Day 61_to_63

From now on we’ll ride with Mark, Eloy, Lucy and their guide. What an amazing coincidence! I knew him from Instagram, we had been talking for a long time on the net and by chance we end up riding together through Pakistan. He is Sha, from Karakorum bikers (https://www.karakorambikers.com and @karakorambikers in Instagram) the best biker guide ever! They are offering other kind of tours around Pakistan, so if you go there contact them!

Samuel and Marc decide to ride a tough off road valley with two new biker friends, Mario a superfriendly Italian (@heartchallenge on Instagram) and Martin, a German guy travelling with Mogli, a cat that he rescued from the streets (@motomogli on Instagram). We’ll met again in Gilgit.

The Pasu cons and the Hunza river…

Our first stop will be the hanging bridge, and there we have another surprise Ahmar and Shaheryar are waiting for us. It seems they were talking to Mark on Facebook and somehow they managed to find us without having an appointment or anything! They just took the car from Gilgit (3 hours each way) to meet Mark! As I’ve said, this country is amazing! We love its people!

The hanging bridge! and no… we are not brave enough to cross it.

Next we visit the Attabad lake. In January 2010, a massive landslide blocked the flow of River Hunza, creating a natural dam and burying 20 people beneath it. The rising water displaced thousands of residents and submerged countless villages, fields, orchards a well as a 19-kilometre stretch of the Karakoram Highway … Until the connection was restored, the only way to reach the villages of Shishkat, Gulmit, Passu and China was to cross the beautiful, blue lake by boat. However, the Karakoram is being rebuilt so we just ride through some tunnels now! This blue it’s not from this planet!

The last stop will be in Karimabad, where we’ll spend the night. Our new friends have prepared some sightseeing! We visit the Altit fort and the Eagle’s nest. The views are just breathtaking, I can’t even try to describe what we see… and the photos are not good enough as usual.

As I’ve already said, people in Pakistan are incredibly friendly with us, we don’t feel insecure or not welcome at any time. Just the opposite, we are overwhelmed with all the love and generosity that they show to us.

That’s why it is called the Eagle’s nest; due to this rock form:

And the views…

Finally we end up having dinner all together in a Pizza restaurant, well not the est pizza ever, but at least it was not spicy! After that Ahmar and Shaheryar drive the 3 hour back home, with the promise to see us tomorrow in Gilgit.

Next dau during the morning we visit the Baltit Fortress, it’s a bit hard to hike there because of the altitude and the heat, but we are rewarded with great views!

By the way… that’s a 20 years old beard:

On our way to Gilgit we stop in front of Rakaposhi (also called Mother of mist and we can see why) an 7788 m peak (the 27th of the world). We wait for almost one hour to see the glacier, but it prefers not to show all its magnificence.

Entering to Gilgit is a bit shocking. Some weeks ago there was presidential elections in the country, and today is the first working day of the Prime Minister, so we find ourselves in the middle of a shouting crowd on cars, motorbikes and walking. We are not sure if they are angry or happy, but we just go to the hotel.

We met again with Lukas and Samuel at the hotel, and we have a nice dinner with Ahmar and Shaheryar. However again the food is a bit spicy for us (even asking it not to be!).

We are a bit nervous about the road status the next day, we know that there are some bad parts before the Babusar pass … but we don’t know how many, how often, and how bad …

This morning Shaheryar shows up with a cameraman, we cannot believe it! He wants to interview us for the Pakistani television. We are too shy to appear in a country wide program!

As we are the slowest we leave the hotel the first ones, if it is not enough it’s raining. Just perfect! The first kilometers are fine, the road and the views are nice. We stop at some point to see the exact point where the Karakorum mountains, the Himalaya and the Indus river meet!

With our guide Sha

Our next stop is to appreciate the magnificence of the Nanga Parbat (8125 m).

Selfies with nice random people:

Then, the landslides start. The road is covered with sand (our biggest nightmare on the road!) so we decide that the best to do is: I walk on this portions and Tià rides alone. It seems a fair trade, BUT I’m walking on sand dressed like an astronaut with ALL the motorbike gear (leather jacket included), my ankle is still in pain, I’m under the sun, at high altitude (around 3000m) and we are above 40 Celsius degrees. I think I am walking more than riding. It’s not optimal for Tià neither … he has to drive through sand with all the baggage, and then, he waits for me wearing also all the gear plus the hot motorbike under the legs! It starts being really hard and slow to do a few kilometers.

That’s my face when the situation has totally surpassed my limits.

I don’t know how many times do I have to hop off the motorbike due to sand, but at this point we are not taking more pics or videos, the situation is too overwhelming. While I’m walking a man on a van stops to talk to me. He says that the worst has to come, there is a big sand slide in some kilometers, at this point I just want to cry. We reach THE sand-slide (all we’ve seen before was a joke in comparison) separately because I’m walking, and when I arrive I’m in shock. We have in front of us two men armed and dressed in a traditional way (with their faces covered) blocking the road. They don’t allow us to pass. One of them starts speaking, I’m so scared at this point that I don’t know which language is he using. We are just trying to continue, saying NO NO NO, WE GO! WE GO! We are alone, scared and we feel we are in danger. Then, we live the most bizarre moment in our lives… One of them smiles and while he is holding an AK-47 with one hand, with the other he is offering us ice-creams, ICE-CREAMS! Now the rational explanation, there are guys working on the road removing the sand, that’s why they were stopping the transit. It was just a coincidence that we were there alone! They have noticed how tired we are so they offer the best thing that they have! They are really nice with us, they offer us a shadow to wait, the ice-creams and water. That’s Pakistan, where someone with a gun offers you an ice-cream!

Here waiting with our new friends… Notice my not healthy colour.

We have to wait around 20 minutes, plus all the extra time that “implies” my hiking on the moutains … the others are worried waiting for us at the checkpoint. When we arrive it’s a party! Luckily they were having news from us, they were asking every single car that was passing. At this point I’m feeling really bad, my temperature’s body is too high so Eloy decides to give me a shower with a bottle of water … I end up being miss wet T-shirt in Pakistan.

After the check point we continue to the Babussar pass, now it’s supposed that the slides are gone and the road is good. Sha comes with us, and the first kilometers we are escortet by the police. This is not a dangerous area, is just that sometimes some kids through stones to the foreigners (from the valley they are doing it to Sha too). It’s not nice, but most of the times they don’t through the stone, and when they do it they fail, so it’s not a big deal… When we arrive to the Babusar pass I’m feeling better, it’s cold here! We are happy because we did it! the road was a bit challenging for us, and the Bonnie was struggling a bit on the last kilometers up, but here we are, taking selfies with a lots of people!

Now it’s time to go down, the first kilometers to Naran the road is fine, but then, we reach a new level of difficulty; River crossing level! We use the same sistem as on the slides, but this time I end up wet! I am testing the best way to cross the river before Tià does it with the Bonnie.

Some rivers seemed impossible, too strong, too deep, too long … We count 10 in total, but Tià crossed all of them without falling! That was quite impressive because he had done that never before! Now we know that he (and the Bonnie) are able!

When we reach Nagan I’m totally done, I feel really sick. I’m having a sun stroke and the only thing that I want is go to sleep, so I skip the dinner with all the others. Tomorrow it will be also a long riding day!