Pakistan - 7 - An Artificial Landscape

A completely artificial landscape

24th October 2008

The landscape of Northern Pakistan is totally man-made. The valleys get about 70mm of rain a year yet are covered in fruit trees and terraces and people grow all sorts of crops throughout the region including rice. This is all down to the incredible ingenuity of the people and the way they have diverted the flow of the various glacial streams onto the previously arid slopes of the mountains. The whole area is marked by lines cutting through the cliffs carrying water distances of up to 10km to irrigate a village.

We went for a walk around some of the major water channels above Karimabad – there are about 12 in total and whenever it rains it is disaster for the villages, as almost invariably it results in damage to the walls of the channels and real trouble for the people who rely on that particular one for their crops. Some of the channels are very precarious......