Tour de Pakistan Day 7

It had been a week since we left Karachi and this day was special, we were traveling to Fairy meadows to witness one of the world’s most deadliest mountain the Nanga Parbat also known as the ‘Killer Mountain’, it has a peak of over 8000 meters and considered the toughest mountain to climb. Fairy Meadows is basically a base camp from where the peak of Nanga Parbat feels to be right above our heads. You could just reach in and grab the glacier from the peak. The view is just out of this world.

All that reward comes after much hardship, we left Chalas and took the Karakoram Highway one of the wonders of the world. It is just mindboggling how humans could have carved a way through mountains with such limited resources. Although the road itself isn’t bad but the main danger while travelling through it is the land sliding of rocks and boulders, the terrain of this region was completely different from where we were coming from. From luscious mountains we landed on dry rugged mountains and River Indus flowing through the valley of these mountains.

Nonetheless we reached the Fairy meadows base hut, booked a jeep to get us up to a check point after which it was a 2 hour hike to get to the main base of Fairy Meadows. Sounds kind of easy of rather okay to do but I assure you it isn’t in any way. First of all the road that leads us to the checkpoint reminds you of Death constantly I mean there were turns on the road on which the jeeps tire went a couple of inches out of the curve. And beneath us was an endless valley from which a river was flowing although our driver had an experience of 12 years riding on the same track but still this was our first time and we were just praying to somehow reach our destination. I have a video of the pathway which I’ll upload on Dtube for sure. If you have a faint heart then I don’t recommend the journey, but if you want to have an adventure of a lifetime then this is your go to place.

After the jeep ride I thought this was over and the hike should be easy, we hired a guide and went on our way but boy was I wrong. The hiking path was just 4-5 feet in width with loosely kept rocks that could slip from under your feet, no safety precaution if you wish for something, there was a rain a couple of days ago which had made the path even more slippery and last but not the least it was really steep to walk on you start losing your breath immediately. It took us forever to reach the top but once we were there we forgot all the pain and hardships we faced.

It was almost sunset and the orange light on the mountain made it look like a scene from a portrait in front of us. We were all in awe just admiring the beauty of our Creator, and how much we haven’t seen and experienced in this world. I took a couple of shots during this time but after sunset our bodies were just tired from all the walking. We went to bed and called it a day but tomorrow was the day to explore this base camp to the fullest.