DISPATCHES

Howkins

Now that Greg Ritchie and I have miraculously managed to get the sat phone back in our hands, the next challenge is to catch up with the team, who left a full 36 hours before. They should be in Tashkurgan, China, by this evening.

We left at 7pm last night, with plans to drive continuously until we reached Sost, the last village on the Pakistan side of the border. Unfortunately, we were able to find only one driver who was willing to undertake this adventure. And at about 1am this morning, after six hours of driving, this poor driver was clearly falling asleep at the wheel. "Do you want to drive?" he asked me.

Drive? ME? A woman, wearing a shalwar kameez and a dopatta? On the Karakoram Highway? At night?

Absolutely.

I had slept less than three hours in the previous day and a half, and my gut was still tweaked, but I was way too excited to care.

So driving in the front, I reasoned, must be the safest place to be. Perfect.

Driving on the Karakoram Highway is an unforgettable experience. The "Highway" is actually a one-lane road that winds through the debris of a geological collision zone formed by four of the world's highest mountain ranges – the Himalaya, the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush, and the Pamir. There are precipitous drops of as much as 1,000 feet on one side of the road, and the constant threat of landslides on the other. The KKH is one of those human feats which, like Stonehenge or the Pyramids of Giza, must have been accomplished at the cost of many human lives.

Driving on the Karakoram Highway at night is even more unforgettable. Yawning caverns of darkness as you round each bend, sudden washouts riddled with two-foot-deep potholes that would take out an axle if you hit them too hard, trying to remember to drive on the left and switch gears with the left hand, shadows behind boulders in the moonlight that might hide troops of bandits. By 4:00am, after three hours of driving, my sleep-deprived brain was so rattled I started to see tunnels in the rock, and rats crossing the road. The driver was still asleep, so Greg took the wheel.

We rotated shifts with the driver for 24 continuous hours, and finally arrived in Sost late this afternoon. It was too late to go through the border post on the Pakistani side, but they have agreed to open up three hours early at 6am, which should allow us to join the team in Tashkurgan in time for the ride to Kashgar tomorrow afternoon.

In the meantime, we are going to spend the evening with Greg Mortenson, who is here checking on a project in the Charpusan Valley, and some of the Pakistanis who manage various aspects of the Central Asia Institute for him, including Apo Abdul Razaq. Apo ("grandfather") accompanied us on the journey from Rawalpindi to Sost, and kept us awake by feeding us juice and biscuits. Greg explained that Apo was the cook who worked for Charles Houston's 1953 K2 expedition, and has worked over the years with an amazing litany of climbers, including Doug Scott, Reinhold Messner, and Chris Bonington. Apo Razaq himself is even more incredible than the climbers he has worked with. With three wives and 23 children (the youngest is three years old), he is still working as a cook and a guide at an age that must be around 70 years.

Good friends, good karma. I'm sure I'll be savoring this day and these smiling faces when I need strength in the months to come.

— Heidi Howkins, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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