Wherever you go in Pakistan you can have delicious food from street stalls. One of my favorite was fried liver with tomatoes and chillies close to the old city in Peshawar. The best thing ever is to wash it down with a cold and refreshing mango or strawberry shake… Continue reading
An old man selling his vegetable at the market in Peshawar. The Old City here is another place to get totally lost in. There are many little corners, small mosques and many fruit juices to discover. Just be aware of the dangers, read the occasional bomb going off around the city. Nevertheless, Peshawar is an amazing place and is basically the only place in Pakistan where you can observe the tribal areas without actually going into them. Continue reading
When we arrived back in Gilgit Joe, Jakko, a Finnish traveller and I decided to cross over to Chitral and onwards to the Kalash Valley to visit the spring festival and sample some of the fiery local wine (that last point might have been the main reason, Pakistan being mainly a dry country). Unluckily for us, the snow this year had arrived late and the pass across was still closed for vehicles. This meant that we had to cross on foot. None of us was planning on doing the walk twice, so we had to take all our gear with us Continue reading
The Hunza Inn in Karimabad in the Hunza Valley is one of those places where you can spend weeks upon weeks. In the evenings there are delicious communal dinners and during the day there are numerous short walks for the more active. Joe and I decided to visit a little village on the other side of the valley. It is quite a hard walk, first down into the bottom of the valley, then we followed the KKH for a bit and then we went across a river and up on the other side. We had planned to even go further up into the mountains, but bad weather ‘forced’ us to accept the offer of a few cups of chai and some freshly baked bread from a kind soul. Continue reading
Polo is an even more revered sport in the Northern Area than Cricket. The match I got to watch was between the NA Scouts (military) and the police. As a spectator you have to be prepared to quickly jump out of the way when the players and their horses follow the ball that somehow landed just an inch from your feet. Kids daringly run across the field to replace a broken battons and during the break men get onto the field to dance for the whole audience. Continue reading
The building of the KKH started in the 60s as a joint venture between Pakistan and China to connect both countries by land. All in all around 500 people died on the Pakistani side while the Chinese refused to make the death toll on their side public. Nowadays the Chinese are rebuilding almost the whole highway to make it safer and easier to travel on. Still, there are many landslides that can make travelling the KKH a bit tricky. A 17 hour bus ride might well turn out to take 28 hours. Continue reading
Joe, another traveller I had met in Lahore, and I decided to check out Skardu. During high season this little sleepy town gets to see a lot of serious trekkers and mountaineers on their way to K2, arguably the toughest mountain on our planet. Continue reading