TRAVERSE 86
Two days later, I pointed north— toward the highest mountains in the world. Riding through Pakistan’ s highlands is not a casual undertaking. Three hundred kilometres can consume an entire day, every kilometre earned through grit. Google Maps had warned me, but I’ d laughed it off. My light bike and stubbornness, I thought, would carry me through. They did— but not without cost.
Landslides and mudslides tore apart the road. Asphalt gave way to rubble, rivers replaced bridges, and hairpin bends hung over drops of hundreds of metres. Between Chitral and Gilgit I found both my hardest test and my greatest thrill. There were moments of pure terror— the rear wheel slipping on loose stone, the cliff edge just a metre away— and moments of silence so profound they felt holy.
Crossing the Shandur Pass, where the mountains divide two very different regions, was like entering another world. Beyond it lay Gilgit – Baltistan, a place I fell in love with instantly. The houses were tidier, the air clearer, the light softer. For the first time in weeks, I saw women— faces unveiled, smiling freely. The people greeted me with warmth, children waving from the roadside. Past Mastuj, the road thinned and the traffic vanished until there was nothing but me, the green valleys, the sound of the river, and the long, solitary ribbon of track twisting through the stone.
It was there that I found peace— the kind that comes not from rest but from surrender. The wheels splashed through icy streams, the scent of pine and wet earth filled the air, and adrenaline mixed with a strange sense of calm. Still, in quiet moments, fear crept in: If I fall here, who will ever find me? I laughed to myself— the kind of laughter that comes from both joy and exhaustion.
At one point I came across a father and son stranded on their scooter with a flat tyre. I was pressed for time, but I couldn’ t ride on. Hours later, their scooter sputtered back to
TRAVERSE 86