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Post by questa on Jan 10, 2014 0:36:47 GMT
The Far North West Pakistan kept reminding me of my idea of the Land of Mordor.
We were driving up to the border with China which is just after the Khunjerab Pass, the highest border and piece of sealed road on the planet.
We arrived in Sost, the small town that marks the border with the several km of “no man’s land” that divides Pakistan from China. Here we had to leave our excellent driver and minibus, as this neutral territory could only be crossed by special government buses.
Border crossing facilities were very primitive. We lined up to do our immigration business at a window of an old house. We were standing in a stony back yard with other groups of tourists. 2 men moved among the crowd, patting down all the males checking for weapons or drugs.
The females were directed to this hut where a young woman checked us as well. She was 16 weeks pregnant and had bad morning sickness. She had to make a dash for the back of the yard while checking me out. Huddled in that hut all day wouldn’t have helped either.
Everyone hung around, waiting for the buses to come. We set off in a beaten up heap which showed scars of a rough life.
To be continued...
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Post by questa on Jan 10, 2014 0:41:40 GMT
Help, someone...what have I done wrong to get such tidgy pics I'm trying to use imageshack but don't know how.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 10, 2014 0:54:56 GMT
Questa, did you select a size option in ImageShack that would account for that? If that's not the answer, you might be copying the wrong url there. There should be one called "direct url" or "direct url for pasteup" or something like that. Copy that one, then come here & click on the little picture icon. When it opens, paste the url where it says Image url.
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Post by questa on Jan 10, 2014 7:33:38 GMT
Nothing is working properly at the moment. There is a note at the bottom saying "the thread in which you are posting has no effects applied to it" Is this why my pics won't take? I have upsized but after trying all the links offered none will open at all.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 10, 2014 7:39:30 GMT
Gorgeous photo! All your link needs is to have image tags around it: See? All I did was what I told you above: click on the image icon, then insert your url where it says ''image url''.
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Post by anshjain97 on Jan 10, 2014 11:43:18 GMT
A very beautiful area.
So this was a border crossing to China? Did you go to the Chinese side?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2014 13:37:05 GMT
So picturesque. Questa where did you stay or camp down when in the area? How did you manage to keep warm. Did you get to meet any of the locals that live in the area?
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 10, 2014 15:10:54 GMT
Questa, I took the liberty of editing your Opening Post to make the pictures bigger. Hope that is okay with you.
Did you see my reply #4? You appear to have edited out your reply#3 where I got the url to insert in #4.
I am guessing you are looking at an ImageShack page that displays your thumbnails. You probably need to click on the thumbnail so that it will appear full-size. Then copy the direct url for the full-size picture, come here & click on the Image icon & insert the url where it says "Image url". Leave the second line ("alt url") blank.
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Post by questa on Jan 10, 2014 22:01:26 GMT
Thank you so much, Bixa. I was hoping you would take pity on this muddle-headed poster. I have a good story with photos to share here and am so frustrated it is taken me 10 hours so far! I'll keep trying..
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Post by questa on Jan 11, 2014 0:02:15 GMT
anshjain...Yes, we eventually made it to Kashgar in China. The no mans land is about 15 km or so and having checked out of Pakistan and not yet into China we were in an "interesting" situation for what followed. The group went on through Kyrgyzstan etc. to Turkey, but I had done this the year before, so flew to Urumqi and trained for 3+ days to Shanghai.
Deyana, it wasn't cold...balmy high 20s We stayed in 3 star hotels and rest houses...comfortable, clean and so glad to see us. The hostilities in Swat valley and around had scared off all the tourists, so all the locals couldn't do enough for us.
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Post by questa on Jan 12, 2014 2:31:51 GMT
We were ¾ hour out of Sost when this happened. Naturally, there was no spare, so the bus assistant had to hitch back to Sost and get one. After more drama (the nuts did not fit the bolts or something) another bus was sent to take us onwards.
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Post by questa on Jan 12, 2014 2:37:28 GMT
We came to a place where the Indus River does a sweeping curve to the right. The road runs beside the curve along a raised causeway, marked with concrete blocks. Today a flash flood had covered the lot.
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Post by htmb on Jan 12, 2014 2:39:55 GMT
Wow! One calamity after the other!
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Post by questa on Jan 12, 2014 2:46:54 GMT
Another minibus driver said he’d get through and set off. Our driver said he’d follow. A large bus joined in too.
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Post by questa on Jan 12, 2014 2:55:42 GMT
The water was deep and flowing fast. The white bus got partially washed off the causeway, blocking the road. The big bus stalled in the flood and we couldn’t reverse out. Our driver got close to the little patch of ground where, with help, we could get a foothold. (p]
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Post by questa on Jan 12, 2014 3:06:52 GMT
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Post by questa on Jan 12, 2014 3:12:37 GMT
Time to abandon ship. Some local men appeared and held our hands as we waded through waist deep water to the land. Some carried our luggage to the riverside, but we had to carry it up the mountain.
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Post by questa on Jan 12, 2014 3:21:34 GMT
The only way was up, scrabbling through the loose rocks for 20 minutes, hands and knees with all my gear on my back. From the top there was a track running to the other side of the river curve.
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Post by questa on Jan 12, 2014 3:35:59 GMT
Looking back down, I could see the buses marooned in the flood, and the height we had climbed. The altitude here was 12,000 feet and some of the other tourists were having altitude sickness problems
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Post by htmb on Jan 12, 2014 3:38:57 GMT
I'm speechless, especially when thinking that you continued to take photographs throughout this ordeal!
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Post by questa on Jan 12, 2014 3:46:20 GMT
How the buses finished up.
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Post by questa on Jan 12, 2014 3:52:12 GMT
While we were climbing the mountain, the river flow had increased. I doubt I would have left the bus and stepped into this.
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Post by questa on Jan 12, 2014 4:06:06 GMT
The track zig-zagged across the side of the mountain, then down to where a Chinese traders’ bus was stuck on the other side of the flood. Some Spanish tourists and our group commandeered it to take us to the border. (Sorry...photos out of sequence)
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Post by questa on Jan 12, 2014 4:21:19 GMT
Goodbye Pakistan…and and hello China. Thanks guys for keeping the check points open for us! It was all an incredible, beautiful journey.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 12, 2014 5:53:47 GMT
Good grief! What an adventure. Can't believe you went through all that and not only came out smiling, but with killer photos. Damn, woman!
The one looking back down after you scrambled up the mountain gives me vertigo. The buses are tinier than matchboxes. Super photo, though.
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Post by questa on Jan 12, 2014 6:26:07 GMT
htmb and Bixa It was a huge effort getting up the hill with a luggage bag and full daypack on my back.
Our group had been travelling upwards fairly slowly...so much to see, but the Spanish group had ascended in a couple of days and were altitude sick as well.
As for the photos...I had lots of breather stops and knew I had to take "pics or it didn't happen"
The Kms between flood and border were twisting around the spectacular mountains where 3 great mountain ranges cross over each other.
Big hurry to get to the checkpoints before they closed at 5pm, and road too rough for pics from the bus, so no pics of that part.
Got to the border 8pm, but the officials were lovely offering us tea to drink.
Found lodgings in Tashkurgan for the night, and on to Kashgar next day.
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Post by bjd on Jan 12, 2014 6:41:01 GMT
Wonderful, questa. Nice to see adventure holidays, even if they are not always planned. These kinds of things are tough at the moment, but make great stories afterwards.
Like the others said, that mountain you had to climb is impressive, especially with your luggage.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2014 13:47:29 GMT
What an adventure for sure. Wow. This is what travel memories are made out of. And you kept on taking the photos as you went along, you are amazing, questa!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2014 20:38:05 GMT
This is an amazing tale and certainly puts my tiny adventures to shame (trapped in mudpits in Kenya and Cambodia, creeping across a collapsing bridge in a torrent during a cyclone in Vietnam) -- most of all YOU GOT PICTURES OF IT!
Those Spanish tourists with the Chinese bus look so totally relaxed as they wait for a future solution. I'm sure that your group did not look at all like that after having to climb the mountain with your baggage.
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Post by mossie on Jan 13, 2014 14:28:37 GMT
Adventure with a capital A. Full marks for surviving and having a story to tell.
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