Crossing the Pakistani/ Chinese Border

So here's the latest...from Hunza (in Pakistan guys, keep up!) we travelled north towards the Chinese border. Stopped of in a place a bit smaller than a village, called Passu. It has some of the most spectacular mountain scenery imaginable. We did a few treks around there with some other backpackers we'd met up with. We did a trek, which involved crossing a couple of suspension bridges. It took a good 15 minutes to get across them. They were a rather unsettling, very loose mix of wire & wooden planks. At some points you were over 20 metres above a wide, fast flowing river, leaping from one broken wooden plank to the next, requiring the agility of a mountain goat. More than a little scary, the sort of moment you wouldn't want your mother to tune in & see where you were!

The second trek we did was along the side of a gigantic glacier (stretching for tens of kilometers). It was a beautiful hike, but to be honest it was so long ago now that I struggle to remember anything about it...besides in-depth conversations with our trekking buddies about whether it's morally right to eat meat!

We had a bit of fun trying to figure out when to cross the border into china. All the locals were telling us that the border town was closed as General Musharraf, the unelected 'president' of Pakistan , was visiting. But because of tight security (this guy's had a few attempted assassinations) no one knew exactly what day he was arriving. We waited a day or so before getting bored with it all and ended up just heading to the border. Despite it being a high security zone, we didn't have any probs getting across and into china.

Customs

Well, it was almost problem free.customs consisted of a rickety table in the bus station. We each had to open our bags & the guards had a look. I was one of the first and the 6 or so officials really pulled my bag to pieces, in front of a crowd of about 10 male passengers/onlookers. They put their hands all over all of my clothes and things & I'm convinced they were only doing it because they wanted to see what a western girl had in her bag (i.e. looking for underwear). I've never had my bag so thoroughly searched. I shouldn't have raised my voice at them quite so much though because it only encouraged them to search further. I was asking why they didn't have a woman to search females' bags and why it couldn't be done in private. I quite literally died of embarrassment when they pulled out a tampon and examined it (FYI: women in Asia don't use tampons). I had to hold onto my hand to stop myself from thumping them. I kept telling myself that I was only experiencing a fraction of the injustice and humiliation that Pakistani women have to deal with everyday. Funnily enough only one guy looked in each of the male's bags and barely even bothered to open their backpacks, let alone pull the entire contents out. It was a shame that the trip in Pakistan had to end like that because up until that point we'd only had positive experiences.

To get into china we had to go to the highest point I'd ever been at; across the Kunjerab pass, which is 4,700m (15,420 feet). The top of the pass was covered in snow.and yaks. It was strange how drastically the faces changed as we crossed the border; from typical Pakistani faces instantly to Han Chinese. We waved goodbye to the incredible hospitality we received in the 6 weeks we were in Pakistan and were greeted by officials who couldn't speak a word of English. Welcome to china.

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