and then a basket of barley-straw, and finally a twist of hay smelling strongly, as all the best Balti hay does, of wild thyme. It was not surprising that the she-goat felt jealous. We later discovered that Hassan had driven the animals up to feed them because all the adult members of his family are ill and he himself is too small to carry down enough fodder. While his flock was eating he set about clearing the shelter roofs of snow with a heavy shovel: otherwise the imminent thaw would destroy both buildings and fodder. This was no easy task for a little boy but he is a sturdy lad and seemed happy as he worked.

The sun felt very hot when we left Hassan alone amidst the white silence of his fields. Rejoining the footpath, we climbed steadily towards those severe grey summits whose snowy skirts merge into the highland. As we approached the base of the crags the afternoon cloud began to gather, though without lessening the sun’s power; it was just a vast, symmetrical fan of silver vapour, its handle pointing east. Rachel eyed it for a moment and then observed, ‘I suppose that’s the mist we saw being drawn up from the Shyok this morning.’ It is odd how unalike we are. I revel in the morning’s mist and the afternoon’s cloud formations, but left to myself I would never connect the two.