HUNZA
The most popular trip from Gilgit, with
the added advantage that it does not involve a perilous jeep journey, is to the
fabled kingdom of Hunza though the Karakoram Range. Even if you do not take your
car up the KKH as far as Gilggit, we urge you to travel the Gilgit – Genesh
section of the highway, either by jeep or by bus.
Leave Gilgit on the road to the karakoram highway. After 10
Km (6miles) turn left to cross the Gilgit, river is the first check Post on the
road to Hunza at the village of Dainyor. (The Gilgit Broadcasting Station is
here) Ask at the barrier for the rock inscriptions giving the history of the
Tibetan kings in the 7th century they are on a rock inside a private
compound.
The road follows the east bank of the river Hunza, skirting
half way round Mount Rakaposhi. Hunza is reached only through the narrowest of
bleak gorges. For mile upon mile there is no sign of life except the river; the
landscape looks like builders’ rubble. You can sometime catch sight of the
Pakistan’ first attempt to build the road before the Chinese came to help them;
it is a ledge some 30 meters above the present highway. On the opposite side of
the river you can see the old jeep track, which was the only southern egress for
the Hunzakuts before the KKH. The jeep journey then took seven hours on a good
day, but it was often blocked by landslides, for this part of the Karakorams is
constantly on the move. Large portions of the old road have entirely disappeared
after only a few years. The trip was, by all accounts, a terrifying experience,
very different from the easy-asphalted highway we use now.
The gorges, some as long as 8km (5 miles), have sheer
sides; one wonders how the travelers on the ancient silk Route managed to
negotiate them, for in summer the river is in flood and it is impossible to pass
on the river bed, and in winter the high passes to the north of Hunza are
blocked by snow. During the winter months when the river, but even then there
were places where, it had to be hauled along the cliffs, lowered by ropes and
steadied by men hanging on to its tail.
The first bi g settlement on the opposite on bank is Normal
32 Km (20 miles) from Gilgit, from where you climb to Nalter. There is no bridge
across the river here. The sands are full of garnets and small iron pyrite, and
is several places the earth is yellow with sulphur. Then, 61 Mm (38miles) from
Gilgit, comes Chalt, also on the opposite side of the river, a wind swept open
plateau at the meeting of three gorges. Chalt, with its near neighbour Chaprot,
and Nlilt, 9 km (6miles) fourther on, was the scene of on the most brilliant
little campaigns in military history; the British war against Hunza and Nagar in
1891.
Captain Algernon Durand, who had re established the Gilgit Agency in 1889 with a large force of Dogra soldiers and British officers under his command, was a sincere if misguided believer in the subjugation of the Dard states to counter the Russian threat. In late November 1891 he moved up a force of 1000 men to chalt to prevent any invasion force from Nagear and Hunza from coming down the gorge to reach Gilgit. He built a new bridge across the Hunza gorge to replace the terrifying bridge of plaited birch twigs and entered Nager territory, overlooking the fortress of Nilt. Here the Dards awaited him armed with no more than 100 modern weapons. The British mountain guns could make no impression on the fortress’s strong walls; eventually the British blew up the main gate an I occupied the fort, one of the most gallant things recorded in Indian warfare’ said knight. Durand, standing in full view of the enemy, was wounded by a home- made bullet of a garnet encased in lead, and was out of action for the remainder of the campaign. He later sent the bullet to his sister as a souvenir.
The defenders rushed out of the fort, the attackers rushed
in, grievous mistake, for by the next day the dared down the Nilt ravine. This
was a grievous mistake, for by the next day. The Dard had reformed behind a
network of prepared defences on the far side of the precipitous ravine, a much
stronger position than the one they had occupied at Nilt there was no way round
the stone breastworks, on which the mountain guns made no impression; the
advancewas halted for three long weeks, the invading force becoming ever more
cold and miserable. The near disaster turned to an overwhelming success when a
force of 100 British and Gurkhas, who had moved down into the Nilt ravine under
cover of darkness, scaled the sheer precipice under the Dard fortifications and
stormed the breastworks. The defenders fled, providing an easy target for the
British guns. One might see many a bigger fight than this’ remarked knight, but
never a prettier one.
An advance party then crossed the Hunza rever and occupied
the Mir’s Palace in Baltit, all resistance at an end. The palace was ransacked
looking for the treasures of many a pillaged caravan and the results of many a
raid’. They found little, however, except for some beautiful books and a secret
chamber containing gunpowder and garnet bullets. Both Hunza and Nagar, who only
a few weeks before had fought the British so bitterly, now welcomed their
conquerors warmly and the Mir of Hunza fled to sinkaing. That the whole campaign
was unnecessary was borne out by the fact that the Hunza people, in 1892 and in
1895, provided voluntarily a force of irregulars to serve under British orders
in Chitra. And by the time the pamir Boundary commission had completed its work
in 1893, it was clear that an invasion force from the north or north west could
never even have reached Hunza, let alone Kashmir .
Along the barren wastes of the Hunza gorge you catch in
termittent glimpses of mount Rakaposhi at 7,788 metres (25,550ft) the
southernmost peak of the Karakorams and perhaps the most photogenic of all the
mountains in the northern areas. Rakaposhi is a snow-covered series of cliffs,
triangles, precipices and peaks, changing colour according to the time of day.
It is a magnificent sight. One of the best views of it is from chalt; another is
from a wide stream 82km (51 nukes) from Gilgit.
The Hunza district starts on the north bank of the Hunza
River 67 km (42 miles) from Gilgit, and Nagar on the south bank.
For 81 km (11miles) the Karakoram Highway runs through
Nagar territory before crossing over to Hunza Nagar and Hunza were once part of
the same ancient Kingdom, but separated in the 15th century undertow
warring brothers.
In both kingdoms every available inch of land is cultivated
and terraced, every resource used. You can see, 77 km (48miles) from Gilgit, a
row of six of seven water mills, all using the same waterpower. These water
mills are common in rural Pakistan, and are pleasing in their simplicity. A
large tree trunk is usually hollowed out to from a sloping pipe through which
the water is directed to increase its force it flows under a little hut and
revolves a gadget resembling an aeroplane propeller. A large round stone with a
small hole in the middle is attached to the revolving propeller and slowly turns
on another stationary stone the grains are dropped, a few at a time, through the
hole and the four dribbles out from between the stones to be collected in a
trough.
Abridge over the river 80 km (50miles) from Gilgit brings
you to the fabled land of Hunza. The cliffs on the Hunza side are still fairly
precipitous but you have a good view of some of the village of Mina pin on a
fertile shelf high above the river. Dudimal, 6 km (4 miles) from the Bridge is
another Nagar village with its compact winter quarters made of stone, perching
in a most precarious position on a narrow shoulder above the sheer high cliffs.
The summer quarters extend up the terraces, culminating in the summer village
right up in the mountains
Now you turn a corner and the Hunza landscape open up
before you, in stark contrast to the grim desolation you have driven through
called by the traveler Erac shipton the ultimate manifestation of mountain
grandeur’ Hunza, at 2, 400 meters (8000 ft) above sea level, is indeed a
fairytale land ‘rich’ fecund and of an ethereal beauty’. Staircases of tiny
terraced fields reaching almost to the snow line have transformed the alluvial
fans of the Side Rivers, each enclosed by a high dry stonewall. The colors
change with the seasons: emerald green in the spring, golden yellow and orange
in the autumn. And everywhere the slender poplar trees cut strong vertical in
the horizontal terraces, standing out against the glacier scarred rock. One
recent visitor Jeremy Bugler, wrote:
The
combination of some of the most prodigious features of nature and the scrupulous
handiwork of meticulous farmers is irresistible. In a glance you can take in
massive glacier and he tiny irrigation canals that take the glacier water to
feed the fields. You see peaks of 8,000 meters (25,000 ft) and a farmer and his
ox-team sloughing a terrace not much larger than a tennis court. Above it all
towers Rakaposhi dominating the entire valley.
HISTORY
OF HUNZA
Hunan’s 30,000 inhabitants have been ruled by the same
family for 1960 rears. They long believed themselves the equals of the great
powers, years. Probably because of their impregnability. A legend states that
the Hunzakuts, as the people of Hunza are known, are descended from five
wandering soldiers from alexander’s army. It is true that some of the people are
fair- haired with blue or green eyes. In central hunza the people speak
Burushaski, Wakhi and aboriginal language.
Hunza retained its isolated independence until the British
conquered it; on the fruits of caravan raids slave trading and attacking it’s
neighbors. It did not become par of Pakistan until 1974, and even now the Mir of
Hunza retains much of his traditional importance. The society is co-operative
rather than competitive; there is remarkably little difference in the people’s
weather, each family growing enough corn, apricots and walnuts for its own use.
The economy used to be entirely self-sufficient, but this is rapidly changing as
the Karakoram Highway opens up the valley.
Hunza was the likely model for the Shangri-La of James
Hilton’s novel ‘Lost Horizon’ where he describes it as a country of peace and
contentment where the people do not ago. The myth of the longevity of the
Hunzakuts probably stems from the fact that it was selected by the National
Geographic magazine as the kingdom where people loved longest, free from social
stress and succored by their high intake of apricots and low intake of animal
fat. Fruit was, and is, the staple diet. During the summer the people used to
eat nothing else; in order to conserve fuel and precious cereals cooking in the
summer months was forbidden. In winter the people ate flour made from apricot
kernels and drank brandy distilled from mulberries, and wines from the grapes
that used to grow everywhere, smothering the poplars and
roofs.
You see
in Hunza a large number of old people, most of them apparently in good health,
but few, if any, live to be 120. Life is as hard in Hunza as it is elsewhere in
the northern areas, particularly in the early spring when the supplies of stored
food are running low.
