Pakistan🇵🇰Flat tyre at 5.000m high

After the wedding, back in the main valley, I asked if somebody could drive me up to the Chinese border, the highest border crossing of the world at almost 5.000m. Exactly the place where you don’t want a flat tyre, for sure not when the border is closed to Covid. The last km we walked up in the hope somebody at the border had gears to fix the flat tyre, but in vain. In the end he called a friend to bring some gear which arrived after 3 hours waiting.
The next three days were themed ‘basecamp’. Hiked up to Rakaposhi (a 7.788m high monster) basecamp and the next day even the basecamp of Nanga Parbat, the 9th highest mountain of the world, belonging to the 14 8.000’ers. How cool it was to meet a famous Pakistani mountaineer who had already climbed 12 of them and was only waiting for China to open its borders to finish his challenge.

Back at the road, I had to hitchhike 3 hours back. Where hitchhiking in Pakistan is already childishly easy, this time I didn’t even have to put my hand up. Talking a bit with the police guy at a checkpoint, I found myself soon drinking a cup of tea while the police guy stopped all the cars to see if they had a seat free and were going to my destination. At the same time he also stopped transport in the other direction for his own benefit. He needed a bed to be transported. After half an hour both goals were met. His bed was tied on top of a bus, and I boarded a Jeep.

More challenging was taking the plane the next day back to Islamabad. This flight is notorious for being canceled 30% of the times as it doesn’t have electronical instruments and can only fly at sight. But this day the challenge was even bigger than that. Arriving at the airport, we were not allowed into the airport as they didn’t know where the airplane was. I learned they have only three of these planes covering these domestic routes (in the 5th most populous country of the world) and it probably was currently still servicing another route first. After 4 hours waiting outside the airport, we were finally let in, as the plane was located in Islamabad and would only take 1 hour to reach our airport. And it did and another half an hour later we were flying through the Himalaya mountain ranges towards the capital. And from there on to Lahore, which deserves its own chapter.

As I had paid €2 extra for “Business Class” (to secure a window seat) I got to know a highly ranked governor. He must have been high ranked as he was the only one allowed in the airport while we plebs had to wait outside. Apart from this little proudness of thinking to be of higher value, it turned out to be a real nice man and he offered me a ride from Islamabad airport to the bus station (a good half an hour drive). To Lahore, a city which deserves its own chapter.

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