Greg Mortenson and 60 Minutes

The Vunarability of Greg Mortenson

Anyone likely to stumble on this blog has probably already heard about the CBS 60 Minutes’ attack on Greg Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute (CAI). As Greg was kind enough to write a foreword to my book Himalayan Portfolios; Journeys of the Imagination I owe it to him to try and provide my own perspective on this disaster.

The Foreword. My interest in Greg's work goes back to an encounter in 2001 with one of his earliest schools in Pakistan. The school was at Hushe, the jumping off point for my trek to the K2 area. In October of 2006 I asked Greg to write a foreword. At that time the CAI was beginning to grow but Three Cups of Tea had not yet hit the mass market. Greg immediately responded with enthusiasm and gave me an outline of his linkage to the mountain photography of Barry Bishop, the father of his wife, Tara. The foreword that emerged (after several months) combined the story of the building of the bridge across the Braldu River and the creation of the first school at Korphe with his photographic interest. My book contains a picture of the turbulent, churning, exploding waters of the Braldu River taken on my first Pakistan trip — 1994, the year before the bridge was built. In conclusion Greg described my book as “a tribute to the mountains we both cherish” and a “source of restoration and hope.”

Inside the government school at Hushe

The Impending Crash. I met Greg briefly in 2008 and then in New York at the 2009 Book Fair (an unbelievable zoo), and later that year talked to his staff at the Banff Mountain Book Festival. It was evident that to keep the fund raising going he has been ignoring health problems. There had been a recent stay in a hospital. I wrote urging him to not let the new book overwhelm him and to pace himself for the long term future. Others had made the same argument. But he was faced with the urgency of the times and the strange nature of the book selling business in which everything depends on a short seasonal time frame. Book selling was his basic way to solicit funds for the CAI. He did not let up on his unbelievably full schedule. I expected a crash. As it tuned out his deteriorating health was just a part of the disaster. As of now he is being stabilized in the expectation of heart surgery.

The heavy load of talk, travel and interviews must have left little time for long term planning. As I saw it, there was a need for an anthropological record of what had been achieved to aid future planning and an accessible data base of schools. Each school was a experiment in a new cultural context but based on the same premise (I wrote to him about that and cited the work of my friend Dick Salisbury who had created a data base of climbing expeditions in Nepal "Himalaya by the Numbers".) I worried about Greg’s move from the relative uniformity of Baltistan into the ethnic and cultural mix up of Afghanistan. His work must encounter constantly shifting political agendas, people who have reconstructed their past histories, and experts at diverting NGO funds to their own pockets. The CAI was changing into a bigger organization that could not be expected to work with the one-man-band approach that had been so successful in the beginning. Greg’s role needed to be redefined.

Greg's Finances. The 60 Minuite program makes a number of charges, including the claim that Greg’s finances and the money donated to the CAI have become mixed in a bewildering way. On this I have no information. Knowing his schedule, I can well believe that finances exploded in ways that were beyond the competence of the CAI and Greg to handle. The problems are like and unlike those that arise when a star college professor writes a highly successful text book or develops a patentable product. In such cases there are the precedents of custom plus a history of legal opinions and IRS rulings that provide guidelines as to where the money raised should go. In Greg’s case the mixture is unique. I can only express my firm belief in Greg’s dedication. I am totally unconvinced that personal gain was a motive. However, the characteristics that make for success in building schools in remote areas are probably not those appropriate for financial management. I can only hope that a panel of friends and experts will resolve this matter with the CAI and present their solution in a way that can be easily understood by the public.

Fictionalization: The other main charge against him was that to a significant extent he had faked the stories in the book. I was completely baffled. It was said that he had not even been in Korphe in 1993. This did not make sense. Before the bridge was built there was only a cable linked the village to the main trail to Askole. There was no possible reason why Greg or any Westerner would visit the village. The account given in the book explains his encounter. On his way back from K2, debilitated and utterly exhausted, he failed to take the turn to Askole. That is to say, he continued onwards instead of turning right to reach the bridge across the turbulent Braldu River and to follow the right side of the Braldu to Askole. (Korphe is on the left side of the Braldu.) Going the other way towards K2 the branch towards Korphe would be passed without attention by a traveler walking as part of a group. Having followed the main route from K2 to Askole myself, I can attest that for a lone walker this error was completely possible. I have made such trail errors many times. In 1994 on the way to the Biafo Glacier we continued on the Askole side of the river, but I remember the other side of the river in 2001 as being a flat plain with few distinguishing marks except for some large climbing boulders that were probably near the bridge. If the area floods in some years the trail probably gets wiped out from time to time so the present markings would not be a guide to the situation in 1993.

In an interview with David Heald, Editor of Outside Magazine, Greg has affirmed that this mistake over the trail did happen in 1993, but he admitted that he was only a few hours in Korphe, not overnight as it says in the book. This was enough to see the poverty of the place and to realize that the health and education of the villagers was of no interest to the government. If he had not observed this neglect, why would he have returned? However, the main events in the book concerning the promise to build a school took place the next year. He reached Askole by way of the cable, met up with his fellow climber and they both continued to Skardu and the K2 Motel and from there to the USA. He admits that he did not then return to Korphe that year as it says in the book, but the following year. I assume the account of building of the bridge to replace the cable in 1995, thanks to Horni’s funding, is essentially correct.

Why? Greg claims that the fictionalization was driven by the need for compression. I conjecture that there was a draft that gave the visit as brief and placed the promise to build a school in the next year but the narrative became so involved that the text was re-cut. Greg claims the essential facts were preserved. (The question as to who suggested the departures from the truth — whether the Viking-Penguin editor, his co-author Relin or Greg himself — is irrelevant.) Bio-Pics, such as Gandhi, do this sort of fixing all the time to provide a coherent story and no one worries. Travel books, from Marco Polo onwards, and autobiographies are often loose with the facts. But, as a scientist I have difficulties: I have a gut horror of invented data. News reporters claim to meet higher standards. Journalists may omit some facts as irrelevant and they tend to seek out representative cases and voices to give shape to their story, but if they fabricate the roof blows off. The authors invoked this standard for Three Cups of Tea when they presented the story as reported by Relin. Why did they then depart from the journalism standard?

The Message. A Pakstani novelist, Bapsi Sidhwa, has argued that Greg made the right choice: artistic truth trumps literal truth. As a landscape photographer I can understand this argument. A black and white photograph is by its nature a representation that requires considerable artistic judgment in printing. My interpretation, however, is a little different. I believe that Greg saw the book as a means of communicating a message rather than as a work of biographical art. This left him vulnerable to making a most unfortunate mistake. Extreme examples of the dramatization of a message are the New Testament gospels. They are inseparable from an evolving Jewish typology. The more powerful the typology, the more the temptation to manipulate. And Greg’s typology is powerful and urgent. If it were not so he would not have maintained his punishing schedule year after year. The grievous error was in not realizing that communicating the truth of the message depended on the truth of the narrative. The reason the book became a best seller is because the message that peace could be brought to a devastated world through the education of girls and women was accepted. The virulent response once the 60 Minutes program was aired is because, in part, people feel betrayed by the departure from the truth.

The question has been raised about the number of schools created and some failures and miscalculations have been cited, but there is plenty of evidence that schools do exist and that successes have been achieved. As Nicholas Kristof wrote in the New York Times. “The furor over Greg’s work breaks my heart.”….“But let us not forget that even if all the allegations turn out to be true, Greg has still built more schools and transformed more children’s lives than you or I ever will.”

Greg is not the first pioneer who has been damaged by his own idealism. As he tries to pick up the pieces after his surgery and work out a considered response to events I hope he will be able to follow his own words in the foreword to my book and turn to the mountains as “a source of restoration and hope.”

PS.

Sales Report. Three Cups of Tea, as of May 8, is #24 on the New York Times extended paperback non fiction list. It was #17. It would seem that the general public may have a better take on the crisis than the media commentators, most of whom have no direct experience of the complications of working in the villages of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Updates: There have been significant developments in the CAI during the last year. The ikat.com site of the CAI has provided an updated picture as a Journey of Hope supplement. One interesting development is the cooperation with other NGO aid agencies concerned with education, including the Agha Khan Development Foundation mentioned in my last Blog. Various setbacks are motioned and the site includes responses to recent criticisms.

-----------------
CBS 60 Minutes: Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhAb37yZ0o0&feature=youtu.be

Bozman Chronicle: Story
http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/article_4d3125cc-67d7-11e0-b861-001cc4c002e0.html

Outside Magazine: Interview with Mortenson by Alex Heard, editor.
http://outsideonline.com/adventure/travel-ga-greg-mortenson-interview-sidwcmdev_155690.html?page=6

CNN: Interview with Alex Heard, Peter Bergan, Nikolas Kristof
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/04/18/exp.ac.mortenson.controversy.panel.cnn?iref=allsearch

New York Times: Story: Edward Wong on the Wakhan Corridor. “Two schools in Afghanistan, One Complicated Situation. “
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/weekinreview/24mortenson.html

Dawn: Article by Bapsi Sidhwa: “I stand by Three Cups of Tea” (Dawn is a Pakistan newspaper)
http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/01/i-stand-by-three-cups.html

New York Times: Op Ed: Nikolas Kristof. “Three Cups of Tea’ Spilled”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/opinion/21kristof.html

Mortenson’s Medical Condition: doctors report
http://www.ikat.org/wp-includes/documents/CAI5-2-11-Release.pdf

Shadows of the Great Game. Part 3

FOLLOWING THE AFGHAN BORDER

Yellow Area: Wakhan Corridor set up in 1895 to separate Russian and British spheres of influence. Visited by Marco Polo in 1274.
Orange line: Our route, Pamir Highway and detour south.
Yellow line: Karakoram Highway.
A, Alichor; B, Bozai Gumbaz; F, Faizabad, I/I, Ishkashim/Ishkoshim; K, Kalaikhum; L, Langar; S, Sarhad (near Broghil Pass).

We made contact with the Wakhan Corridor when we followed the Pamir River to its confluence with the Wakhan River. At the point where the two rivers join to form the Pyanj River the elevation is about 9,500 ft above sea level. By the time the southernmost point in the river is reached the level is about 800 ft lower. For most of this section the river is broad and there are in many places islands used for grazing. This turning point is the end of the Wakhan corridor appendage to Afghanistan.The road follows the Pyanj River due north. As it flows north the river becomes more turbulent because the valley narrows and the level drops some 4,700 ft. Before the river swings to the southwest it takes a Z detour through a narrow gorge with near vertical walls. The photograph shows a trail along the Afghan side of the gorge. On the Tajik side the road in many places has been blasted out of the cliff face. At Kalaikhum (1,200m/3,934ft) we left the border and the river to climb over a high grassy plateau region and eventually reached our final destination Duschanbe.

In the wider valley before the northward turn the main drama is the view of the major peaks of the Hindu Kush. These define the Afghan-Pakistan border and appear as a line of white in Satalite phtographs. They are not much more than 12 miles away and several of the peaks are over 7,000 m. Of these Nashaq Peak (7429m/24580ft), first climbed in 1960, is the highest peak in Afganistan and the third highest in the Hindu Kush. The observed elevation from river level is about 15,800 ft. The slightly higher Tirich Mir (7,709m/25,292ft), whose importance goes back to the early days of Himalayan climbing, is further away and may not be visible, or if it is visible it appers as a lesser peak. On the Afghan side of the river the main peaks are Marx (6,732m) and Engels (6,507m).

The Bridge Not Crossed. At Ishkoshim on the Pyanj River there is a bridge and border crossing to Ishkashim in Afghanistan. The bridge was opened in 2006, thanks to the support of the Agha Kahn foundation. There is a major contrast between the two sides of the river. In Soviet times the Tajik side of the river was developed as a resort area, thanks to the presence of hot springs and the dramatic scenery. Hydropower supports local industry. The Afghan side has been a largely forgotten region. The better agricultural land is limited and in places there is only subsistence farming. Both sides of the river have a reputation for drug smuggling and there is also an illegal trade in gemstones such as rubies. On the Afghan side there is a road through the mountains to Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan province. It is situated in the only major valley that crosses the main north-south mountain chain. This junction town was a military center during the Soviet occupation. A road to the east from Ishkashim provides access to the Corridor but it comes to an end at Sarhad (10,112 ft.) Up to this point the road passes small Tajik-speaking farming settlements. Beyond Sarhad there is a deep river gorge and a steep ascent. Transport of goods requires pack animals, notably yaks. Eventually a high rich grassland area is reached inhabited by Turkic speaking Kyrgyz herders living in Yurts. Here at about 12,500 ft is Bozai Gumbaz, a historic place of meeting. Although we only viewed the western end of the Wakhan Corridor, its importance in the Great Game, past and future, requires comment.

The Gibraltar of the Hindu Kush. In Part 1 in discussing the consulate at Kashgar I noted that in 1891 Francis Yonghusband, on his way back to Gilgit from a grim winter of diplomatic isolation in Kashgar, made a detour over the broad Wakhjir Pass (4,847m/15,836ft) and to his surprise encountered Russian Cossacks. He was informed that this was Russian territory and politely ordered to leave. Cables were sent back and forth between Simla and London. In London Lord Rosebery, shortly to become Foreign Secretary, declared: “Bozai Gumbaz is the Gibraltar of the Hindu Kush.” There was no backing down. Gurkha troops were sent to Bozai Gumbaz from Gilgit and Younghusband, with his added troops, sat out the crisis on the Wakhan side of the passes through the Hindu Kush to India. (See Patrick French, Younghusband. 1994; Chs 6, 7.)

The Cradle of Our Race. The next major player in the Great Game was Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India from 1898-1904. He hsd become deeply suspicious of Russia’s motives while traveled extensively on Russia railways and in Afghanistan. There was however diplomatic progress. In 1893 the Durand line was drawn to establish the border of Afghanistan with India (still a festering issue.) In1894 Curzon probed the boundary by crossing the Wakhjir Pass, with permission from Kabul. He probably wanted to find out what in practice Russia was doing, but he took the opportunity to investigate the source of the Oxus. A river “believed to have rocked the cradle of our race.” He settled as the source a glacier towards the Hindu Kush that feeds the upper Ab-i-Wakhan River. By this choice he discounted Lake Victoria on the Pamir River, mentioned above, and also the Chakmak lake area that feeds the Murghab River. His account in the Geographic Journal (Aug and Sept 1898) led to a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society.

The Innermost Heart of Central Asia. In the Soviet era the Russians seem to have accepted the Wakhan boundaries, however the source of the Oxus was still of interest in the postwar World War II period. In 1948 the noted climber Bill Tilman left the British Consulate in Kashgar, after indulging in a little climbing with the outgoing consul Eric Shipton. He aimed to brighten up the travel to Gilgit by detouring from China into the Wakhan valley by the Wakhjir Pass and exit by a pass through the Hindu Kush. On the Oxus question he wrote: “Speaking as a Mountaineer, the only fit and proper birthplace for this mighty river of most ancient fame is the ice-cave…at the innermost heart of Central Asia.” Unfortunately he trusted in the remoteness of the area and did not worry about Afghan intransigence. He was arrested and imprisoned as a spy by the local authorities. He was eventually escorted to a high and inconvenient border pass and discharged into the newly created Pakistan – minus his notebooks and passport. (See W. H. Tilman. Two Mountains and a River. 1949. Ch 13,14, 15. Tillman is my source for the Curzon visit.)

Stones into Schools. Despite these endorsements Bozai Gumbaz, the Yurt settlement, had been off the political map until it was mentioned by Greg Mortenson at the end of Three Cups of Tea. Its symbolic importance forms the basic narrative of his second book Stones into Schools (2010), now in paperback. Some photographs of these schools are included in a recent New York Times article by Edward Wong. (Oct 28, 2010. Wakhan Corridor Journal.) In the new book Mortenson relates how a promise to the local Kahn was fulfilled. His organization The Central Asia Institute has managed to create 21 schools in the region between Faizabad and Sarhad. Bozai Gumbaz, however, was almost a ‘bridge too far.’ Eventually cement and rebars were driven by truck from Khorog by the Pamir Highway to Murgab and then overland to cross the Afghan border north of Bozai Gumbaz. From the trail end 43 local yaks were used to take the loads to the building site. Less weighty goods were brought from Sarhad. Experienced masons and carpenters that had crossed the Irshad Pass from Pakistan directed the building of the foundation by the local Kyrgyz. The impossible was finished, thanks to the local commitment and the vision of their leader Abdul Rashid Khan, on September 28, 2009.

The Next Chapter in the Great Game; Enter China. The players in the Great Game have changed. China has adopted the role played by Russia in the time of Lord Curzon. The Russians built railways; the Chinese have built roads and railways in the most forbidding terrains. Their ‘forward policy’ has been to reach out across borders, as in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. I have twice traveled the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan and in 2003 I descended the road to the Kathmandu valley that links the Tibetan plateau to Nepal. Internally the highway and rail linkages are being steadily expanded. The high altitude railway to Lhasa is an example and the main motivation is probably the shipment of minerals. A New York Times article by Andrew Jacobs (Kashgar Journal Nov 15, 2010) that describes the massive building program in Kashgar notes the intended extension of the railroad system to Kashgar. In 2008 China signed a $3 billion mining agreement with Afghanistan that grants them a 30 year lease on copper mining. The proposal is to build Afghanistan’s first railroad. It would, I assume, run through either the Panjir valley and over a high pass or via Faizerbad to reach the Wakhan Corridor and then over the mountains to Kashgar. Expect Bozai Gombaz to be an exotic railroad stopping point with a bright pink hotel resembling the one near the Rongbuck Monastery near to Everest.

Given such economic leverage, China can expect to be a major player in the future of Afghanistan. However it will not be the only economic player. 2008 India completed a road connecting the Iranian container port of Chahbahar to northern Afghanistan and Central Asia. (See Thomas Barfield. Afghanistan; a Cultural and Political History. 2010. Princeton UP. p 346, p 344 )

The Mes Aynak Mine. The copper that the China Metallurgical Group Corp plans to mine happens to be beneath a major Buddhist site 40 km to the southeast of Kabul. The site has seven stupas and a great numbers of statues. The complex was evidently a key center in the transmission of Buddhism between the first and seventh centuries CE, akin to Taxilla in Pakistan. The Chinese have given archeologist a three year window before they start to blow up the ruins. Because of political instability and low funding Archeologists estimate that it is at least a ten year task. An article in Science states that only Karzai can stop the destruction (Vol 329, 30 July 2010.)

Breakfast at Khorog
Our brief say at Khorog, the capital of the large eastern Gorno-Badakhshan egional, provided a morning when there was no immediate departure. It was a moment to review, to ask the question: What had we not expected? As tourists it was easy to see only the wonderful setting. There was a pleasant garden with a view across the river. To the left was the confluence with the Gunt Rriver, to the right the new suspension bridge to Afghanistan. But what were we not seeing?

Our first surprise; The Russian Influence: both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are still firmly bound to Russia. The normal post-Regan narrative in the USA is that these former components of the USSR remembered the Soviets as oppressors. But the separation was in 1991 and the pain of most of those who suffered has died with them. The next generation remembers the Soviet period as providing work and economic stability. With separation the factories closed. Now large numbers have to travel to Russia to find employment and the remittances sent home are an essential part of their economies. Russian is still the necessary common language of the region. The USA ships almost half its essential military supplies to Afghanistan via air from Bishkek and by road from western Tajikistan, but, in general, it keeps as low a profile as possible and provides some cultural support.

The economic condition of Tajikistan has not been helped by the civil war that began in 1992 a year spurred on by Islamic beliefs and clan loyalties. The Pamir region starved in 1992-3 as the result of a blockade. Russian troops moved back to the Afghan border. A cease fire in 1996 and a peace agreement in June of 1997 left Tajikistan one of the poorest countries in the world. As might be expected, the drug trade flourishes.

Our second surprise; the Pamiri Culture: In all this turmoil the distinctive Pamiri culture has survived. The Pamiris, mainly Nizari-Ismaili Muslims, are located on both sides of the Pyanj River. The treaty establishing the Afghan-Russian border that was signed by Russia and Britain on February 25, 1895 left the Pamiri community divided. The cultural, ethnic and religious contacts between the two sides of the river were maintained until 1936 when the USSR closed the Tajik-Afghan border but contact has resumed in recent years. The culture on the Tajik side must have been influenced by the Russian presence.

This culture we glimpsed while visiting Langar, Yamg and Khorog, The above picture is of performer in a folk music event at Yamg. The hats are signatures of that particular village.

Permission to photograph women in many Muslim countries is normally refused but here everyone was delighted to be photographed — old and young, male and female. The above photo is of a holiday gathering at Langar. Head scarves for women seemed to be optional.

Women shopping at the Afghan market near the Khorog bridge. Afghan selling boots.

The Ismaili Muslims require some explanation as from the US perspective they have a very low profile. The Ismalis are a branch of Shia Islam that separated over a dispute about the choice of the seventh Imam in the family line from Mohammed. They are often known as Seveners and they were once the main branch. The Imam line for the other branch came to an end with the 12th Imam, hence they are known as Twelvers. For the Nizari-Ismailis the present Imam is the 49th: the Agha Kahn IV. The twelvers, now the majority, tend to be legalistic and text directed; they are often associated with large cities. The Nizari-Ismalis, Seveners, are more mystical and have linkages to the Sufi tradition. That has made them the particular target of traditionalist Suni Muslims. From the point of view of many Suni and Shia Muslims the Ismalis are at best deluded and at worst heretical. One can compare their situation to that of the Samaritans in the first century CE who had their own Torah and their own temple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria and claimed to be of the true Abrahmic line. The Ismailis do not go in for mosques; we saw none. We did see family devotional centers. In general the Ismailis have been pushed into the more remote areas. I encountered them in the Hunza valley in Pakistan.

The importance of family traditions was shown to us by a visit to the Mubarak Kadam Wakhani museum and center built inYamg by relatives. He is described as a Sufi Sage and mystic who lived from 1843-1903. The museum is built on family ground next to a small building that has been his work and study place. The above photograph shows to the left the custodian, the driving force in the enterprise, and his cousin who was there to read some of Mubarak’s poetry. In addition to the poetry, that reminded me a little of Rabindranath Tagore in its universalism (but it draws on mystic Shia Muslim traditions about Ali.) He wrote songs, commentaries on the Koran and devised a solar devotional calendar.

The Agha Kahn Foundation and the Agha Kahn Development Network have been of enormous importance to the Pamiri community. Money from the foundation helped keep the area from starvation during the civil war. The bridges at Iskashim and Khorog and Darwaz, built with the help of the Foundation, have allowed contact between the Pamiris on both sides of the river to be renewed. On the Tajik side schools and hospitals have been built. Khorog has been provided with a well tended tree-covered park next to the river. The contribution that impressed us most was the University of Central Asia that was started in 1994 and funded by the Foundation. We were shown the plans drawn up by an award winning Japanese architect, for an impressive larger Khorog campus. But the aims of the university is to be trans-national. The Network supports three branches: at Khorog in Tajikistan, at Naryin in Kyrgyzstan and at Tekeli in Kazakhstan. There are connections to Karakoram International University in Gilgit-Hunza, Pakistan, and a school in Faizerbad in Afghanistan (built with US aid.) The basic aim of this university movement is to address the problems of mountain communities. Childhood education is enormously important for all the reasons that Greg Mortenson has spelled out, but the danger is that the impact of rural education will be diminished because it serves to provide a means for the young to leave. Sustainable mountain communities need the commitment of the educated to local economic and environmental problems.

But what of the Afghan side of the river? How is the future of the mountainous Badakhshan Province tied to the fate of Afghanistan as a whole? The linkage of the University of Central Asian to Faizabad and the schools built by the Central Asia Institute suggests one possibility: an empowered Pamiri culture could help create a Badakhshan with some sort of responsible autonomy within Afghanistan. The Soviet regime, the Taliban and US policy have all emphasized a strong central controlling government— a typical nation state. The present centralized self-serving and corrupt Pashtun-dominated government in Kabul seems to be fatally flawed. Sooner or later it could collapse in all out war, or there could be a blending of the Pashtun with the Taliban. Given past brutality, there is no evident way such a combination can be reconciled with the Pamiri culture. A measure of separation seems essential. Perhaps education can help bring this about.

The present situation is by no means stable. While we were in Tajikistan a Taliban group killed 10 medical aid workers in the Badakhshan Mountains. The latest Journey of Hope from Greg Mortenson's organization reports on the way in which small bands of Taliban from Pakistan attacking the adjacent Nuristan region have created floods of refugees into Badakshan. If civil war breaks out when the US leaves that flood will only increase.

As to the place of education: A letter just received by my wife (Betty) from a former student from Pakistan described his summer visiting his family, wandering in the Hindu Kush, locating Sufi shrines and taking a university course. He writes: “The course on Allama Iqbal's Urdu poetry was a treat in its own.” … “Though things [in Pakistan] look really bad and sound even worse, I have my hopes pinned on the students studying in the universities. They are very passionate and want to see Pakistan prosper and they are willing to work hard and smart for it. I could sense the frustration these kids had with the current state of affairs. I understand that action is harder than just talking but a lot of students have taken the initiative to improve their worlds in their own way and I can see the rest following soon. Honestly it is hard to explain but it was very encouraging to spend a couple of months in the university.”

May we also be encouraged.

SOURCES

Edward Wong New York Times Oct 28, 2010 Wakhan Corridor Journal.

Andrew Jacob, Kashgar Journal, New York Times Nov 15, 2010. Kashgar Journal

Journey of Hope 2010, Vol IV. Jaskol and Ronnow. Just issued by the Central Asia Institute.

(This has phtographs of the Ishkashim school.)

Middleton Pamir Blog.

Thomas Barfield: Political Legitimacy in the Land of the Hindu Kush.Posted summary of Lecture May 23, 2010.

TRIP

Our trip was organized by MIR of Seattle, USA.

Our excellent guide was Yura Kim of Bukhara, Uzbekistan.

CURIOUS EVENT.
Betty and I attended the above Barfield Lecture at Yale in May. It had been enthusiastically organized by two students: Anna Kellar and Mari Oye. We talked to them afterwards. At Yamg on August 12 as we were waiting for lunch what should happen but that the same two enterprising students walked into the guest house. Tajikistan was providing them with the chance to use their Yale studied Farsi (the Tajik language is a form of Persian.) Anna's perspective on her trip is contained in her blog for August 2010. (Also, check out the watermellon song. )

Shadows of the Great Game, Part 2

Pamir Highway:

Journey to the Tajik-Afghan border.

The Pamir Highway runs from Osh in Kyrgyzstan to Khorog in Tajikistan. Osh, close to the jigsaw-designed border with Uzbekistan, was the site of a politically manipulated conflict between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks earlier this year. Khorog, the capital of the autonomous Gorno-Badakhshan region that comprises eastern Tajikistan, is at the junction of the Gunt River and the Panj River. The latter defines the border with Afghanistan. We joined the Pamir Highway at Sary Tash in the Alay Valley of Kyrgyzstan having reached there from the Chinese border 50 miles away (the Irkeshtam pass.) The Russian built road from the border is a much eroded highway that is being reconstructed by Chinese road engineers (see Part I, previous blog). The road recapitulates the ancient Silk Road route that the Chinese followed to get heavenly horses from the Ferghana Valley.

Sari Tash, a junction village at the edge of the grassland, is at 10,400 ft; the Kyzel-Art Pass that is at the Tajik border is almost 4,000 ft higher (4,200m/14,042ft.) The road to the pass was in places challenging, as seen in the above photo. After the border rituals we transferred to a new pair of 4-wheel-drive vehicles and admired the distant representative herd of grazing yaks and the statue that marks the high point of the pass. I understood the statue to be a Marco Polo sheep. We passed a valley that is a sanctuary for such sheep the following day. We encoutered the horns of Marco Polo sheep (or ibex) at Zoroastrian fire shrines and in houses. However, we did not, in fact, see any Marco Polo sheep, though we may have eaten the flesh thereof. A commentator claims the statue is an ibex. We did not see any ibex. A picture on the web identifies the statue as a Marco Polo sheep. I look forward to further clarification of this important issue. From the pass we descended to the desolate ash-grey landscape of the Kara Kul Lake (12,841ft). This was formed by a meteor impact less than five million years ago. Lenin peak should have been visible in the distance but it was obscured by clouds. The lake is without an outlet. The outline of the 35 mile wide crater can be seen in satellite photographs. The desolation of the lake is matched by the desolation of the nearby settlement composed of the spaced white blocks that derive from its former role as a Russian military outposts close to the Chinese border. Many of the houses are unoccupied and it is hard to imagine that much goes on in the settelment beyond providing for passing travellers and border guards.

Wikipedia states that the lake was once named after Queen Victoria. Had she actually seen the lake she might not have been pleased that such an inhospitable place was named after her -- on the other hand it might have reminded her of Scotland. Presumably the locals ignored this and used its Kirgiz name.

The designation Lake Victoria is a puzzle. The noted mountaineer Bill Tillman, writing about the source of the Oxus in Two Mountians and a River, cites Captain John Wood's A Journey to the Source of the Oxus, and states that in 1838 he gave the name Victoria to lake Sir-i-col from which the Pamir River flows. However in Chapter XXI of the book Woods writes:

As “we had received the news of her gracious Majesty's accession to the throne, I was much tempted to apply the name of Victoria to this, if I may so term it, newly rediscovered lake; but on considering that by thus introducing a new name, however honoured, into our maps, great confusion in geography might arise, I deemed it better to retain the name of Sir-i-kol, the appellation given to it.by our guides.” Wood notes the lake fits Marco Polo's description, but the description could equally well fit the lake in the main Wakhan valley that is the source of the Murgab River. An editor's footnote in the 1872 edition reasons that as Sir i-col was a descriptor and not a name, future maps should use the name Lake Victoria. Lake Victoria in Africa was so named in 1858 by Speke who thought it was the source of the Nile (Stanley later confirmed it flowed into the White Nile.) My hypothesis is that the name Lake Victoria was used for the source of the Oxus on maps sometime after 1878. The Map given by Bill Tillman in Two Mountains and a River labels Sir-i-col Lake Victoria. Given the pressure of the Great Game, such an implied claim would be irresistible. Maps tend to be copied and at some point the name probably wandered to Kara Kul Lake which is much bigger. Clearly more research is called for.

To leave this basin a further high pass had to be crossed. The Ak Batel pass, was the highest on our route (4,655m /15,272 ft.) We made further wanderings through red tinged mountains until we reached the much lower town of Murgab (3,576 m /11,732 ft) where we stayed the night. Somewhere on the road to Murgab we crossed the thrust fault that separates the Northern Pamir and Central Pamir terrains. The fault is also a suture line. The Central Pamirs are being pushed under the Northern Pamirs, hence the Northern Pamirs are being pushed up from both north and south.

Murgab is an important junction point. According to Wikipedia it was once the highest town in the Soviet Union. It is situated on a river that rises in the eastern Wakhan corridor and ends up flowing westward to join the Panj river. Murgab was established as an advanced Russian military base as a part of the Great Game in 1893. The post helped establish the claim to the area and the Kulma Pass into China (4,363 m) was a potential route for a further Russian advance. In 2004 the Chinese established a restricted road link via this pass to the Karakoram Highway that is the linkage between Pakistan and Kashgar.

From Murgab we made a side trip on a dirt road to a near-desert valley with low rocky hills in order to see a petroglyph. We then crossed another pass and descended to the valley of the upper Gunt river. The Pamir Highway leaves and rejoins the Gunt River on its westward way to Khorog, where it joins the Pyanj River. but we turned south to cross a further range to reach the Afghan border (pass at 4344m.) To the south were the snow capped mountains of the Afghan Pamirs. The Pamir River defines the Afghan border that is the northern boundary of the bulge in the Wakhan corridor. We followed the river to its junction with the Wakhan River at which point their fusion become known as the Pyanj River. Both tributaries can be called the upper Oxus. At our first encounter the Pamir River was wandering through a near desert. It did not look as if crossing it by one means or another would be a serious problem.

An Afgan caravan
As the Panj river junction was approached the river narrowed and became more turbulent and grass was at last visible. We did not know it at the time (August 11, 2010), but the turbulence of the river reflected the delay in summer snow melting. The levels of all the rivers were exceedingly high. This delay was a substantial factor in creating the floods in Pakistan which were just starting to take place. We learned about them later. The notion that something might be abnormal came to us suddenly as we rounded a curve in the road into a side valley.

We had survived one tire blowout and one puncture but there before us was a raging stream of melt water that crossed the road and plunging into the valley below. I expected we would have to overnight in the car and wait for the melt water to go down. Dilshod, our Tajik guide and driver, seemed greatly cheered by the challenge. He plunged into the stream and started throwing around rocks to make a ramp. Others helped. His heroic charge through the torrent is shown at the beginning of my previous blog. An Australian motorcyclist generously helped us ford the river. He was one of a group of four that had managed to push their bikes through the stream. They had to spend an entire day taking one of the bikes to pieces in order to dry it out. We had only to dry out our sneakers.

After this diversion we descended to the village of Langar (elevation about 2900m/9,504ft.) This pleasant village is just past the confluence of the Pamir and Wakhan rivers. Afghanistan is on the far side of the Pyanj River formed by this junction. Above the river rise the snow capped mountains of the Hindu Kush that are a western extension of the Karakoram. The above photograph was taken from the bank of the Panj River looking East, the Afghan Pamirs are to the left.

An important Pamir web site by Robert Middleton : link.

Middleton is a co-author of Tajikistan and the High Pamirs.

Shadows of the Great Game-Part 1

Bishkek to the Pamirs by way of Kashgar

Four factors promoted our interest in a trip to the Pamirs.
— When writing the essay for Himalayan Portfolios: Journeys of the Imagination I had become intrigued with the role the Pamirs played in the 19th century struggle between British India and Russia known as the Great Game. One major player in the drama was Francis Younghusband who later became a major force on the Everest Committee. The Great Game came to a provisional accomodation in 1893 when the boundary of Afganistan was drawn to leave a thin extension of Afghanistan, the Wakhan Corridor, as a buffer between the Russian and British spheres of influence.
— A second reason was the account by Greg Mortenson of his struggle to build a school near Bozai Gumbaz in the Whakan Corridor described in his recent Stones into Schools (now available in paperback.)
— A third reason was the result of looking at satellite images of the Afghan-Pakistan region. The one thing that stands out amidst the mountains is the hook of the Afghan boundary defined by upper ancient Oxus (see map in previous blog.) Why is this river so much more visible than the Indus? The sources of the Oxus have been assigned to a lake in the Little Pamirs that is drained by the Pamir River and to a glacier that feeds into the Whakan River. The two rivers join to form the turbulent Panj River that eventually, after more additions, becomes the Amu Darya that makes its way to the dead end of the Aral Sea.
— Lastly, it seemed that the culture and history of the region could have a great deal to do with future events in Afghanistan (Betty's department. Betty is my wife.)

Across Kyrgyzstan

Our road trip began in Bishek and took is south across Kyrgyzstan. The last part was through a high-altitude grassland smudged with occasional flocks of sheep and cattle and small gatherings of isolated yurts. We stayed at a yurt camp near the ancient fortress and caravansary of Tash Rabat that is separated from the wider grassland by the Dragon Mountains. Near the Chinese border there were snow capped peaks (the Celestial Mountains, Tien Shahn), but they were obscured by a haze of loess dust that was unrelated to the dust churned up by the enormous Chinese trucks that travel the highway. The highway was, no doubt, once paved. The process of crossing the border involved multiple check points each of which involving a ritual of multiple passport inspections. We were checked and rechecked both before and after passing through a winding section of no-mans-land. A long dusty descent invigorated by miles of road construction brought us to a final inspection, with photographs added to the file, and to Kashgar.

Kashgaria

In reading the narratives of British visitors to Kashgar the Chinese name for the region, Xinjiang, tends to be replaced by ‘Chinese Turkistan’ or ‘Tartary’, but Kashgar was its own center of power, hence the term Kashgaria. Local Uyghur nationalists call it Uyghurstan or Eastern Turkestan thus linking it with other Turkic regions rather than to China or Tibet. Silk Road traders came through Kashgar because it was the junction of the branches of the road that flowed to the north and south of the Taklamaken desert.

It is not easy on visiting Kashgar to imagine the old city with 50 foot high mud walls as it was in 1940 when the noted climber and writer Eric Shipton was sent there as British Consul General or in 1946 to 48 when he served a second term (in Mountains of Tartary.) His task on the second occasion was to hand over the Consulate to India and Pakistan; they were newly independent and unclear how they should deal with their new responsibility to look after the interests of wandering traders from Ladakh and Hunza. By October of 1949 the Chinese Communists had taken over from the Nationalists and the consulates in Kashgar had a new set of problems to deal with.

The Consulate building remains; it is now a restaurant. The massive willow tree that must have dominated the garden still stands. The former Russian consulate is also a restaurant.

Both consulates date back to the Great Game period. When Francis Younghusband in 1887 made his epic journey across China that led him to the north side of K2 and to Srinagar by way of a high Karakoram pass he was surprised to find a Russian Consulate in Kashgar. When he invited the Consul General to tea the consul arrived with 16 Cossack carrying Russian flags. Younghusband had a second notable encounter in 1891. He was sent to Kashgar and from there proceeded to Bozai Gumbaz in the Pamirs where he encountered a force of 30 Cossacks and an unambiguous declaration that this was Russian territory. This convinced all concerned that Russian expansion was a serious matter. The borders of Imperial Russia were close to Kashgaria, Chinese power was weak and the British territories were on the other side of high passes. (See Tournament of Shadows, Meyer and Brysac, 1999; Younghusband, Patrick French, 1994)

The rule of the Tsar gave way to the Soviets and the Soviets were intent on rearranging Central Asia. Peter Fleming (the literary uncle of James Bond) in “Report from Tartary” described the political situation when he arrived at the Consulate in 1935. He set out from Peking traveling to the south of the Taklamaken desert to reach Kashgar at a time when the situation in the province was almost totally unknown to the outside world. There were, in fact, a series of warring factions that included Manchurians, White Russians, Turkis and Tungans. The Soviets were deeply involved: there were Russian advisors in Kashgar and Umruchi and the national government exerted little control. Kashgar was run by a local warlord in cahoots with the Russian Consulate aided by the advisors and the warlord's secret police. When in 1940 Eric Shipton arriving for his first stint as a consul he found the Soviets equally present. It was wartime and it was uncertain whether the Soviets were friend or foe. The Chinese Republican government in Nanking was still very far away.

Later when the Chinese Communists came to power the Russian advisors seem to have gradually departed. There were various uprisings. There was a brief attempt to set up a Turkik Republic in Khotan, but the overall consequence seems to have been a steady influx of Han Chinese. The Great Leap Forward beginning in 1958 led to starvation in central China and this encouraged the Han migration into Xinjiang. In 1960 this pressure caused Uyghurs to flee to the Soviet Union. A major migration of Han Chinese started in 2,000 as an 'Open the West' campaign. The immigrants were deployed to ensure that they were a dominant force in each regional subdivision and along all major routs. The influx of Han Chinese has consolidated the native population under a Uyghur identity and brought together groups that were formerly diverse. They have learned to speak the same coded language. The Chinese recruited cadres of Uyghurs that would be loyal to the government.

There are crumbling bits of the city walls of Kashgar left, but the narrow lanes of the old city in front of the Id Kah Mosque were obliterated when the area was flattened by the Chinese administration to make a ceremonial plaza. This action promoted not ‘harmony’ but riots. When Colin Thuberon visted Kashgar in 2003 the plans for the clearing were on display (Shadow of the Silk Road.)Such tension between the native population and the immigrant Han Chinese came to the boil in Urumchi, the other major city of Xinjiang, in 2009. Rioting natives were met by vigilante Han mobs. The influx of Han Chinese has consolidated the native population under a Uighur identity brought together groups that were formerly diverse.

As result of these migration policies Kashgar has become a modern Chinese city with a major Han presence analogous to the dual community situation in Lhasa, Tibet. Kashgar does have some attractive older streets and these were not far from our Tarim Petroleum Hotel where we stayed. They were used as location sets in the filming of the Kite Runner. These older streets form a regular tourist area, though the activites are locally driven. However, we are still trying to puzzle out why someone was being paid to follow us around and take photographs of us taking photographs. The photograph shows our watcher pretending to be interested in photographing bread. Since returning I have been reading The Uyghurs, Strangers in Their own Land by Gardner Bovington (Columbia UP, 2010.) His discription of the Chinese divide-and-rule policy fully explains why no one, including our guide, was willing to comment on the present political situation. The parallels to Tibet are not accidental.

To the Pamirs

The next stage was to reenter Kyrgyzstan by the Irkestam Pass--further to the south than our departure route.. The loess haze had departed, an unusual event, and for 200 km we passed by a paved road through desert hills layered in shades of red, yellow and purple. At the pass we once more went through multiple checks before entering a 7 km no-mans-land where we studied the long line of trucks enduring to endless wait until our new land cruiser's arrived. Beyond the border we entered a new realm of high altitude pasture, the Alay valley.To the south a long line of snow capped peaks, the Trans-Alay range of the Northern Pamirs, arose abruptly from the grassland. Somewhere hiding in this vast landscape the Main Pamir Fault marks the line where the older basin rocks underthrust the northern Pamirs. This is also a suture line where the Northern Pamir terrain became attached to the Asian mainland. To the west along the border range is Lenin Peak (7,134 m /23,406 ft).

To this peak is attached an important example of the political reidentification made necessary by the break up of the Soviet Union. In Tajikistan Lenin Peak is now officially named after the Ismali physician and philosopher Ibn Sina, better known in the West as Avicenna (980-1037.) He belongs to the golden age of Islamic enlightenment. His vast achievements include an encyclopedia The Canon of Medicine, but he also contributed to astronomy, algebra, trigonometry and discussed the nature of experimental knowledge. In Dushambe he is represented by a statue. Most remarkably, the Russian built Opera House was featuring an opera about his life.

TO FOLLOW SHORTLY
Part 2: Journey to the Tajik-Afghan border.

Beyond the Karakoram

The Pamir Highway

On the 1994 Snow Lake trip to Pakistan (see Himalayan Portfolios, pp 13-25) we descended the Hispar Glacier and then took a crazy jeep ride to Karimabad in the Hunza valley. Karimabad is on the Karakoram Highway that was created by Pakistan and China to link Islamabad to Kashgar. Kashgar is a major oasis on the edge of the Taklamaken desert and a nexus on the ancient Silk Road. As we had a day to spare, several of us hired a jeep to follow the Karakoram highway to the Kunjarab Pass that is the Pakistan-China border. The broad pass is cluttered with shops selling Chinese goods. There were lines of decorated Pakistani trucks and uniformly blue Chinese trucks all waiting to clear customs. Behind us, south, was the Karakoram, to the left, extending far into Afghanistan, was the Hindu Kush and ahead to the north was the road to Kashgar that passes through the eastern edge of the Pamirs. As conditions in Pakistan and Afghanistan have degenerated, this part of the Silk Road has seemed to be more and more unreachable.

This Blog is to say the unreachable should be reached by my wife (Betty) and I this August.

We expect to fly to Bishkek (B) the capital of Kyrgyzstan (KYR) where we hope to get a political briefing from one of Betty’s former students who is at the US Embassy. We then join the group trip --follow the red line on the map. Our first stage is to journey southward across Kyrgyzstan over the southern ranges of the Tien Shan Mountains and reach Kashgar in China. The major line of the Tien Shan sweeps to the north of Kashgar and the Taklamakan Desert. The boundary between the Tien Shan and the Pamirs, the Main Pamir Thrust Fault, is in southern Kyrgystan. Note the jigsaw arrangement of bondaries in this troubled area.

The second part of our journey is to reenter Kyrgystan by a more southerly pass and join the Pamir Highway at Sari Tash. The Highway enters Tajikistan (TAJ) a little to the east of the peak that continies to be named after Lenin but is also known as Independence (7,134m / 23,405ft). We continue south over various high passes until the road drops down to the valley of the Wakhan Corridor. To the south of the corridor is the Hindu Kush. This corridor, which stretches to the Chinese border, was created in 1896 to separate Russian and British spheres of influence by a thin strip of Afghanistan. The Wakhan River becomes the Pyanj River that becomes the Amu Darya River, the legendary Oxus. The Oxus drains into the dead-end Aral Sea. The Amu Darya river forms a northern boundary to Afghanistan. Our route takes us from the Afghan border to our final destination Dushanbe (D).

We will probably be unreachable until we return August 19. My immediate challenge is to pack.

A Geological Interlude

The Strange Case of the Iapetus Suture

The conjunction of the Icelandic eruption with my visit to England (see my last Blog) caused me to wander again in tectonic realms.

My starting point was the matter of volcanic island arcs that are created by the tectonic subduction of oceanic plates. In Himalayan Portfolios I discussed the Kohistan-Ladakh arc that became the area between the greater Himalayan chain and the Karakoram. This topic awakened me to the presence of an arc nearer home. In my April Blog I mentioned the remains of an island arc which runs south to north in Connecticut to the east of the Connecticut valley where it is known as the Bronson Hill formation. It continues up through Massachussets, New Hampshire and northeast across Maine. This arc formed in the early to mid Ordovician period in what geologists call the Iapeatus Ocean. This was a time before there was any Atlantic Ocean and before a diversity of oddly composed continents assembled into the super continent Pangaea. The arc formed off the coast of Laurentia (later to become North America). Continuing plate motion thrust the arc against the mainland around 450 million years ago producing a substantial "Taconic" mountain range. (This is the simple account; the details of the process are exceedingly murky.) The Taconic mountain-building process was an early stage in the formation of the northern Appalachian Mountains. The Scottish Grampian mountain building process took place about this time (see below.)

Also in the Ordovician period, but thousands of miles away on the other side of the Iapetus Ocean, another subduction of the Ocean floor began the process that created the English Lake District. Between 460 and 450 million years ago subduction generated the Eykott Volcanic Group, and, later, the larger Borrowdale Volcanic Group. A large island caldera, similar to the Greek island of Santorini, may have repeatedly built up and then erupted. These volcanic islands eventually docked with the coast of a mini continent known to geologists as Avalonia. Lava flows and vast amounts of ash covered the area and the mountains created formed the core of the Lake District. This European end of Avalonia later became the underlying layers of England and Wales, southeast Ireland, most of the Isle of Man and part of Belgium. Not far away was another slightly larger continent: Baltica (Norway etc.)

The Suture: In the Ordovician period there were no land plants or land animals, but the island volcanoes must have made life very unpleasant for local trilobites and graptolites. These had distinct forms according to whether they resided on the Avalonian or Laurentian side of the Iapatus Ocean. Scotland along with New England was on the Laurention side of the ocean far away from Avalonia and Baltica (hence the Grampian and Taconic connection.) This public-domain map from Wikipedia shows the Iapetus Suture in red and the fosil distribution after the Iapetus Ocean closed about 400 million years ago in the late Silurian and Early Devonian.

The Iapetus closure generated the Acadian round of mountain building on both the Laurentian and Avalonian sides of the suture. [Getting the nomenclature straight for the various mountain building events and rest periods is quite difficult (see Figs 1 and 2, McKerrow, Niocaill & Dewey). The term Caladonian mountain bulidng has been applied in many different ways, somtimes as a part of the Acadian process. In Avalona in its independent period prior to the formation of the Borrowdale Volcanics there was (Late Cambrian and early Ordovician) a mountain building process associated with Penobscot in Maine and with North Wales.

The Split: The process of continental assembly continued into the Permian with the addition of Gondwana (Africa etc) to form Pangea. More mountain building took place in the central and southern Appalachians as a result (Alleghenean mountain building). When Pangea split up in the Triassic and Jurassic period there was a false start creating the Connecticut rift valley, but finally the split came to the east. The magma spewing ridge that created the Atlantic Ocean ignored the Iapetus suture. It sliced through Avalonia leaving part attached to Laurentia and left Scotland attached to England. It also created the Icelandic volcanoes -- which brings us full circle.

An Avalonian Trek. Connecticut hosts the end of the non European end of Avalonia. The start of the terrain seems to be the granitic gneiss at lighthouse point by New Haven harbor. A little down the rocky coast is the Stony Creek quarry that provided the granite for the base of the statue of Liberty. The Bedrock Geological Map of Connecticut shows that Avalonian rocks underthrust the gneiss fieldstone in the Eastern Highlands, however, a small area of Avalonian rocks is exposed in the middle of the Eastern region near Willimantic. A walk along the Avalonian terrain would begin in Connecticut, continue through Massachusetts, Maine, New Bruswick, Nova Scotia and southern Newfoundland. It would continue through southern Ireland. The suture line in passing between Ieland and the border between Scotland and England clips the western tip of the Isle of Man. Most of the island is Avalonia derived; the short costal strip of Laurentia is known as the Dalby group. The Avalonia trek could wind up in the Lake District and North Wales.

The Noble Cause: Having expounded the case for an independent Avalonia it remains to suggest that Avalonia, less fictional than Ruritana, is clearly in need of a national anthem. There are precedents. Any reasonable suggestion will be posted. It could begin: Rocks, rocks, rocks, rocks/ You gotta learn to take your knocks. / Take em, take em, in your stride/ With the old volcanic pride...

Adventure Travel

An Exultation of Skylarks

My last Blog concerning the UK sales of Himalayan Portfolios was written hastily before I made a trip to England. I went to visit to my brother who lives in Kirkby Lonsdale, a small market town to the north of Lancaster in the Lune valley. This town is on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales and close to the Lake District. In early April it is lambing time. This picture was taken in a field a short distance from my brother's house.


The view from the back widows of the house is towards Middleton Fell, Barbon Fell and Gragareth on the far side of the Lune valley. Further to the distant right is Ingleborough whose distinctive flat top is a layer of millstone grit that sits above the more easily weathered Carboniferous limestone. All these fells are open moorland with occasional limestone outcrops, caves and potholes. The fells are crossed in places by long dry-stone walls. An occasional sheep farm can be found tucked into an upper valley positioned along a spring lines. The following picture of myself was taken at the trigonometric point on the top of Gragareth (627m / 2,057ft). This is the highest point in Lancashire. Few places that I know give such a sense of floating in the sky. We were accompanied by an exaltation of skylarks.
K E Visit

Seven of my view-camera trips to the Himalayas were taken with KE Adventure Travel. My visit provided a splendid opportunity to stop by their Lake Road office in Keswick (in the Lake District) and drop off a copy of Himalayan Portfolios. At the time of my first trip with KE to the Karakoram they were called Karakoram Experience. Since then they have greatly expanded into other areas, hence the name change.

I was lucky enough to find two of my former trek leaders in Keswick: Pete Royal (Rolwaling) and Jonathon Hughes (aka Frog: Gondoro La and K2 BC). Pete was working in the KE office and Frog in a local climbing gear shop. I also met the owner Kit Wilkinson. The upshot was a story about the book posted on their current news letter. As the news letter contents will change with time, the gist of their message will be added to the Reviews on my web site. They plan to keep the book in the office and before long two of my photographs should be hanging on their walls (Snow Lake, p23, and Kangchenjunga, p127). Stop by the office and say hello.

VEy ya Fyat-lah YOU-khut

On Thursday April 15, the day we hiked up Gragareth, the morning news announced the eruption of the Iceland volcano Eyja-fjalla–jokull. By the evening the ash plume had closed most UK airports. It was comforting to learn the name translates as Island-Mountain-Glacier. According to the New York Times it can be sounded out more or less as in the paragraph heading. There is a slight h sound before the initial E and a final glottal t. Begin with “Hey ya, fergot la, yoghurt” and practice.

Each morning brought further messages of doom. I was due to fly back by Iceland Air from Manchester on the Wednesday, April 21. Late Tuesday the ash cloud briefly diverted and next day my flight arrived at the strangely empty airport only three hours late. In Keflavik my continuing flight was waiting and I safely reached Boston. My luggage arrived 3 days later. Manchester airport closed again the next day.