Before I left America I agonized for some time over what kind of tent to bring. Sure I wanted my stuff to be light, but I didn't really try too hard (at Karakol Lake Spencer and I both bought magic rocks that are shaped like eggs and they glow in the dark....the guy promised us that only 1 min. of direct sunlight would provide 24 hours of glowing rock....I can't really consider myself ultra-light if I'm going to be carrying around glow-in-the-dark-magic rocks). I didn't want a one man tent because those are too small and most two man tents are kind of big for one person. So I bought the Big Agnes Seedhouse SL 2. It's labeled ultra-light, which doesn't hurt, and the sizing is perfect. It would be a little tight for two people, unless I really liked the other person, but makes for a very roomy one person tent. We've been in some wind storms, snow storms, sand storms, rainstorms and Breckan trips over my guy lines every time she walks past and the thing has held up great. Then the other day my zipper broke. It has two zippers, but the one that broke is the one I like the most (as in, one zips from the bottom and one from the top, and I liked the one that zips from the top.....). I emailed Big Agnes and they're sending me a new tent. Just like that. Which makes me like Big Agnes.
We're heading out to do some more trekking tomorrow. Then after that I'll head to Islamabad to get some visa's for the Central Asian countries I plan on visiting.
6.29.2009
6.28.2009
Trekking
We're in Gilgit , Pakistan. We've been doing a lot of trekking lately, and not much bike riding. We've only ridden 150 km or so in the past 3 weeks. It's weird....
We spent a few days camped near the base of Nanga Parbat, the worlds 9th largest peak. We saw a game of 'freestyle' polo played.
We're planning on doing some more trekking, so I don't think I'll be on my bike much for another 2 weeks. I'm getting anxious to start riding again.
This keyboard is bad, so I'll write more later....
Spencer in Ultar Meadows.
Spencer while winding our way through Karimibad. 
The hair coming out the sides is moustache hair. He normally keeps it tucked behind his ears, but he pulled it out for the picture.
Polo with Nanga Parbat in the background.
Little Pakistani boy racing his horse behing our jeep.
6.21.2009
Yak
This is for Ethan, Kennedy, Jack, Landon and Presely:
That was easy....any other requests?
That was easy....any other requests?Tami - my knee is fantastic and I love my bike. I would have been fine with a regular touring bike, but mine is super comfy and anything I want to buy or find or add on fits easy. We often ride on gravely bad roads, and when going downhill my bike rides a lot like a mountain bike. Which I like. I get a lot of comments on how long I am, which Spencer always finds amusing....
Sarah - that is part of plans A, C & E. Would you mind getting a sailboat, picking me and my worlds longest bike up in Portugal and hauling us across the water? That would help me with my planning....
6.18.2009
Some Pakistan Pictures
All cargo trucks are flamboyantly decorated with shiny pinwheels and tassles. I love it.
Spencer on the Karakorum Highway.
The evening view from our hotel room the first night we were in Pakistan.
On the KKH.
Near Passu. The first suspension bridge is down and to the right and crosses the entire river bed.
Spencer on the suspension bridge.
The bridge was really cool so we took a ton of pictures. It took about 5 min. to walk across and had cables running off the sides for stabilization. It was mostly stable, but the boards we walked on were woven into the cables and several were split. They weren't spaced very evenly and it was hard to trust them.
Near the second suspension bridge. After we crossed the bridge we walked through the small village on the other side. Some local kids volunteered to show us the way. We didn't think we would need any help, but then the village turned into this maze of paths and irrigation ditches which wound between houses and fields for a long time. We then crossed the KKH and walked up into the valley by my right shoulder to a lake called Borit Lake. It's a salty lake with no inflow or outflow and had a really brilliant turqouise patch of water in the middle. We got drinks at a small restaurant overlooking the lake. On the north side were green fields of potatoes and wheat, on the west side was a rocky mountain and the south side had a snowy ridgeline which went back to some big mountains covered in snow. We sat on the east side in the sun.
I took this from the jeep we rode in. Our road cuts to the through the middle of the picture. The old trail that the locals walked on before the road was built, in 2003, starts on the right above my road and then zigzags up the center. We see trails like this all over the place. 
We don't see very many women. Only on buses or sometimes when wandering through residential parts of villages. None of them work in stores or restaurants or hotels.We tried going on a 5 day trek the other day. My giardia kicked in so I stayed back on the first day and went the next day to see if I could meet them on their way back. I never met up with them. The next day snowed so we all ended up coming back early. The trail I was on went past several shepherd huts where people live for the summer to graze their cows or sheep or goats or yaks. I didn't have a map or a stove or anyway to cook any food so Yasim (a restaurant/hotel owner) wrote me a note to give to his brother which said he should feed me (his brother lived in a shepherd hut for the summer). The first shepherd hut I came to was peopled by women. Only women. I approached them to show them my note because I wasn't sure which way to go, and they all ran from me. Later that day some women working in a field started to follow me from about 30 yards away. When I stopped they stopped. When I walked they walked at my same speed. Spencer had a similar experience, so it wasn't me....
I easily found Yasim's brother and he gave me rice and offered me a million cups of tea (suck on that Greg Mortensen....). This shepherd hut and most of the other shepherd huts I saw had only men. All the families in the village send up their boys or men to work in the mountains and they all help out. Thinking there would be a designated place to go to the bathroom (there were about 60 men working and living at these huts), I asked Yasim's brother where I should go, he said "it's only men, go wherever you like." I camped near one of the shepherd settlements and then walked back the next day in the rain.
This old shepherd is making Barus. It's cheese. He gave me a cup of it without draining the liquid so it was the consistency almost of cottage cheese, but more runny. It wasn't bad. I didn't ask for a second cup, but it wasn't bad. In town we order Barus all the time. It comes served on Chupatid bread, which is like tortilla's, and has chives and other spices mixed in.
I camped near the shepherds huts so the animals grazed all around my tent. That's a yak in the background. Golden Peak (aka Spantik) is in the back center, but is hidden by the clouds. It came out a few times at night was spectacular. There are Japanese and Korean expeditions trying to climb it right now.
Yasim, hotel owner, is behind Spencer. The man next to Breckan is a Pashtun from outside Lahore, he was in town overseeing the installation of a cell phone tower. He didn't speak any english. All the local people are Nagyr's. There are very distinct cultural differences between the different cultures here, so everyone gave the Pashtun a hard time. Taliban are mostly Pashtun's so everyone kept calling him the Taliban. He also cheated at cards. The locals joke alot about the Taliban. There aren't any Taliban in northern Pakistan and everyone thinks it necessary to reassure us of this. Tourism is hurting here really badly because of the Taliban and it's frustrating these people because there aren't and have never been problems up here. We get asked alot if the Chinese have a lot of tourists right now. I think it's because they hope that tourism is down everywhere and not just for them. That and they probably don't understand why anyone would go to China and not Pakistan....and I kind of agree with them.
I get jokes alot that I look like Taliban because of my beard. Spencer gets jokes that he looks Iranian because of his. We're pretty sure that's meant as a slam.
6.13.2009
Karimabad, PAKISTAN
The first thing we did after entering Pakistan was rent kalishnikov's. The deposit wasn't very much and the rental system is very affordable and effecient. Since we all got one they gave us a huge discount on ammunition, which is dirt cheap anyway. I'm seriously considering getting a full body bullet proof suit because we get shot so much. All the getting shot slows our progress.
The Karakoram Highway has got to be one of the coolest places I've ever been. And I get to ride my bike on it. The Khunjerab Pass marks the border between China and Pakistan and the road plunges into a huge canyon, which we haven't left yet. We're surrounded by monstrous mountains on all sides. Every corner we turn reveals another snow covered peak or glacier. If it's not covered in snow then it's just rocks. I've never seen so many rocks. The road will go through narrow gorges and then open up to large valleys, and everything is rocks. I'm really having a hard time describing how fantastic it is.
Almost every valley we see has a small village. Each village has green trees and green fields all over. They've built very intricate irrigation ditches which run from the glaciers, across mountain slopes and into their towns where they divert the water to each and every field. While walking through most towns there aren't any roads or sidewalks, just small pathways alonside the ditches. Several villages are perched high up on cliffsides, with no road acces. From the highway we can often times look across to the other side of the canyon and see small faint signs of a trail carved into the mountainside leading to one of these villages. It's incredible.
We took a 4 hour 55 km jeep ride to a small village called Shimshal. There has only been a road suitable for a jeep since 2003. Before that it was a 3 day walk from the village to the highway. The village is something like 700 years old and is set back in a valley surrounded by mountains and glaciers. It was unreal how that road was cut into the mountainside. Rocks were simply stacked onto small outcroppings on the cliffs, and after their were enough rocks they filled in some gravel. All the bridges are cable suspension bridges, so when the jeep would drive onto it the whole bridge would sway up and down. It was interesting talking to the locals about how their society has changed. We met a man who was married to his 8 year old wife when he was 14. They lived with their own families for the first 10 years or so and had their first of 8 children after 12 years of marriage. Marriages now take place when the men are in their mid to late twenties or early thirties. Sometimes they're arranged by the parents, sometimes not. But not forced. Education is what changed the early marriage practice. Boys and girls are moving out of their villages and going to the big cities for education, but then returning to the middle of nowhere because that is their village. They take a lot of pride in where they live.
Pakistani food has changed everything with my stomach. I complained a lot about the Chinese food, but I didn't realize how bad the Chinese food was until I got here. The food is fantastic. I wake up in the morning and lay in my tent excitedely thinking about what I'll eat for breakfast. I haven't been excited about eating in nearly 60 days. 60 days. Sixty Days. Now I try to keep my snacking to a minimum because I want to save room for meals. And the snacks are good, so it's not easy. We eat chupati with almost everything. It's a bread, similar to tortilla's but thicker. We don't use utensils, we use our chupati as spoons and scoop our food onto it. We eat a lot of Dal, which is a lentil dish. It's working wonders on my digestive system. They serve us milk tea with sugar (an ingredient which is non-existent in china), I've had pudding, apricot cake, chocolate cake, biryani dishes, mountain dew, cherries, bread, fried eggs that were'nt soaked in oil and all sorts of good candy bars. It's fantastic. It's 10 pm and I'm going to try and get some more dinner before I go to bed.
The people have also been fantastic. Everyone speaks english and they're super friendly. It's nice to be able to talk to the locals.
The Karakoram Highway is under construction right now and the crews are mostly Chinese with some Pakistani's working also. It's funny to hear the Pakistani's complain about the Chinese. Because I have similar complaints. Alot of it is centered around the food the Chinese eat....
We're in Karimabad right now and are heading out on a 5 day hike to some lakes and mountains. I have to rent a backpack so I can carry my tent.
I'll try and post some more pictures, but the power goes off randomly every hour or so and it's very frustrating to upload pictures.
Pakistan has flush toilets and the bathrooms have toilet paper and a hose, so I have options.
The Karakoram Highway has got to be one of the coolest places I've ever been. And I get to ride my bike on it. The Khunjerab Pass marks the border between China and Pakistan and the road plunges into a huge canyon, which we haven't left yet. We're surrounded by monstrous mountains on all sides. Every corner we turn reveals another snow covered peak or glacier. If it's not covered in snow then it's just rocks. I've never seen so many rocks. The road will go through narrow gorges and then open up to large valleys, and everything is rocks. I'm really having a hard time describing how fantastic it is.
Almost every valley we see has a small village. Each village has green trees and green fields all over. They've built very intricate irrigation ditches which run from the glaciers, across mountain slopes and into their towns where they divert the water to each and every field. While walking through most towns there aren't any roads or sidewalks, just small pathways alonside the ditches. Several villages are perched high up on cliffsides, with no road acces. From the highway we can often times look across to the other side of the canyon and see small faint signs of a trail carved into the mountainside leading to one of these villages. It's incredible.
We took a 4 hour 55 km jeep ride to a small village called Shimshal. There has only been a road suitable for a jeep since 2003. Before that it was a 3 day walk from the village to the highway. The village is something like 700 years old and is set back in a valley surrounded by mountains and glaciers. It was unreal how that road was cut into the mountainside. Rocks were simply stacked onto small outcroppings on the cliffs, and after their were enough rocks they filled in some gravel. All the bridges are cable suspension bridges, so when the jeep would drive onto it the whole bridge would sway up and down. It was interesting talking to the locals about how their society has changed. We met a man who was married to his 8 year old wife when he was 14. They lived with their own families for the first 10 years or so and had their first of 8 children after 12 years of marriage. Marriages now take place when the men are in their mid to late twenties or early thirties. Sometimes they're arranged by the parents, sometimes not. But not forced. Education is what changed the early marriage practice. Boys and girls are moving out of their villages and going to the big cities for education, but then returning to the middle of nowhere because that is their village. They take a lot of pride in where they live.
Pakistani food has changed everything with my stomach. I complained a lot about the Chinese food, but I didn't realize how bad the Chinese food was until I got here. The food is fantastic. I wake up in the morning and lay in my tent excitedely thinking about what I'll eat for breakfast. I haven't been excited about eating in nearly 60 days. 60 days. Sixty Days. Now I try to keep my snacking to a minimum because I want to save room for meals. And the snacks are good, so it's not easy. We eat chupati with almost everything. It's a bread, similar to tortilla's but thicker. We don't use utensils, we use our chupati as spoons and scoop our food onto it. We eat a lot of Dal, which is a lentil dish. It's working wonders on my digestive system. They serve us milk tea with sugar (an ingredient which is non-existent in china), I've had pudding, apricot cake, chocolate cake, biryani dishes, mountain dew, cherries, bread, fried eggs that were'nt soaked in oil and all sorts of good candy bars. It's fantastic. It's 10 pm and I'm going to try and get some more dinner before I go to bed.
The people have also been fantastic. Everyone speaks english and they're super friendly. It's nice to be able to talk to the locals.
The Karakoram Highway is under construction right now and the crews are mostly Chinese with some Pakistani's working also. It's funny to hear the Pakistani's complain about the Chinese. Because I have similar complaints. Alot of it is centered around the food the Chinese eat....
We're in Karimabad right now and are heading out on a 5 day hike to some lakes and mountains. I have to rent a backpack so I can carry my tent.
I'll try and post some more pictures, but the power goes off randomly every hour or so and it's very frustrating to upload pictures.
Pakistan has flush toilets and the bathrooms have toilet paper and a hose, so I have options.
6.12.2009
6.06.2009
Karakoram Highway - Tashkurgan
I'm still in China and I still can't get on blogger so I can't post any pictures....I can't imagine this being anything near interesting without pictures....so I'll try and hurry....
I didn't think the Karakoram Highway would turn fantastically beautiful until we hit Pakistan. But it was fantastically beautiful from the moment we left Kashgar.
The road was flat for the first 80 km out of Kashgar and took us through green pastures with irrigation ditches running wildly through them. The Pamirs of Tajikistan (where I hope to be in about 1.5 months) popped up to the west very quickly followed by the Karakoram mountains in front of us. The road took us into deep canyons surrounded by sandy mountains and ridges with glacier rivers running through the center.
The next day was one of our 4th biggest climbing days, but didn't really feel like it because of a slight tailwind and the impressive scenery. There isn't much growing up here, small shrubs every once in awhile, but mostly just rocks. Lots of rocks. A river is still running down the center of the gorge, sometimes it's a wide river bottom with lots of empty braids, sometimes it's narrow and the water is fast.
The people aren't Uighur anymore. There are Kyrzyg's and Tajik's and I don't know what else. Alot of the kids look white. Brown hair. Blue and green eyes. It's incredible that I've been in China for nearly 60 days and it feels like I've gone through 5 different countries. Everything changes. The food, the language, the architecture, the clothing. China is fantastic.
We reached Karakol Lake early one afternoon and ate 'dinner' (these people speak a surprising amount of english. We hear more english here than on 98% of the roads we've ridden on in china. But this guy only new one word for meal, so all three meals are 'dinner') at some Kyrgyz's yurt. It was a nomadic yurt, one that he could take down and set up regularly. We ordered rice pilaf, which had mostly already been prepared, and Breckan wanted noodles. When we got inside the man's wife made the dough and pressed the noodles right there in front of us before cooking them. She did it really fast. And never really washed her hands.....
The lake is around 3,600 m above sea level and ringed with short green grass. There are several huge glaciated mountains all around. The locals feed travelers in their own homes and rent out their yurts for people to sleep in. It was cold and the lake was pretty so we slept in a yurt. The animal skin covering the 5 foot diameter hole in the ceiling leaked, so when it snowed for 3 hours in the evening it got wet inside. But the yak dung fire kept us warm. I bought a 30 min camel ride for $1.40. It was a double humped camel and the kid told me to hold onto the hump. It wasn't a very big hump, it was hairy and kind of felt like a bean bag with too many beans in it.
The other day we had just reached the top of a 4,093 m pass (13,400 ft) and were putting on another layer of clothes before the descent. It was snowing and windy and probably right around 32 F. A Volkswagen pulled up and a Dutch woman got out and took some pictures and said 'hi'. They were an elderly couple on a guided trip to Tashkurgan. The car drove away and then quickly stopped and backed up. The man got out and gave us a bag of baby nectarines, the whole time apologizing that that was all he had. He got back into his car and then came back once more with a tin of fancy lifesaver type candies that had been half eaten. And again apologized that that was all he had. It was very kind of him and the fruit and candy were delicious. But I thought it was kind of odd how apologetic he was. Then I realized that in his eyes he probably thought we were in a precarious situation and he felt bad that he couldn't help us more. In reality none of us thought twice about our situation. We were just putting on more clothes. It was actually a much more comfortable situation than a few weeks ago. We knew we were going downhill. We knew there was a town 70 km ahead. And we were pretty sure it wouldn't be snowing once we got lower (it ended up pouring rain on us for the last hour). It's all a matter of perspective.
We're now in Tashkurgan and are heading into Pakistan tomorrow. Everything I've heard is that this road gets prettier and prettier. I can't wait to see how it possibly can.
I didn't think the Karakoram Highway would turn fantastically beautiful until we hit Pakistan. But it was fantastically beautiful from the moment we left Kashgar.
The road was flat for the first 80 km out of Kashgar and took us through green pastures with irrigation ditches running wildly through them. The Pamirs of Tajikistan (where I hope to be in about 1.5 months) popped up to the west very quickly followed by the Karakoram mountains in front of us. The road took us into deep canyons surrounded by sandy mountains and ridges with glacier rivers running through the center.
The next day was one of our 4th biggest climbing days, but didn't really feel like it because of a slight tailwind and the impressive scenery. There isn't much growing up here, small shrubs every once in awhile, but mostly just rocks. Lots of rocks. A river is still running down the center of the gorge, sometimes it's a wide river bottom with lots of empty braids, sometimes it's narrow and the water is fast.
The people aren't Uighur anymore. There are Kyrzyg's and Tajik's and I don't know what else. Alot of the kids look white. Brown hair. Blue and green eyes. It's incredible that I've been in China for nearly 60 days and it feels like I've gone through 5 different countries. Everything changes. The food, the language, the architecture, the clothing. China is fantastic.
We reached Karakol Lake early one afternoon and ate 'dinner' (these people speak a surprising amount of english. We hear more english here than on 98% of the roads we've ridden on in china. But this guy only new one word for meal, so all three meals are 'dinner') at some Kyrgyz's yurt. It was a nomadic yurt, one that he could take down and set up regularly. We ordered rice pilaf, which had mostly already been prepared, and Breckan wanted noodles. When we got inside the man's wife made the dough and pressed the noodles right there in front of us before cooking them. She did it really fast. And never really washed her hands.....
The lake is around 3,600 m above sea level and ringed with short green grass. There are several huge glaciated mountains all around. The locals feed travelers in their own homes and rent out their yurts for people to sleep in. It was cold and the lake was pretty so we slept in a yurt. The animal skin covering the 5 foot diameter hole in the ceiling leaked, so when it snowed for 3 hours in the evening it got wet inside. But the yak dung fire kept us warm. I bought a 30 min camel ride for $1.40. It was a double humped camel and the kid told me to hold onto the hump. It wasn't a very big hump, it was hairy and kind of felt like a bean bag with too many beans in it.
The other day we had just reached the top of a 4,093 m pass (13,400 ft) and were putting on another layer of clothes before the descent. It was snowing and windy and probably right around 32 F. A Volkswagen pulled up and a Dutch woman got out and took some pictures and said 'hi'. They were an elderly couple on a guided trip to Tashkurgan. The car drove away and then quickly stopped and backed up. The man got out and gave us a bag of baby nectarines, the whole time apologizing that that was all he had. He got back into his car and then came back once more with a tin of fancy lifesaver type candies that had been half eaten. And again apologized that that was all he had. It was very kind of him and the fruit and candy were delicious. But I thought it was kind of odd how apologetic he was. Then I realized that in his eyes he probably thought we were in a precarious situation and he felt bad that he couldn't help us more. In reality none of us thought twice about our situation. We were just putting on more clothes. It was actually a much more comfortable situation than a few weeks ago. We knew we were going downhill. We knew there was a town 70 km ahead. And we were pretty sure it wouldn't be snowing once we got lower (it ended up pouring rain on us for the last hour). It's all a matter of perspective.
We're now in Tashkurgan and are heading into Pakistan tomorrow. Everything I've heard is that this road gets prettier and prettier. I can't wait to see how it possibly can.
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