A RICKETY, makeshift box is suspended on a wire and pulled on a rope barely thicker than a piece of string, and that is all that separates us from certain death. The grim reaper flows beneath in the form of an icy torrent of grey meltwater that rushes onwards, swift and violent, to pummel the shattered remains of a metal-framed road bridge. It’s not hard to imagine what that elemental force would do to our precarious perch – the bridge’s hastily improvised replacement – and its contents. But perversely, at the end of this trek through the mind-bending Karakoram mountains, this nominally horrific, hand-pulled crossing of the Braldu river is the most relaxed I’ve felt in weeks. It’s actually a relief.
COLD COMFORT
Some journeys take you out of your comfort zone, others require a new mindset. The arid heights of Gilgit-Baltistan, housing the world’s greatest concentration of high mountains, is such a place. ‘New normal’ is a buzz phrase today, but a journey in the Karakoram is a re-evaluation of the very notion of normality. The flight from Islamabad, marginally above the ‘roof of the world’ and down into the Balti capital, Skardu, is one example, a breathless fly-past of K2 and Nanga Parbat, before a descent like a Himalayan ridge traverse on an Airbus.
This was my first trek since Covid, in a place
