40 km south of Gilgit the road to 'Skardu' forks off from the Karakoram Highway and heads eastwards into Baltistan territory. If you thought the double-laned Karakoram Highway was scary then you're in for a rude awakening. The KKH is indeed a marvelous engineering achievement but the road to Skardu is even more formidable and a case-in-point of mankinds total lack of respect for nature. Let's make it clear right now: this road should not exist! The fact that it does is a testament to the 'Pakistani Army' engineers who built it in the 50s and 60s. The road has literally been carved out of the mountainside; a narrow groove that has been blasted out bit by bit (with countless loss of lives) and snakes through the barren meandering mountain rock for over 170 km. Somehow they bought heavy machinery down here, injected the rock with explosives, blasted it out, scooped out the rest with shovels and pick-axes, made a flat surface, added a layer of tarmac, added road signs for authenticity and hey presto! - you have a road. But this is no ordinary road. This is by far the most terrifying road I have ever travelled on and once you have experienced it you will never fear any road ever again. The road is very narrow with barely enough room for a single vehicle. It sits perched 1km (1000 metres) above a deep mountain gorge carved out by the mighty Indus River, whose raging and spitting torrent can be seen and heard somewhere at the bottom. If you're lucky (or unlucky) enough to have a window seat you can see the long skinny outline of the silvery river right at the bottom - a Km down. On either side wherever you look are huge, brown, vertical scraggy mountain walls that rise sheer into the sky or plummet into the mouth of the gorge below. The gorge is so narrow that sunlight only touches parts of it for a few hours a day. Nothing grows. Huge boulders overhang from the road edge and threaten to topple over taking you with them. Landslides are common. And so are accidents.
What makes the experience doubly frightening is the driving. We we're seated in a large NATCO bus whose wheels we're barely touching the tarmac, yet somehow, during the entire trip to Skardu, the driver maintained a minimum speed of 70km an hour. Picture this:
You're seated near the front. You can see the road ahead of you meandering through the mountain like a slit in the rock. You can see the edge of the road and below nothing. The bus approaches the turn. Instead of slowing down the driver continues at speed. You think the bus will tumble over the edge. But no, at the last moment the driver flips the stearing and we turn the bend. The precision steering and the skills of the driver are astonishing! One mistake and you've had it. Yet time after time. Bend after bend. The driver does the same thing. And you survive for another 'bending'. Your heart is in your mouth and you are regretting ever making this 'fucking' trip. You hear yourself cursing and when you look around you notice that all the other passengers are sleeping. Sleeping! There lives are in the hands of a mad-man and they are sleeping! Perhaps they know something you don't? What is this 'something' they know?
When you stop for a rest break you quizz the driver. You discover that he has been plying this route for 15 years. That's every single day for 15 years. He knows the bends by heart. Knows where the bad parts are. He knows the spots where he can over take. He knows where he must give way. He knows how much he has to turn before he has even approached the bend. Each bend is different he says. Each requires a different amount of turn and speed. It's all in his head he say's pointing to his cranium and smiling through his crooked teeth. You smile back at him weakly. You look at his cranium. It's not much. Bold. Wrinkly. Calloused and severely weather-beaten. Doesn't look as if a super-computer lurks in there somewhere...
