Pakistan: Visit to CHITRAL and KALASH VALLEY, Part 1: From the Memoir of Carolyn T. Arnold

Chitral Valley, Pakistan

My husband’s Aunt Carolyn traveled to Pakistan in the 1970's. The following are excerpts from her memoir of her travels.

No place can be truly remote these days, yet getting to Chitral isn’t all that easy. The simplest way is by a Fokker Friendship plane--which has seen better days and only operates sporadically. The mountains between Peshawar and Chitral rise to well over twenty-two thousand feet, and the plane has to negotiate its way through several passes between the peaks. A few clouds obscure the peaks, and several Fokkers, consequently, have failed to complete the trip. No wonder pilots flying over the Himalayas earn a fifty percent bonus!

We arrived at the airport in Peshawar and had to wait until fifteen minutes before departure to get confirmation from Chitral that the wind currents were favorable. We were lucky and received the OK for the flight. It is a spectacular flight over snowy peaks. The most prominent one, called “Trich Mir,” over twenty-five thousand feet, sparkled in the sunlight. [Chitral, is the capital of the Chitral District, situated on the western bank of the Chitral River, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. It served as the capital of the princely state of Chitral until 1969.]

Man plowing field with his oxen

At the airport in Chitral, we were assigned to a jeep, along with seven men and all our luggage. We had not gone far before the jeep gave up and died. Several of the extra passengers tried in vain to coax or push the jeep into town. Finally, some of the men in our group carried our baggage and showed us a short cut, walking past the suspension bridge, along the rice paddy paths, through waist-high grain fields, through a farmyard, over a wall, and up the steps to the hotel, a very modest building. Our rooms were on the second floor, which opened onto a balcony the length of the building. Tea was served at once while we sat and relished the spectacular view of the lush green valley, the rushing river, and directly in front, the breathtaking view of snow-covered Trich Mir. Just below the balcony was a mud-brick farmhouse. Here we could watch, unobserved, vignettes of domestic life: feeding the squawking chickens, milking the cow, shampooing a child’s hair, even the loud scolding of someone out of sight, and later, the father coming home with his wooden plow over his shoulder and leading his oxen.

Road to Kalash Valley

When the jeep driver called for us the next morning, we began a journey to visit the village of Birir in the Kalash Valley. In addition to our driver, another man, plus the four of us tourists made a jeepful for a day’s ride. Also, there was a boy who stood on the rear bumper. We worried about him, but we had learned to accept what we did not understand.

The day was sunny and bright. The road from Chitral followed the river to the village of Ayun. On the other side, I could see patches of bright green fields nestled between high, rocky peaks. After leaving Ayun, the road began to rise in twists and turns, looping higher and higher across the face of the mountain in a series of sharp switchbacks so that even our jeep stalled. Now I learned the purpose of the boy on the bumper. Instead of starting the stalled jeep and risking a lurch on loose gravel which could easily send us fifteen hundred feet below, our boy jumped off, found a large boulder and propped the rear wheels. I was paralyzed with fear. Then, with a whir of the starter, we were off again. This happened many times. Near the top, we were stopped by a mud slide. What next, I thought! Men were working to make a temporary bypass up and away from the edge. Two men shouldered heavy ropes attached to a shovel while another man pushed. In this way, they strained and pulled shovelful after shovelful of mud and rocks to clear the road. By means of the bypass, we were able to continue. Reaching the top, we stopped to admire the view and to stretch our cramped legs. (Part 2, next week.)

Perhaps the original intrepid tourist was Carolyn T. Arnold, my husband’s aunt.  A single school teacher in Des Moines, Iowa, she began traveling abroad when she was in her forties, beginning with a bicycling trip through Ireland in 1950.  She went on from there to spend a year as a Fulbright Exchange Teacher in Wales, to more trips to Europe and beyond, and eventually became a tour leader, taking all her nieces and nephews (including my husband Art) on her travels.  When she retired from teaching, she wrote of her experiences in a memoir called Up and Down and Around the World with Carrie.  Today, as I read of her travels, I marvel at her spirit of adventure at a time when women did not have the independence they do today.  You can read of some of her other adventures in these posts on this blog:  October 21, 2013; October 7, 2013; July 29, 2013.March 10, 2014.