I am truly in the back of beyond. As I write this evening I am three days walk from the nearest track (calling it a road would be overly generous) and most of the way to Noshaq, Afghanistan's highest mountain. The peak, some 7600m tall if I recall correctly, straddles the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and is similarly inaccessible from both countries. The call of the wild has a certain appeal, however, and so here I am.
Trekking in this terrain is hard. September is a good itime to visit as the rivers are no longer in spate and the first snow is yet to fall, but still the barely visible path is steep and incredibly loose under foot. I half stumble and half crawl across hundreds of yards of last year's avalanches and wonder quite what I'm doing here. You need confidence and good balance in equal measure but whenever I run low on blood sugar, I fear I am short on both. The bruises on my knees certainly attest to that and I have twice ended up in the river. Wet boots are somewhat less than pleasurable and I am at the very limit of what my body can physically manage. I am not sure this is exactly fun.
The one positive thing to have come out of the trek so far is that I have seen a Lammergeier, a bearded vulture with a wingspan 9' long. It is one of the largest birds on earth and yet manages to soar and circle over the valley quite effortlessly. Bill spotted this particular bird not long after the start of the trek, adopted a most comfortable bird watching position (see below!) and the bird fortunately hung around long enough for us all to get a good view through the binoculars.
Trekking in this terrain is hard. September is a good itime to visit as the rivers are no longer in spate and the first snow is yet to fall, but still the barely visible path is steep and incredibly loose under foot. I half stumble and half crawl across hundreds of yards of last year's avalanches and wonder quite what I'm doing here. You need confidence and good balance in equal measure but whenever I run low on blood sugar, I fear I am short on both. The bruises on my knees certainly attest to that and I have twice ended up in the river. Wet boots are somewhat less than pleasurable and I am at the very limit of what my body can physically manage. I am not sure this is exactly fun.
The one positive thing to have come out of the trek so far is that I have seen a Lammergeier, a bearded vulture with a wingspan 9' long. It is one of the largest birds on earth and yet manages to soar and circle over the valley quite effortlessly. Bill spotted this particular bird not long after the start of the trek, adopted a most comfortable bird watching position (see below!) and the bird fortunately hung around long enough for us all to get a good view through the binoculars.
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