How to Kill Yourself on Term Break

Living overseas has taught me both to be rational/reasonable and daring/stupid. I hardly know what column my fall term break falls into. Term break means a holiday from hard work which I can assure you was intense over my now completed 8-week term. I was up for laying around, writing friends and watching TV shows. But no! We must seize the moment! Part of living overseas involves enjoying what's around while it's around so we decided to make a trip to the Himalayas while we're in Pakistan and term break is a perfect time to do that.

"North" means "Northern Areas," officially "Federally Administered Northern Areas" (FANA); (not to be confused with Northwest Frontier Provence where the militants hang out; no one goes there). The Northern Areas back up to China thus the trade and thus the high mountains and deep ravines. The mountains are incredible; they go straight up out of the river basins and on the flight up we were actually flying with the mountains higher then the plane.

We started off by visiting Fairy Meadows (so named by Germans explorers). We traveled in 1970s Russian jeeps (beautifully refurbished) up the side of these cliffs in a frightening experience for even those who like heights. The “road” was a path thousands of feet above a river basin. Once the 16 kilometer death trip ended, we trekked for several hours up steep inclines over more cliffs before reaching the camp. Little House on the Prairie cabins with no heating welcomed us while it snowed down upon us wimps from Southern Africa. When the sun finally came out, we had a stunning view of Nanga Parbat, the second highest peak in Pak, ninth in the world. Nanga Parbat is a deadly climb and quite a few people have died in their attempt to make it to the top (we only trekked around it). All this, is only going up. We could have died coming down too and then we realized, it's always important to read the fine print.

After Fairy Meadows we spent the night in Gil Git before driving north towards Hunza Valley. We spent two nights at the famous Eagle's Nest lodge at the tree line high above the beautiful valley. Hunza residents are considered to be more open people. The women are highly educated and freely walk around without headscarves and people are very friendly. We did some mild trekking around Hunza and saw the famous 800 year old Baltit Fort sitting near a now melted glacier. Hunza boasts it's own peaks; Golden Peak, Lady Finger and our favorite, Racaposhi (we said it over and over again, attempting to create as many different phrases with the word as possible). We then traveled on to visit Passu Glacier north towards the China boarder.

We were supposed to fly out of Gil Git a week later on Wednesday morning but due to the weather, Tuesday's flights were canceled (happens all the time with mountain weather) so they kicked us off the Wednesday flight. How we got home, is another deathly adventure. But that's reserved for next week.