International Peace & Friendship expedition to Broad Peak 2003

13 June, 2003: Hello from balmy Islamabad - 114 F in the shade & all is well and we feel safe and are ready to go. Most team members have made it now but for one German violinist catching up in a few days time.

I am enjoying reuniting with Mike Hale, the new company of Canadian John McBirnie, Aussie Malte Hagge, Belgium Fredrick Muylaert, and working hard on my Spanish to connect with the three Basques sharing our permit. We are already feeling good about the group and ready to go. We have a whiffle ball and bat, a cribbage set, a few heavy books, a nerf ball, some pop-tarts and a few items needed for climbing! Everything necessary for 6 weeks of fun in the Karakoram. Easy arrival in a nice airplane, picked up by Field Touring's local staff and whisked liked royalty to a 4 star hotel with AC and cable TV.

After a short sleep we were up having breakfast filling out forms, packing the bulk of our gear that went earlier today by 35 hour ride to Skardu (our plane ride will be 1 hour!!!!) afternoon walks, rests and off for the evening shopping. We spent this evening running around the bazaars searching out bargains and last minute purchases, with Zahoor our lean taxi driver who laughed and haggled for us and drove us anywhere we liked. Islamabad seems like most of the major Asian cities...a good thing.

Bright shops, narrow dusty alleyways full of hawkers, military with AK-47s slung on their shoulders keeping the peace, people interested in engaging us in conversation... There is a smell here, not disdainful on ones nose, that evokes humanity living and working and surviving on the edge, the thread of religion permeating the entire scenery, as if being the one link that is strong and bold enough to hold the whole thing together.

Most streets look the same as the last and the modern block style of buildings and steets of Islamabad I think reflect the fact that it is relatively modern (built to take over for Karachi and consolidate punjabi power about 40 years ago) I enjoyed a frank discussion of politics earlier today in the hotel with a computer programmer looking for better work in Canada or USA who is worried that 9/11 and Iraq will make it hard for him to come. We fly to Skardu tomorrow , thumping down on a little mountain airstrip in a B737-200 with out the benefit of an instrument landing. I've been told its one of the great mountain flights in the world, flying past and underneath the summit of Nanga Parbat. The journey, but, has already begun.

From an amazing little internet café, on an amazing street corner, in amazing Rawalpindi, Pakistan, This is Stu, signing off.

Stuart Remensnyder near hotel, Islamabad

Thought for the day: life is short, there is no time to hate

Dispatches

Photo copyright Dave Hancock

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