The Lowari Pass

We said a heart-felt goodbye to the family (I cried) and went back to Peshawar & then straight up to Dir. We then crossed the Lowari Pass, which is a road going over a mountain. The scenery is absolutely indescribable. Hopefully my photos will describe it better than I can (although, you'll have to wait until I'm home to see those, as I'm not developing them here). The jeep we were in climbed and climbed and climbed a dirt track road until we were up in the mountains with all the slow, traversing narrow paths cut through glaciers. At points there was 6 metres of snow piled up on either side of the jeep. The driver would stick his hand out of the window, grab some snow & munch on it for a while. The snow walls had collapsed in on themselves at one section of the road. We all piled out of the jeep and crunched through the snow to watch the snow plough do his thing & clear the track to blaring Pakistani pop music, blasting from the plough! We spent the 2.5 hour wait throwing snowballs, making mini-snowmen for the plough to crush & cursing the fact that we didn't have a sledge, or big plastic bag.

Worry not about Terrorists, worry about the Tarmac

We arrived in Chitral later on that night. We couldn't help the fact that we were travelling at night because of that delay, but it's not something I enjoy. It's a very stressful experience, when it's a one car track and a huge truck is screaming towards you, horns blaring, lights flashing & there's nowhere for the jeep to go except down, down, down...from the jeep window, all you can see by the moonlight is a vertical drop about 100 metres down into a manic river. Touch wood, we've always come out alive (as far as I'm aware), but it's a bit of a scary one. Landslides are another thing I've grown to fear. When there's as much rock and slate around as there is in this part of the world & you just see piles of it by the side of the road, stretching all the way up the mountainside the driver looks more than a bit stressed when he's driving passed, it tends to put you a bit on edge.

A Poor Attempt at Describing the Scenery

But that's not exactly describing the beautiful scenery though, is it?! A lot of you were telling me about Michael Palin's Himalaya programme before I left. Well, if you've seen the ones on Pakistan , especially the road from Peshawar to the Kalasha valleys, then over the Shandoor Pass well, have a look at it again if you can. Then imagine that you're actually there. Standing amongst those gigantic mountains (some over 6,000 metres), looking down on snow covered polo grounds & lakes (and you're at 3,600m above sea level). Really, I can't describe the scenery, but I'm getting a lump in my throat thinking of it. I didn't know that there was such beauty on this planet.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z GENERAL

Disclaimer
These articles have not been written by an attorney, they are not intended as legal advice and not meant to be relied upon. The articles are written by many different authors and do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of GlobalGophers. Global Gophers is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.