The road to the Third Pole
photographic storytelling of a travel from Islamabad to the Hunza valley, in the Karakoram range
Leaving Islamabad, an immense city humbly situated at the foot of the even more immense Himalayas, and entering the green mountains, refuges of high pines and tall trees, watching over a world watered by a generous monsoon. The warm and humid air of the monsoon envelops us with its infinite arms, sprinkling an aura of mystery, poetry and sensuality on what we see around us, changing the light and colours of the scene. Everywhere we look, we see fertile slopes teeming with life, with silhouettes strolling through gardens or woods, going about their business. The road is absolutely crowded, with trucks, cabs and motorcycles displaying huge Pakistani flags vigorously flying in the wind, on this 13th of August, the eve of the national day.
After the Babusar pass, and its staggering 4 173 meters, we suddenly get the impression of having breached into a wall, to penetrate in a new world, a new universe richly endowed with arid tones, browns and ochres, with summits and slopes, dry slopes, but also a place deprived of any large vegetation, where only rare trees forming small shrines of life, gathered around irrigation channels or lakes, break the dry monotony of this merciless, desolate but beautiful nature.
The last effort, the ultimate challenge, the journey within the journey: to climb further up in altitude, to reach the ice giants, they who bring us from so far.
We take rocky paths, of large stones, paths sometimes straight and docile, sometimes steep and uneven, filled with tricky stones waiting to slip away under our steps. We cross oases of Eden, miraculously luxuriant, filled with fruit trees, junipers, dry groves, grasses and flowers whose delicate smell lifts from our shoulders the burden and the fatigue that overwhelms us. This fresh and green grass contrasts beautifully with the mineral tones and hues that seep into our vision, those brown and arid shades that have percolated deep into our senses. The grass that covers the bottom of these small irrigated valleys, where the water from the glaciers brings life, would almost immediately border the glaciers if it weren't for the moraines that separate them, these walls of stones carried by the glaciers on their sides. They are the last wall to cross, after which we begin a long walk on the glaciers, and we will feel smaller than ever.
