Himalaya (2004) Read online

  ‘Right! Start now!’

  It doesn’t seem to matter that no-one really knows what they’re doing. It all looks absurdly colourful and manically vibrant, like the opening scene of a musical. The bulls are led forward, the veteran guard of honour present whatever arms they can lay their hands on, and my two glorious palominos, who seem to be quietly giggling to each other throughout, set off at a canter that turns into an unstoppable gallop.

  Cries of ‘That’s far enough!’ fade into the distance as we hurtle through a set of grand gates, and up garden paths, eventually pulling to a halt at the front of a large white mansion with wide, presidential steps leading up to a towering columned portico.

  I’m told it’s modelled on the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, though it reminds me more of a plantation house in Louisiana.

  Now that he’s orchestrated the grand welcome the Prince is off his charger and visibly relaxed. He organizes drinks for us. Retainers (probably not the right word, but they behave exactly like retainers) carry trays of Pepsi Cola out into the garden. I suggest to him that a place of this size must be an awful burden to keep up.

  ‘It is only one,’ Prince Malik replies breezily, ‘I have four others.’

  I ask him about the episode with the bulls earlier.

  ‘Was anyone hurt?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, rather dismissively, as if it happened all the time. ‘One old fellow had his arm broken. I’ve sent him to the hospital.’

  The Prince calls forward one of the faithful fifteen who had mounted the guard of honour for my arrival.

  ‘Here is a chap you must meet, Michael.’

  A slightly stooped, handsome old man with lively eyes and a fine white beard steps out of the line.

  ‘He fought in the First World War, you know. He’s 104. He was a very big man.’

  He turns a little towards me, lowering his voice.

  ‘Much smaller now of course.’

  The Prince seems to have a thing about height. He talks proudly of his great-grandfather, of whom he has a photograph taken at George V’s coronation.

  ‘He was a big man. Seven foot two.’

  He has ordered lunch to be prepared for us. As we go inside he chides Vanessa about the problems we have had getting permission to come here.

  ‘Always ask the army. It’s the only discipline there is in this country. Did you not get my email?’

  Vanessa shakes her head.

  ‘Then your computer is wrong. Burn it.’

  There seems to be almost too much space inside the house. Even without seeing any of the 28 bedrooms, I feel it in the dining room, with its high empty walls and giant table on which the eight places set out for us barely make an impression.

  ‘D’you eat here even when you’re on your own?’ I ask the Prince.

  ‘My father told me never to dine alone,’ he replies briskly. ‘If I have no-one to dine with, I go outside and find someone.’

  At one end of the gloomy room, tall green electric fans are clustered together, heads bowed like dormant sunflowers. At the other, there is a marble mantelpiece on which is framed a front page of The Times with a photo of Prince Malik tent-pegging in Hyde Park.

  ‘I was the champion tent-pegger in Pakistan. It is a very difficult thing to do you know.’

  With some relish he describes the origins of the sport.

  ‘When attacking a camp the first wave of horsemen would go in early in the morning and uproot the tent by its pegs, revealing the dazed occupants doing…’ he pauses, ‘whatever they might be doing. Then the next wave of slightly less skilful troops comes in and cuts off their heads.’

  At this he rocks with laughter. A man in a turban, with all the aplomb of a maitre de vin, tops up my glass of Pepsi-Cola from a plastic bottle.

  As the food is brought round Prince Malik enlarges on his life and reveals a keenly felt regret for the passing of the old ways. He is a countryman, not at all happy in the city. He loves country sports and rides at least twice a day for several hours.

  ‘I am the last of the dinosaurs, who live like this. Who organize entertainments for the people. The new generation are only interested in becoming technocrats.’

  More food issues forth from the Stygian gloom of the kitchen, ending up with a particularly delicious concoction of almond, egg and honey.

  ‘The honey is off my land. It is very good. Have some more.’ He pushes a bottle of Cotes du Rhone towards me. It’s full of honey, not wine.

  In the afternoon, despite the great heat, he insists that we visit the fort in Fatehjang. This is where the local jerga, or council of elders, meets. Recently they dealt with a vendetta that had gone on so long between two families that 13 had been killed on both sides. At the jerga they agreed that there would be no more killings, and, having forsworn further violence on the Holy Koran, the feud was declared to be at an end, with none of the murderers facing trial. Prince Malik shrugs.

  ‘That is the way it works in the country.’

  He insists that, if we are really interested in the rural life, we must come along as his guests to a bull-race in nearby Taxila tomorrow. Of course we can’t say no. He wouldn’t let us.

  Day Five : Taxila

  Taxila, at the axis of routes connecting Central Asia with Persia and the south, is one of the oldest continuously populated cities on earth. A university was thriving here 2500 years ago and remains of Buddhist temples, monasteries and stupas indicate its importance long before Islam or Christianity were born.

  Following a narrow road through olive groves and fields of peanuts, we pull up a low hill until we reach an encampment where the animals are being unloaded from the back of trucks. Stalls selling food and soft drinks have been erected.

  To get to the course means negotiating various ridges and ditches, behind, and sometimes alongside, swaying pairs of bulls, led out by owners and supporters to a relentless squealing of pipes and thumping of drums, each group trying to make more noise than their rivals.

  There’s such a squeeze that it’s impossible to avoid bull contact. To my relief, they’re smaller than the bulls I had a close encounter with in Pamplona. Of a breed called Dhanni, they have short legs, a distinctive fatty crest curling out from their shoulders and are mostly white with splodgy black markings that look as if someone has thrown a pot of paint at them. Today, each one is turned out in their party best, their ferocity compromised by brightly coloured medallions and favours, ribbons and rosettes, gaudy horn-dressings and fluffy pom-poms. One wretched beast, with a tasselled, silver-trimmed, see-through muslin coat thrown over him, looks as if he’s just stampeded through a lingerie department.

  Ahead of the melee I can see the course, a wide stretch of open field, 600 yards long, marked by red flags on tall poles. Beside it and about halfway down the course a truck and trailer have been decked out with red chairs protected by a huge and ornate sun awning. Beneath it sits the unmistakable figure of the Prince.

  He’s in ebullient mood, which could be something to do with the presence of two tall, slim, European girls among his guests. He’s already been out riding with them this morning.

  With the racing about to begin, we ask if we can film up at the start, where a big crowd is milling around.

  The Prince looks doubtful for a moment then barks an order and a man rushes over.

  ‘He will go with you. He has a gun and speaks English.’

  The bulls race in pairs, yoked together with heavy wooden frames called joots, from which the reins run back to a rider, who stands, as best he can, on a small board with a metal base, little more than a glorified tin-lid.

  While dozens of people grapple to get the joot onto the two sets of shoulders, the bulls are kicking up the dust as they duck and weave and back up in a desperate attempt to avoid being involved in the racing in any way. Once harnessed, the animals are dragged unceremoniously to the starting line. Outriders heave them into position while the jockey, nervously clutching a flag on a stick, readies himself to spring on
to the board the moment the bulls are released. This is where the race is won or lost. The bulls’ desire to get away must be timed exactly with the attachment of the rider to his board. With luck the jockey retains his balance, and the bulls race off with the outriders running alongside to keep them in a straight line, before letting go, slapping the bulls’ hides with a valedictory shout, and leaving the crouched figure to scud across the bumpy, uneven surface like a terrestrial water-skier, hanging on for dear life.

  As if this isn’t perilous enough, some enthusiastic teams throw firecrackers to ‘panic’ their bull into even greater speeds.

  One team loses control at the start and the bulls make a 90-degree turn and plunge headfirst into the crowd. Two more hurtle off towards a flagpole that Basil has chosen as a photo-position, taking out the flag and almost Basil as well as they race off the course to the freedom of the fresh-cut wheat fields beyond.

  Prince Malik says this only confirms that bulls aren’t stupid. They know that their best interest lies in getting rid of their handlers as soon as possible, by any means possible. As he’s explaining this a pair that seemed to be going well take an inexplicable left turn and head straight towards us. Nigel and Pete, filming with their backs to the course, are the last to notice. Grabbing the camera and tripod they dive for cover as Prince Malik roars helpfully.

  ‘Under the truck! Always under the truck!’

  At the end of the day, as the racing is drawing to a close and the heat haze fades to reveal the low, reassuring contours of the Margalla Hills to the north, we’re treated to a meal at a nearby village. It’s laid out in suitably princely style, with dishes of tikkas and masalas in silver salvers on long tables and local specialities of partridge and quail.

  ‘Now, quail racing,’ the Prince enthuses, ‘that is where the big money goes. You know, small fortunes are won or lost on quail races.’

  As ever, I’m not entirely sure where fact and fiction merge in Prince Malik’s stories, but before we can question him further, he shakes hands and apologizes that he must return to the course for the prize-giving.

  ‘And those quails, Michael. They are not from a farm. They are shot in the forest.’

  A countryman to the last.

  Day Seven : Peshawar to the Kalash Valleys

  It’s a few minutes after five and just getting light as our convoy negotiates the suburbs of Peshawar. By the end of today, all being well, we should be off the plain and experiencing our first taste of big mountain scenery in the heart of the Hindu Kush range.

  In the soft morning light pony and traps loaded with produce head for the city markets, boys cross a river on a gently undulating wooden bridge, a thin strip of black smoke drifts from a brick kiln, and in the fields figures are already at work bringing in the harvest.

  We rumble across the wide and powerful waters of the River Kabul, swelled with snowmelt and curling back against the stanchions of a long steel bridge. It’s joined in turn by the River Swat, creating a green and fertile plain, with fields of sugar cane and tobacco interspersed with orchards of plums, apricots and pears.

  We pull off the road for something to eat at a hotel of very few stars but quite a lot of what the guides call charm. Along a wide verandah, tables with wonky legs are set out on a mud floor. Instead of chairs there are the ubiquitous charpoys, bedsteads with rope bases that are quite uncomfortable to sit on, but as soon as you pull your legs up and stretch out, make absolute sense.

  Bleary staff appear from dark rooms and I realize that, although we’ve been on the road for more than two hours, it’s still only half-past seven.

  After a breakfast of bananas, hard-boiled eggs, green tea, fresh chapattis and malaria tablets I’m back in the jeep and climbing out of the plain and up to the Malakand Pass.

  Here, on the endemically war-like North-West Frontier, almost any pass or prominence bears a fortification of some kind, ranging from fully-fledged fortresses to barricaded look-out points they call picquets or pickets. The best known of these is still called Churchill’s Picket, where the great man, then a reporter for the Daily Telegraph, was holed up in 1897. A force of 1000 British and Sikh soldiers was defying an army of 10,000 Pathans, led by one Hajji Shaib Balee, whom the British press quickly, if predictably, christened the Mad Mullah. Young Winston sent back a blood-curdling account of the dangers they faced. ‘Death by inches and hideous mutilation are the invariable measure of all who fall in battle into the hands of the Pathan tribesmen.’

  I can hear him saying it.

  The sun is well up now, but the roads badly kept and progress increasingly slow. My feeling of good fortune in being here at all is tempered by constant bumping and jarring and an enveloping cloud of dust and exhaust fumes from the vehicle in front.

  Maqsood Ul-Mulk, who has organized our journey today, is a comfortably built man in his early forties with an amused air of quiet contentment, which may well come from being a member of the family who’ve ruled the Chitral Valley for several generations. He points across at the far bank of the River Panjkora, which runs beside us at a fast, muddy grey lick. The road is better over there, because it used to be a big poppy growing area. The central government, under a new policy headlined Poppy-Free Pakistan, offered new roads and houses if the locals agreed to change from opium to less controversial crops. They accepted the offer.

  ‘What do they grow now?’ I ask.

  Maqsood gives the hint of a smile.

  ‘Onions.’

  A bad road becomes atrocious as we wind up to the 10,000-foot Lowari Pass. Closed by snow for six months of the year, this lifeline to the Chitral Valley has only just reopened and the soft-top track has wilted badly under the weight of over-loaded trucks struggling to restock the valley after the long winter.

  The rapidly decomposing track climbs tortuously up above the snow line, slicing through sheer ice walls at the end of dirty brown glaciers, negotiating fast flowing streams of melt-water that tumble across the road before being flung into waterfalls below. The sun is blotted out by drifting grey clouds and hailstones scatter across the windscreen. With much blasting of horns and squeezing past trucks stalled on perilous precipices, we eventually obtain the top of the pass, marked by a small stone hut and a low wall of plastic-wrapped soft drinks.

  Our drivers can’t celebrate yet, for the road on the other side is even worse, a sheer plunge, which we ease down with the help of 47 sweaty-palmed hairpin bends. Tree trunks stripped bare by avalanche dot the route like tombstones.

  Thirteen and a half hours after leaving Peshawar, we are down into the valley and gliding onto tarmacked road again.

  By now it’s dark and though it’s frustratingly hard to see what’s out there, I have a sense of being somewhere special. The stars are white as pearls and homes are lit by single lamps and the flicker of wood-fires.

  A further three hours later one of the most spectacularly beautiful and consistently uncomfortable journeys I can remember draws to an end as we reach our home for the night, a plain and simple guesthouse above the tumbling waters of a young mountain river. And I was right. It is somewhere special. There are women without veils and wine to drink and villagers with clear blue eyes. This is a very unusual part of Pakistan.

  Day Eight : The Kalash Valleys

  All night long the river keeps up a light roar, which, in my semi-sleep, becomes transmogrified into the rumble of an ancient air-conditioner. Finally woken by sunlight as hard and bright as Excalibur, I take in the simple tongue and groove walls, flimsy curtains and bare floor of the cabin I’m sharing with Basil, and conclude that this is not air-con territory. Through the window I have my first glimpse of a narrow twisting valley and an extended village of stone-walled houses squeezed along it.

  The village of Rumbur takes its name from the river that runs through it, one of a number of steep and vigorous torrents cutting down through the mountains that separate the Chitral Valley from Afghanistan, chiselling out well-concealed canyons that have for centuries been the refuge
of a tribe quite distinct from the rest of Pakistan. They have their own language, dress, customs and religion and because they are non-Muslim they have been historically known as Kafirs (Infidels), and this tight little land of theirs as Kafiristan.

  Today they are better known as the Kalash (‘black’) after the colour of their clothes, despite the incidence of light skin, fair hair and blue eyes, which some say marks them out as descendants of Alexander the Great’s soldiers.

  Pale faces look curiously at us over the dry-stone wall that divides our compound from the lane outside. The fact that some of them are women is a great contrast with the rest of the North-West Frontier, where the rule of purdah is so strictly observed that no woman will look you in the face in public.

  The Kalash ladies who peer so frankly at us, often dissolving into giggles at what they see, wear wide black dresses, tied with woollen scarves with multicoloured threads attached and strips of coloured ribbon on hems and cuffs. Their hair, which they never cut, is braided or plaited tight against the scalp and a long headdress, decorated with beads and cowrie shells, runs down from their crown to below their waist.

  Saifullah Khan, a man of around 40 with grey threads in his thick dark hair and a face broad and olive-skinned as a Spanish farmer, is proprietor of the guesthouse and spokesman for the community. He’s the only one of the Kalash to have received an education outside the village and after a breakfast of walnut bread he takes us on a walk around, pointing out this and that and constantly hitching up the pants of a grubby brown shalwar-kameez as he does so.

  We’re at 6500 feet (1980 m) and as the Kalash live in a largely pre-industrial state, with almost no modern gadgetry of any kind, the air is clear and fresh. Two small hydroelectric generators provide what electricity is needed; otherwise, life is entirely based around agriculture. The women till the fields in traditional costume while the men look after the livestock. The houses, stout and stone-walled, are tiered up on top of each other to save space, with one person’s roof another’s front porch. They have neither gabled roofs nor chimneys and the smoke from the open fires has to find its way out of a hole in the ceiling.