Km. 23657 to INDIA

... and no matter how good it was it ends... the indo-pak border crossing at Wagah... http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=YeSX6AZ5xEI

Lahore!

pakistani soft drinks

... and our favorite, perfect for ending the day... where you get the best Behari Kebabs. Slurp! Home delivery: (92-42) 5756108

Lanes of the Old -walled- City

The Holy Qur'an, written in silk and gold embroideries

Red Mosque

Siddhartha

Lahore Museum

AUTO - RICK - SHAW ............... http://hijodevecino.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/autorickshaw.jpg

Totally different, Lahore is like being in an Indian city, chaotic, colorful, with traces of Colonialism, the Mughals, less orthodox... and very, very HOT

Islamabad to Taxila to Rawalpindi

early morning train to Lahore, from Rawalpindi, and Mr. Marutti

back in Islamabad, a 1970's specimen of public transport... still surviving

Seating Buddha, on the center of the image above

Way back before the Muslims arrived to this land, there was already an important Buddhist and Hindu center settled here, leaving remains of the city and universities. It dates back to the 6th century. This you can find today in Taxila, 35km from Islamabad.

anyway, on a close up it has its charm!

Faisal Mosque, which could easily be confused with a missile launching pad

Islamabad, created as Pakistan's capital, its small and doesn't have much of a charm, and adding the issue of the bombings...

No matter how you travel, take in account that if it is time to pray to mecca, however the road, everyone will leave the car to pray on the floor... at least a 10 min. stop.

Nanga Parbat 2

At the far back of the picture, the Rakaposhi Range, part of the Karakoram Range. At the bottom, the KHW.

the end.

stage 3...

stage 2...

And... the last minute farewell avalanche. Stage 1...

Last day at Fairy Meadow, all the way down to the KHW. (Karakoram HighWay)

Nanga Parbat

base camp, at 3,900 mts.

4,300 mts. of sheer vertical wall and where you understand the called 100 face mountain

approaching base camp

on our way up... where the glacier is born. From time to time locals find objects and even climbers corps of past expeditions that the glacier spits out.

... "I remember, years later, his describing to me the effect of the sudden view you get of Nanga Parbat from one of those Kashmir valleys; you have been riding for hours among quiet richly wooded scenery, winding up along the side of some kind of gorge, with nothing very big to look at, just lush, leafy, pussy-cat country of steep hillsides and waterfalls; then suddenly you come round a corner where the view opens up the valley, and you are almost struck senseless by the blinding splendour of that vast face of ice-hung precipices and soaring ridges, sixteen thousand feet from top to toe, filling a whole quarter of the heavens at a distance of, I suppose, only a dozen miles..." Fragment of Mistress of Mistresses of E. R. Eddison, 1967.

...sunrise against Nanga Parbats face

On the way up we struggled against rain and wind... not even a glimpse of the mountain. But next morning...

Nanga Parbat or Naked Mountain in Urdu, is known as the killer mountain! Its the 9th highest peak on earth, with 8125mts high. But its considered, together with K2, to be one of the toughest to climb. Nontheless, more than 100 climbers have died in her hands and just 2 weeks before we arrived at base camb an Italian climber lost his life... together with 16 others at K2. Its summit wasn't successfully reached until 1953, by Hermann Buhl, part of the German-Austrian team.

On our way to Fairy Meadow. The only way to access this location is through a 45 min. jeep ride ascending the narrow road cut on the side of the mountains up to a small settlement. From there you continue walking up for about 3 hrs. until reaching the Meadow, at the feet of the glacier, overlooking Nanga Parbats dramatic north face.