On a mountain of the moon
13 February 2015
Out in the backwoods of Balochistan, on the old trade route connecting the Balochistan plateau with what was once called Siestan (in Iran), lies the dusty little town of Nok Kundi. The place became famous after the second decade of the 20th century when the government of India laid their ‘Lonely Line’ from Quetta to Zahedan – railway track of over seven hundred kilometres that passes through one of the most desolate areas of the country.
Over a century later, Nok Kundi is still hardly a destination; it is just a way station one passes through. And if on a clear day one pauses in the passing to glance around, one cannot miss the purple outline of a range on the distant northern horizon. This is the Koh e Sultan whose highest peak crests at 2332 metres (7650 feet) above the sea. The mountain commemorates a mythical character named Sultan e Pir Kaiser also known as Pir Sultan regarding whom no fabulous tales are told. And yet he is venerated as saint.
Labels: Balochistan, Travelogue
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Punjab, Afghanistan and Turkistan
19 May 2013
There are endless names shining through the annals of the Great Game that raged during the 19th century. Most of them are British and a few of them Germans who worked for the East India Company and later the government of India. On the other side of the divide are the names of some Russian stars.
Lost in the glare of these famous personages are not a few ‘natives’ who served British interests in this region. Since that was a time of limited knowledge about the great knot of towering peaks and high passes in the mountainous region comprising the Western Himalayas, Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges, exploration and map-making was of the utmost imperative.
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Natives — Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs — trained in the art of surreptitiously measuring distances, keeping notes and drawing charts were let loose in high Asia. They travelled in the guise of mendicants and pilgrims and were collectively known to their British masters as pundits. Their work supplemented that of British explorers.
Labels: Book Review, Books, Travel, Travelogue
posted by Salman Rashid @ 10:31,
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Travel Sponsorship in Pakistan
03 April 2013
No one should be interested in sponsoring a journey in Pakistan. This is mainly because of the security situation. A mountaineering expedition is another thing. Right now – and I don’t know if it will actually come through – Toyota Indus Motors are working out details to sponsor the Shimshali women’s mountaineering expedition to Muztagh Ata (7000 + metres) in China. This was as a result of my article on the past exploits of these daring young women in The News on Sunday.
Read more »Labels: About, Pakistan, Tourism, Travel Writing, Travelogue
posted by Salman Rashid @ 12:13,
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My next travels through Pakistan
25 March 2013
Travel was indeed a very peaceful, enlightening experience until we became a frontline state. But let's take about two troubled provinces one at a time. That blessed land of Balochistan with its wide open spaces give such a sense of exhilarating freedom that you feel like a bird. Here, in this untrammelled, unexplored land, you make discoveries that educated you beyond your wildest dreams, far more than decades in some university. However, Balochistan did not fall foul because of the frontline misadventure. We abused the province - and this includes all of us, you me and everyone else. We are guilty because when the establishment was misgoverning this wonderful land, we all silently watched. We are guilty because we did not protest. My Baloch friends tell me I can still return to their land and travel with them and if there is trouble, they'll be the first to die for me. I trust them completely. But I joke that in that case there will be two of us dead!
Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa simply had to go that way after what we did in the 1980s. I recently learned that one Zahir Shah who was my guide in June 2003 on the trek to Pre Ghal (also Pir Ghar, Pir Ghal) is now a leading terrorist. I want to meet him, but friends in the civil service tell me that they will not risk taking me anywhere near Waziristan. It has been said that they will try to get him to come to Tank or Dera Ismail Khan for a meeting. But I don't know if that will ever happen.
Labels: Balochistan, Kashmir, Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa, Pakistan, Travelogue
posted by Salman Rashid @ 20:14,
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Travel Writing in Pakistan
17 March 2013
Be assured that travel writing is not even considered a genre of writing in Pakistan. In this country, sadly, only fiction is writing. Moreover, Pakistanis will not deign to read a book on Pakistan. It seems as if they think it an activity below their dignity and status. They might read a newspaper article, but never ever a book. Especially true if the book is written by a Pakistani. The Pakistani travelogue therefore has no future.
Several times in Islamabad where bookstores stock my work, I have, without disclosing my identity, asked the sellers who buys my books. The answer is an unambiguous 'ONLY FOREIGNERS'. The same question was asked of the man in the kiosk inside Karachi's departure lounge and the response was the same. A few months ago, in Liberty Books, Clifton, Karachi, the salesman told me that a man about my age came looking for The Apricot Road to Yarkand and after turning it this way and that and learning that it cost Rs 2200, did not buy it. Foreigners being my only readers is not because of the high price of my publisher's product, it is simply that Pakistanis do not read. I have actually never met a stranger, a Pakistani, who has read my book. Some know me from my newspaper articles, but no one knows that I have a few books as well. But I have met so many foreigners who have read my books.
Read more »Labels: About, Pakistan, Travel Writing, Travelogue
posted by Salman Rashid @ 12:26,
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Travels are no fun at all
04 February 2013
Someone once said, and I read it years ago, that the joy and fun of travelling was inversely proportional to the speed of travel: the faster you went, the less you were likely to either enjoy the journey or to get anything out of it while a slow journey was always more meaningful. I have yet found no reason to quarrel with this very smart observation.
People might huff at this and say what is this man ranting about. But have you ever read a travelogue about a journey by modern jet (or even old fashioned propeller-driven aircraft) from one place to another. I tell you even the best travel writer in the world will be hard put to write about a flight from anywhere to anywhere. But give me a camel and a camel driver and set me loose where you want and there is a story. Conversely, let me go walkabout and watch my yarn unravel.
Read more »Labels: Tourism, Travel, Travelogue
posted by Salman Rashid @ 11:23,
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The Apricot Road to Yarkand
02 February 2013
“With so much of the vast Himalaya still a blank on the map, our first privilege is to explore rather than to climb,” wrote Eric Shipton, the twentieth-century British explorer-climber. But as Salman Rashid wistfully notes in The Apricot Road to Yarkand
, “In the world of the beginning of the 21st century, there were no blanks on the map to fill and be celebrated.” Yet this in no way diminishes the romance of retracing historical routes, and not solely for the sheer joy of adventure.
Rashid’s account of the mediaeval route from Baltistan to Yarkand (now in the Chinese province of Xinjiang) has its roots in Francoise Bernier’s Travels in the Mogul Empire. A wandering French doctor who found service at the court of Aurangzeb, Bernier explains why the older trading route between Kashmir and Tartary (as it was then known) by way of the un-glaciated Karakoram Pass was abandoned on the order of the ruler of Ladakh. A new route, reports Bernier, was established from Skardu to Kashgar and Yarkand by way of the Muztagh Pass. For Rashid, the idea that caravans were routinely crossing a heavily glaciated, high-altitude pass was the germ of an expedition.
Labels: Book Review, Books, Muztagh Pass Expedition, Salman Rashid, The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Travelogue
posted by Salman Rashid @ 16:20,
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