Pakistan - 26 - Gilgit To Chitral - The Descent

November 6th 2008

Gilgit to Chitral – Part 4 – The Descent

Once we started to descend we realised that it wouldn't be quite as simple as we thought. Yes we would be dropping 2300m to Chitral, but until we reached the tar-sealed road we would be unable to travel much faster than 10km/h and on the worst rocky sections, we'd be lucky to descend at much more than 6km/h. Our hands ached from permanently holding on to the brakes and our shoulders and arms were sore from always trying to absorb the constant shocks of rocks and the occasional boulders that littered the track. We were just incredibly grateful that we were going down rather than up and that we had a well sprung Brooks saddle to sit on. The first 10km were just a frightening drop of 700m down switchback after switchback, to a village that was right below us when we started the descent. All the time we were thinking 'We are not coming back this way!!!!' a real issue for us, as we had been warned that the roads South from Chitral to Peshawar and Islamabad aren't really safe, and that buses and private cars are occasionally held up by the Taliban or bandits. We started to dream of flying out of Chitral directly to Islamabad rather than travelling on this amazing but terrible road ever again. Further down the valley we were forced to take an even worse road as a detour to avoid a bridge destroyed by flood, 15km of hell, I literally felt like crying as my bike groaned it's way along at 5km/hr and I longed for the biscuits hopefully available at the next village – the village where we had stayed, had no shops so we were being fuelled by the Chapati and milk tea we had had for breakfast 4 hours previously. But like every bad moment on a bike, eventually the surface changed as we crossed another bridge and regained the original track, and in seconds our spirits lifted as we saw Chinese road workers smoothing out the surface ready for a future coating of tar. 15km/hr WOW!!!! Eventually, after about 150km of Jeep track the tar started again and we whizzed our way down to Chitral at 40km/hr. Whatever happens though, we are not going back up that road to get to Gilgit and the safe road to Islamabad. We will have to make a new plan.

© Simon Taylor 2008