Passu Glacier and more

Attabad Lake

Today was meant to be an easy day or a spare day in case things had gone wrong en route due to road conditions.  I had allowed time to go to Baltit Fort but Faisal had other plans.

To ensure that we get to Sost early tomorrow, in order to secure our bus tickets to China, he recommended that we do all the sights between Karimabad and Sost today.  That’s instead of doing them along the way tomorrow morning.

Sure, there’s more mileage and travel time involved but in terms of risk management, I was more than convinced.

Actually, I hadn’t particularly planned for these sights, as we had already seen a glacier at Hopper.

Heading north, we went through a series of five tunnels totalling 7 km built by China after a landslide in 2010 submerged the road through the formation of Attabad Lake.  Prior to the tunnels, traffic to be shipped on barges for five years.

The lake was formed due to the obstruction of the natural flow of the Hunza River for five months.  At first, it had a beautiful turquoise colour but now, only one part remains picturesque.

The beauty hides the fact that 20 people were killed and 6000 displaced due to the landslide.

Over 16 years, the upper part of the lake has become silted up to become a grey mud flat.  ChatGPT suggests it’s more due to the delta effect (the river being slow through a broad area now rather than a faster gush through a narrow river).  However, falling water levels are also a secondary factor.

From here, we patronised the local cottage industry by visiting a carpet-weaving place.

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Passu Cones Glacier

After passing the Passu Cones, we took a side road.  The Corolla did a marvellous job off-road in place of the Prado, passing Borith Lake, then onwards and upwards, getting us to Passu Glacier around 1030.

Jo stayed near the car while the rest of us did an hour’s return walk to get a better view of the glacier.  It was more spectacular than yesterday’s experience at Hopper, in part due to slightly better weather.

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Hussaini Bridge

We parked near the Hussaini Suspension Bridge around midday and took a short walk down.  The 194 m pedestrian bridge was across the Hunza River to allow access to the remote village of Zarabod.

Bravely, we all took a walk about half-way across before turning back, taking care not to drop our phones through the wide gaps.  Faisal took us with a photo on his phone.

We took a simple lunch of deep-fried goodies before heading back around 1300 to Karimabad.

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Back in Karimabad

M and I got dropped off at the far end of town to take a walk along a water channel.

On the walk along the channel, I got to see shiny silvery water (due to mica present in the glacially ground rock suspension) that was in the town water on my previous visit in 2012.  Thankfully, the town water supply is now clear.

I also took time to find the Old Hunza Inn where I stayed last time.  It has certainly been spruced up.  The view from there was stunning, better than other places in town.  It looked up the Nagar, Mamubar and Hunza River valleys.

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Karimabad has become quite touristy and it no longer feels like the secret place that I loved back in 2012.  It is still an awesome place and I still love it very much.  I just have to share it with many other people.  “Many” is a relative term as not many foreigners come to Pakistan.

Eagle’s Nest again

Back in the room, Kim was grumpy, saying that I hadn’t consulted him about my plans for the channel walk.  This had been discussed but because he felt left out in the decision-making, he opted to be dropped off close to Baltit Fort instead.

I did a quick turnaround and asked Faisal to take M and I back to Eagle’s Nest of Duirka Hill again.  The weather had improved significantly and I could see some of the peaks that were obscured by cloud yesterday, while on the channel walk.

Despite the excellent weather, we were just about the only people at Eagle’s Nest to enjoy the excellent view that we now had of the Spantik range.

The situation changed suddenly as military with big guns turned up.  Then came a group of Americans.  We learnt later that amongst them was the chargé d’affaires of the embassy and some of the entourage are only visiting Pakistan for 3 days.

The elusive Lady Finger peak also showed up a little better today.  After a long wait I managed to see it with only a wisp of cloud shrouding it.

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Back in town, we returned to Safinah’s Café for dinner.  We tried to fesenjan chicken.  It wasn’t like the Persian pomegranate stew but was supposed to be in an apricot sauce.  It looked like curry to me and had a sweetish tinge, so it may have blended apricot in it.  Anyway, it was yummy.