Travel: The road between China and Pakistan

By Alice Albinia / FT.com – Published: July 4 2009

We arrived at Sost, the Pakistani border town, in the afternoon. From here to Gilgit, the Karakoram Highway passes through a green oasis: a river valley terraced with fields and lined by apricot groves. The road clings to the river, into which glaciers – walls of rugged ice, dazzling in the sunlight – pour their meltwater. This is Hunza, one of the most idyllic places in the country, inhabited by Ismailis who follow a more lenient form of Islam than many of their compatriots.

I travelled south through Hunza on a local minibus. As the vehicle zigzagged down the hillside, stopping to pick up giggling children and ladies regal in embroidered caps, the air was noisy with banter and gossip. When men and women meet in Hunza, they kiss each other’s fingers. Greeting each other across a crowded bus, they blow air kisses. Compared to the segregated worlds in which men and women live in other parts of Pakistan, the intimacy is astounding.

Today Hunza is a byword for tranquillity yet not so long ago, it, too, had a reputation for lawlessness and banditry. In the late 19th century, rumours were spread of a slave-dealing people who plundered other countries’ caravans, practised weird magic and terrorised their innocent neighbours. An army was sent north to subdue the “robber valley”.

A century later, after the highway brought in tourists with cameras, Hunza’s reputation metamorphosed again: this time the inhabitants were famed for their longevity. A western woman wrote a book about their mountain diet of apricots and yoghurt. Pictures were published of sprightly Hunza males who looked 45 yet claimed to be 120.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/76d57272-6764-11de-925f-00144feabdc0.html