Over the top of the world

Expect the unexpected on the Karakoram Highway.

Thus forewarned, we set out from Kashgar—called Kashi by the Chinese—already half a day late due to “problems” up the road. But we are undaunted, lured by the spell of the Silk Road—and its modern incarnation, the Karakoram Highway. Still, it is not easy to leave this ancient oasis of mosques and veils set amid the sands—and oilfields—of China’s Far West. It is early in the season, though, and jeeps with a red ”Border Pass” are rare. We are independent travelers and we have learned to go with the flow.

We pass through village fields, sheep and goats grazing even as the tumbling Ghez River begins to etch a stark canyon. Murky waters twist below as we climb, dark walls closing in on us, a hint of the untamed terrain ahead. Our journey will take us over the top of the world, a land of forbidding peaks and remote plateaus, virtually impenetrable until the mid-eighties. Linking western China and northern Pakistan, the 750 mile—1300 kilometer—KKH was blasted out of the Pamir and Karakoram mountain ranges that rise into the great Himalayas, a mammoth effort that took twenty years and thousands of lives.

So now, communications and trade are no longer restricted to camel caravans. Yet the two-humped Bactrians are everywhere, fueling up among the rocks, disdainful of those limited to fair weather travel. It is May 1, the first day the highway is opened to us weak mortals and our four-wheel drive vehicles. Yet the way does seem more truly suited to the camels, yaks and horses that accompany our route over the steppes of Central Asia.

A sharp wind picks up, snowflakes pelting our jeep. We gasp as the river is transformed into a shimmering field of ice; beyond it, rolling sand dunes, the glacier-rounded Pamirs rising forever around us, losing themselves in fluffy white. Sweeping almost to the lower peaks is a vast, treeless plateau with “grass so lush,” wrote Marco Polo, “that a lean beast will fatten in ten days.” Today, with spring only hinting, we see yaks picking at bits of new green while geese fly in formation and ducks bob amid shards of ice. But mostly, we see the land—and sense the forces that shaped it.

We are in a world beyond time: The yurts and caravans of tribespeople, some still nomadic, Chinese only by an accident of birth. The proud horsemen who barely give way for our jeep. The camels who bellow their warnings as we edge closer with our cameras. The Tajik family whose adobe compound we “visit,” smiling and nodding, staring curiously—but warmly—at each other. The menfolk, at least. The shy, graceful women, scarves tied over hats in the local fashion, are busy tending children and sheep and the cooking fires that send smoke swirling into the dusk-softened sky.

We reach Tashkurgan around eight, checking into the Pamir Hotel, with its beanbag pillows and cold water showers. Woozy from the altitude, we stagger up the dusty road…shopfronts, school, cinema, stretching to the highway like a rough Western town, a border town patrolled by Chinese soldiers. We greet a pair of local Hajis en route to Mecca, as well as two Pakistani traders heading home from Beijing, who seize upon us, anxious for some word about the pass. They advise us off the hotel restaurant—closed, in any case—directing us to a dive across the street where we drink noodle soup and Xinjiang pilju, the region’s potent beer. Upon our return, our frigid green room takes on a warm glow.

Customs procedures take place outside town next morning. We pass a checkpoint manned by an earnest young guard, then our driver steps on the gas. Yesterday so relaxed, Fang is worried about the weather and in no mood to linger. Even at the Mintaka Valley, once a major Silk Road artery and now a route to Afghanistan.

We push on, to Pirali, the former customs’ post deserted now, even the window glass taken. Fang steers tensely through the desolate yet sublime moonscape, starkly white and black, bitter cold. He honks impatiently at the final checkpoint, the final showing of the red flag, waving stiffly in the icy wind. Yanked from their cozy post, three babyfaced guards appear, easygoing, no sense that we are but a few miles from the border. A cursory passport check, some friendly photos, then onward, up the mountain.

Snowdrifts cover the road as we reach the broad bowl of the summit—the Khunjerab Pass. Grimly, Fang plows through the slush, refusing our request to photograph a sign bidding farewell China, hello Pakistan. We have arrived, but our applause is cut short as the road disappears in the snow and we are forced onto a rutted track, twisting down and around the side of the cliff. With a final sharp turn, we regain the road, as the Pamirs become the Karakoram: jagged walls of granite surrounding us, a deep gorge carved over eons by the rushing Khunjerab River. Before long, we are greeted warmly at Dih, the Pakistani security post, where passports are examined but not stamped.

Kara koram means “black crumbling rock.” It is everywhere, and now, across our path—a piece of frozen mountain, broken off. A bulldozer arrives to clear the slush, but the overhanging rock is still dripping, still cracking. We sense the mountain is alive, an awesome force that refuses to be tamed.

Or ignored…Fang squeals to a halt. An avalanche has blocked traffic on both sides. Glancing up the great cliff, workers furiously shovel rocks into the gorge, backing off as more come showering down. Eyes cast upward, my intrepid husband dashes across the no-man’s land to investigate. The verdict: an indeterminate delay. But not for Fang—who is now backing down the road, our belongings in a pile. We are stranded!

Expect the unexpected…