Igniting a Lifelong Passion: How Pakistan Captured the Heart of Our First Ever Traveller
In a quarter of a century, within six trips, the Hindu Kush and Pakistan have brought me beauty, friendship, hope, disappointment and frustration, and will always hold a special place in my heart. As the first client of Wild Frontiers, this is where this chapter of my life started. Though there’s a prelude to my joining Jonny on that first tour in the Autumn of 1998.
I had an itinerant childhood in different countries and as a result, I went on to study International Relations at Sussex, to gain a better understanding of what I’d seen on the surface. After that, I lived and worked in Moldova and Ukraine in 1994, first in Chisinău and then travelling through Odesa to Crimea, back to Lviv by train and onto London by bus.
When I returned to London, the quest for adventure still stirred and I started planning to head further east. After 4 years of work, I resigned, split up with my girlfriend and left on my own for Central Asia and Xinjiang (eventually I did return, got my job back and married my girlfriend!).
A few months before I left for Tashkent, I glimpsed a few lines of black and white text in the travel section of the Telegraph, advertising a trip to northern Pakistan. I replied, and met Jonny in a pub for a planning meeting, the first of many in the years since. We agreed to meet in Islamabad, once I had taken the Karakoram Highway down from Kyrgyzstan, through Kashgar, Gilgit and on to Rawalpindi.
But I wasn’t the only one who replied to the ad, there were two of us! Carmen, a glamorous actor, joined our inaugural team of three.
On our first night, we stayed at Flashmans, where an alarm clock went off in my backpack setting the hares running with hotel security (US cruise missiles had struck Khosh a month before).
The plan was to hit the road, and take the loop to Peshawar, Chitral, Gilgit, Skardu and back to Islamabad.
Once over the Lowari Pass and reaching Ayun Fort, Jonny and I decided we would try a day trek from there to Chitral, with a young local guide. Jonny had already spent time in the area, having crossed from Nuristan on the other side of the border a few years before.
What followed was a hellish day of wind, unidentifiable terrain, painful feet thanks to my rubbish boots, getting lost, running out of water and drinking from irrigation channels. With the high-altitude expeditions I’ve done since, I’ve evolved into the planning guy and I never travel without my great (inov-8 Roclite Pro G 400 Gtx) boots!
But that’s life with these kinds of trips. However thorough the planning, things inevitably change - it’s just a question of when, by how much, and how you choose to deal with it.
We crossed the Shandur Pass and headed to Gilgit. Recent flooding had washed away a critical bridge, so we became stuck with no alternative route. So we hunkered down in a small building by the road (I’m being generous here!) and discussed our next move. In the morning, we said goodbye to Mufti and the jeeps, crossed the river on a makeshift raft and hitched a ride… with Carmen up front and Jonny and I squeezed in the back with about 15 others, standing room only, with an open top, bouncing along the rubble road to Gilgit!
Five years later, with Wild Frontiers well on its way, for our first wedding anniversary, Jo and I retraced these tracks, in the safe hands of Mufti. We celebrated the 19th of July 2004 with Maqsood and his wife in the beautiful gardens at Ayun Fort. I had wanted to share with Jo what I knew would be a lasting passion.
In December 2017, Jo and I decided to escape the UK for Christmas. I called Jonny for advice and just a few weeks later, Wild Frontiers were looking after us in Rajasthan. We spent a magical New Year at Castle Bijaipur with our 3 children. Then I was back in Pakistan 6 months later, for the 6th time…
I still remember the day when I awoke on my 40th birthday in 2010. I felt great, fit and well, and decided that just in case I didn’t feel the same on my 50th, I would do a big trip every two years, to balance the comfort of my life in the UK with my lust for adventure and appreciation of a fortuitous life.
So this is when we pushed everything up a notch. Myself and four friends spent over a decade searching out historic high-altitude passes of circa 5,000m and taking ourselves into the most awe-inspiring, remote, high, cold, rough and utterly beautiful mountains you can imagine.
We did all of this in northern Pakistan, until October last year when, as a natural next step and in the footsteps of Ney Elias, and to where George Hayward had intended to go, we were dropped off at Bulunkul in the Pamirs. The 5 of us were accompanied by four donkeys, three donkey men and our guide, Matherak, an amazing woman. From there we spent just over a week between 3,500 and 5,000m, feeling bitterly cold when the sun went down and heavenly when it rose above the mountains.
Next year we will be back in the Pamirs, and at some stage, we need to complete the Chilinji Pass between Chapursan and Ishkoman (which unfortunately led to huge disappointment when we failed in 2013) and then one day, after all these years, Jonny and I might get to tackle the Irshad Pass together…