Noshaq 2

I expected to reach Noshaq base camp (4450m) and to feel such an overwhelming sense of achievement that it made the gruelling climb worthwhile. It didn't. The shortness of breath, sweat and fatigue were omnipresent, so much so that I felt almost resentful. What on earth was I doing struggling up a mountain no one has heard of in the absolute back of beyond? What was the point?

As we descended, retracing our steps along the rocky ledges and mine-littered scree, my mood began to change. Perhaps it was the renewed thickness of the air, the lower temperature of a cloudy day, or simply that the going is less tough downhill. Everything around me seemed a little brighter and, for the first time, I could appreciate my epic surroundings.

During the ascent I put my slow progress, sweat and pain down to a lack of fitness and lingering food poisoning. On the retreat I realised I'd been overly harsh on myself - the track was in fact incredibly steep and some of the climbs exceptionally long. We had completed what is advertised as a 5-6 day trek in four days and so, although it felt awful, we must have been moving at quite a pace.

Lastly, having not trekked before, I took the trek's guidebook rating of "moderate" as read. However, having later discussed this with Bill, a keen mountaineer and our party's most seasoned trekker, it appears that although the duration and change in elevation put our trek firmly in the moderate category, the condition under foot was quite the worst he had seen. Looking back at my sweaty scrambles across rockfalls, slipping and sliding on slopes of gravel and sand, and hoping feverishly my foothold would stand, I realised that finishing the trek was a challenge but also an achievement. I won't be attempting to climb Noshaq again, but I'm glad I tried it once. 

Noshaq

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.