Free Where the Indus is Young by Dervla Murphy Page B

of white foam – relieves the grey-brown of crags and sheer precipices and steep slopes. Many of these slopes are strewn with sharp, massive hunks of rock, often the size of a cathedral yet seeming mere boulders. Soon the river begins to have a hypnotic effect and, appalled as one is by the sight, one peers constantly down at thatbeautifully untouchable green serpent which is usually so far below it looks no more than a stream. We passed two of those steel rope ‘bridges’ across which the locals propel themselves in small wooden boxes and glimpsed one man so occupied. Rather him than me …
    Naturally most of this area is uninhabited. But at rare intervals, where the gradient permits terracing, or a ledge of rock has allowed some soil to defy erosion, clusters of rectangular stone hovels stand amidst apricot, mulberry, plane and poplar trees. In summer these oases must look very lovely. Now, observed in the fearful sterility of mid-winter, they simply seem improbable. One wonders why and how people ever came to settle in such a violently inhospitable region, where climate and terrain are equally opposed to human survival.
    This jeep-track was built less than ten years ago and based on an ancient footpath. At present the Pakistani army are trying to convert it into a conventional motor-road that will take buses, trucks and ‘auto muboils’, but tough as is the Chinese task theirs is incomparably tougher. One cannot see them ever succeeding, unless their methods and morale are radically changed. Yet Mr Bhutto expects them to have completed the job by the beginning of 1977. One vignette I shall never forget. A colossal boulder had been blasted to the edge of the track and was being imperceptibly shifted by a quartet of elderly privates. All four were sitting on the ground – two facing the boulder, endeavouring to push it over the edge with their bare feet while leaning against their mates’ backs. How not to build roads in a hurry … This was a sight to gladden any motor-hater ’s heart.
    We met only one jeep all day – near here, where the track was slippy with snow. When it backed to let us pass my stomach felt sick for I swear at one point its outside wheels were hardly four inches from the edge: and I wondered how often that day our own had been similarly placed. Inevitably on such a track drivers get into the habit of regarding four inches as an ample safety margin, despite the crumbly nature of many of these cliffs. Otherwise the traffic consisted entirely of large herds of goats being driven, I surmised, to some less barren area, for here not even an Asian goat could last withoutsupplementary feeding. Their shepherds were among the wildest-looking men I have ever seen, wearing collections of patches rather than garments, and skull-caps decorated with pieces of coloured glass, and leather strips wound around their feet and halfway up their calves. Many looked very like Dolpo Tibetans or Ladakis – not surprisingly, since Baltistan is also known as Little Tibet. Yesterday we saw similar types, driving towards Gilgit a large herd of crossbred cattle; each animal wore a coat of sacking despite its yak-like wool, which indicated that they had descended from a great height, sleeping out en route.
    When we arrived here at 4.30 it was already dusk because of low, thick cloud and flurrying snow. At this point the Gorge widens for a few miles and the track leaves the river to cross a wilderness of grey, boulder-strewn sand, riven by narrow minor gorges. Brand-new wooden bridges, barely wide enough for a jeep, span these deep cracks which allow swift torrents to roar down to the Indus, their noise amplified by echoes from their own rock-walls.
    Mohammad stopped outside a ‘hotel’ ingeniously built on to a huge outcrop of rock by the roadside. The boulders that were already in situ are used as seats, and as supports for the mud fireplace, and as a table on which the cook prepares chapattis. As the Connemara-type stone