c u on top - satyabrata dam

How to tail tourists with a twist in the tale I take pride in my obscurity and penchant for going boldly into places most men or women have never gone before. I take this occupation of mine rather seriously and stick to it to the best of my inabilities. My friends constantly rebuff me as to the complete uselessness of my sordid life since I know nothing about the finest dine and wine or bars and night clubs of Paris or Milan. And when I tell them that I know of places that are not mentioned in atlases, somehow that doesn’t impress them much. Cut in to the year 2011, months of October to November and I am headed for Europe for around 40 days. Where are you climbing, which new routes are you eyeing, would we see you in Zermatt, Grindelwald or Chamonix or the Dolomites or in the Bavarian Alps, my friends and fans throw at me to which I only smile mysteriously letting them steam in their curiosity. But to tell you the truth through this post, even I can’t believe where all I am headed ...

This would be my last and final post on people I befriended in Afghanistan. I know all the Afghan stories have not been told and they never will be since my Afghan Affair will continue as long as I breathe. Neither have I told of all the people I met; only a few, which is not to say that these were more important or indelible in my memory than all the others I befriended and walked with. I have told of the little girl in the black but her pretty friend was no less impish or charming; I have narrated the story of our cab driver Carry but our other drivers were no less courageous or resourceful or hard working; I have told you of the shopkeeper Dawood but then all the others were equally welcoming and smiling. I will not be telling about the brick layer Naseeruddin with the leather deerstalker cap who, on hearing there was one Urdu speaking Indian lost in his village, walked 22 km just so he could come and speak to me and find out if I needed any help and walked back the same nigh...

Ameena Bibi found me slipping and sliding down a steep scree covered hill, the trail that led directly towards her house with a mud wall. She stood outside suckling an infant to her breast. She must have noticed me long ago, as I was literally skiing down the hill from far above with massive dust storm of black and brown following at my heels. I have just had close encounters of the Afghan kind all over the village outside of Eishkashim, where young kids had taken me through green fields of peas and maize, where women had invited me inside their dark gloomy houses for tea, where men and kids have posed for me to take their pictures and where old and young, men and women alike have given me countless reasons to smile. I must have seemed like a madman intent on killing himself to the woman (though that isn’t that far from the absolute truth). Braking with my battered knees isn’t easy and I had almost zipped off into the sizeable stream to which the trail led when I came to a halt with...

The day is gay; wind is kind; and the green fields are dancing in the halcyon breeze. The glacier fed streams are gurgling along as I dip my feet into the cold water and lay upon the grass to rest. I am not dead but I am in paradise, or very close to it. My horizon is decked with white crested peaks upon peak, woolly clouds etch their trail across the sparkling blue sky and birds sing their joyful melody while butterflies and honeybees buzz around sucking nectar from the million yellow and violet flowers that the valley is awash with. Happy and simple people are passing by, pushing or pulling their donkeys or wheelbarrows, sickle or shovel on their backs, pretty women decked in startling variety of colourful dresses are scattered across the meadows minding their cows and goats. And little children are just about everywhere. They are swinging from the trees, they are jumping into puddles, they are chasing the dogs, they are climbing to the roofs, they are bothering their mothers for...

In a land where it is nearly impossible to make someone smile for the camera, Shukur is an oddity. It is nearly impossible to make him stop smiling, on or off the camera. I first noticed Shukur when he came along with the Kheret guesthouse keeper to serve us evening tea. While the score of people gathered in the room ogled us with various expressions on their weather-beaten faces, this one boy (couldn’t be more than 25) laughed and smiled openly at all of us, especially at the two ladies in my company. He didn’t seem curious rather extremely jocular and merry at seeing us; though I later realized that he is merry about everything since I never ever saw anything but a radiant smile on this simpleton’s face. What endeared him to all of us were his pantomime abilities. Through silent gestures and hand movements he could make us understand exactly what he conveyed and in turn could interpret our gestures. He said his name is Shukur. My first conversation with Shukur was filled with s...

I walked rapidly upon the muddy trail by the river Wakhan looking for our return vehicle to Eishkashim. A month ago, when we had bid goodbye to our interpreter Dawood, we had asked him to send us a vehicle on the predicated date of our return from the climb to the Kheret Village, our road head. We had descended two days before, at least I had, and we had absolutely no idea if any vehicle was indeed coming for us. So I took off on my pursuit to find the driver and the car that would be our only salvation. I had walked for a day and half and had crossed about two vehicles (all going the wrong way with tourists) and yet clueless if we were destined to depart soon enough before our visa expired. At a place, I crossed a tiny village of few houses, scattered randomly over the wide brown ridges of the hills. And beneath the village, right beside the road I find one of those Toyota Vans that they don’t manufacture anymore and is usually found all along the silk road. These are oversized box...

First day inside Afghanistan (Eishkashim) and Pat draws out a long list of stuff that we need to purchase from the local bazaar before setting off to the mountains. We walked down to the bazaar and soon face the common problem of any international traveler who is not a linguist, that of lingua franca. Every shopkeeper in that bizarre bazaar smiles at us and offers his display for our benefit but we can’t make anyone understand what we really want since most of our ‘wanted’ list items are not on display. I apply my pantomime and say ‘Hindustani’ (I am from Hindustan or India) that brings out more smiles but no comprehension and then I scream ‘Urdu’ like a demented gorilla, to which brings in severe nods of denial. I feel like a deflated balloon without gas since I had boasted Pat I would be able to swing through the shopping like a hot knife through hot butter. We walk up and down, looking and smiling and clicking pictures of people and donkeys for the want of anything better. Pat...

We first came across Hafiyat Khan in person at the village of Quazideh, the first proper outpost after leaving Eishkashim, en route to our mountain. He was haunched by the roadside along with our interpreter chewing a sturdy stick of sugarcane. He wore a black leather jacket with loose trousers and a turban around his handsome head. He was fair, smooth skinned and quite unlike a seasoned climber, which he was if we were to believe some of the reports that Pat carried with her about earlier expeditions to the area. Hafiyat Khan is among the only four Afghans ever trained in Chamonix and he is among the first Afghans to climb Noshaq, the highest mountain in the country. He is mentioned in several earlier expedition reports and has always been highly spoken of. It is odd to find him so far away from any mountain and engaged in a pursuit so trivial. We exchange greetings, Pat shows him the cuttings she has where his name is mentioned. He speaks fair amount of English and some French an...

Our battered Toyota Landcruiser’s rear wheel went into a ditch and the front left one got stuck atop a massive boulder—how our driver managed this seemingly impossible manoeuvre is still a mystery to me—but right at that moment we all knew that this perhaps is the first major mishap to befall our expedition; and in every possibility there seemed no way out of the fix. Our vehicle contained our entire expedition load and five robust people: three climbers, one interpreter and one driver and it was bursting from its rivets (according to Pat, popping the rivets) and welded joints. We had been hurtling and hammering ourselves relentless over the last 9 hours or so over some of the worst dirt roads of my entire life (and that says a lot); we had forded swollen rivers, sand dunes, had changed one burst tyre, and had just crossed to the south bank of Wakhan River over the bridge past Shergez and were hoping our masochistic journey would soon come to an end. Precisely when I had begun to ...

As I trapeze the rickety wooden bridge, swinging into the wild winds across Wakhan River, I find an old man smiling to himself by the river, looking deep and lost into the turbulent waters. I need a shelter for the day and through the grassy fields I could see the top of one at a distance and no one else around save the old man. I have my backpack on my back and I must look haggard and deserted and severely in need of a bath (though that is not a point that gets you sympathy in a land where no one bathes). I stride up to the man, who continues to stare into the waters, timeless like the mountains around. He couldn’t possibly have missed seeing me. I walk closer and he looks up. With my back to the sun he has to squint and so he did but his smile remains intact and then his eyes return to the river. I too look at the river but couldn’t find anything out of the place or interesting for this man to give it such undivided attention. By now I thought I knew enough Dari / Wakhi to get b...

How often does it happen that you reach a place for the first time in your life and instantly feel you have arrived that you have been here before, and this is where you belong. As my feet lands upon Afghan soil, this is exactly how I feel. A country that I have dreamt of ever since I have known the great Himalaya and the trans-Himalayan Ranges. My childhood was replete with Afghan encounters as dry fruit sellers from Kabul (we called them Kabuilwallahs) would potter around selling their merchandise and would enthrall the buyers (especially me) with tales of a magic land full of snow white mountains, green lush pastures, beautiful men, women and children, legends of fairies and jinni, orchards full of apricots and peaches, gurgling mountain spring a sip from which could make one immortal, the fierce horse riders, the nomadic tribes and the valor of the Afghan people who have never been conquered or subjugated by a foreign force. Names like Kabul, Khyber Pass, Bamiyan, Mazar-e-Shari...

If memory serves right—and my memory always serves left when I want it right especially taking a nosedive whenever I return from the rarified environs of our planet—I had put in my last post from Dushanbe towards the centre of July. And then I had plunged into an adventure that took me to a place that I have dreamt of since childhood. Surfacing only the past week back in the Delhi heat that is making me disparately desperate to seek an escape, hence my creative juices have been running dry ever since, and when they had been overflowing I was too far away from a computer, electricity, net connection and civilization in that order. So here I am your chronicler and story teller and your companion on roads less traveled and much troubled, which often leads us into travel travail tales of titanic tapestry. Taking up the thread where I had lost it last. Join me now from where we had parted, if you had indeed joined me before; but if you haven’t even then this is a good place to begin o...