Autumn in Chitral and Peshawar

After the Camp autumn life continues its peaceful routine. Goats are tended to the rare meadows, kids shake the meanwhile golden colored leaves from the trees. Tomatoes are put up in wicker baskets to be dried, grapes are hung under the fire hole in the room to smoke them to be used for medicine in winter.
The last crops get harvested, the valley is beautiful in this peace.
Showers get colder and therefore I have to reduce them, not daily anymore, but every second day will pretty well serve my requests on hygiene.
Some evenings we spend searching for a proper “dasturi ostaz”, which means a tradition teacher for the Kalash kids. Pierpaolo – the Italian Birbo-La – has left the valleys with the wish to fund the salary for such a teacher, but without finally agreeing on a certain person. He should tell kids and parents alike about their traditions and why exactly things are done this or the other according to tradition. The quest is now reduced to 3 men who are all able to do this responsible job.

Another time Imtiaz visits the valley and as he leaves I decide to join him on last leg to go down to Peshawar for my visa extension. Within 5 min I pack some things and there we go to Sweer first from where I want to get a flying coach down to Peshawar the next morning.
I hope to be lucky as Lawari had been closed due to snowfall before. But it’s Pakistan, everything is possible.
After a comfortable night, sweetened with fruits tirelessly cut by Imtiaz wife, a warm room I leave for Drosh to get a vehicle. We find a Landcruiser, the only car that would be a ble to cross the snowcovered Lawari which was luckily open. In Dir I will switch to another car. At 9am we start.
But no Lawari crossing without strange happenings. This time it was the driver who was a special case of „not really able. The car owner, sitting at the front seat, tearing his hair without break, only sometimes interupted by strange shouts like „beokuf!“. I was not aware of the meaning of this word, but soon I could guess.
After 10km we crash with a small car. “Beokuf!” But he was lucky things did not turn out worse, no one was hurt and only a small dent was the result in the other car. If it was not for the driver, who was quite stunned and came running towards us, boxing through the open window on our “beokuf’s” nose. Some harsh words are exchanged, then we start off again. The car owner on the co-driver’s seat is even more aware now, watching beokuf with hawk’s eyes.
The driver of course gets more and more uncomfortable and unconfident, more driving mistakes are the logical result, in turn followed by another and another and another “beokuf”-whoop. We are slithering forth and back across the mountain pass. But again we were lucky, in the evening the road should be closed again.
On top it starts snowing. Slowly we slide “downtown” to Dir, where I take another car. Later I should come to know that exactly the car in which I came was caught by an avalanche on the way back. In the evening they find it and also the driver who was believed to be dead. He is the hero of the day…

I was lucky enough to come down to Peshawar safely, but now I am stuck.
Well, no problem, Zarin’s hospitality doesn’t safe me the first time.
I have time to extend my Visa, which has a double entry option. So I go to Afghanistan for a few hours, on the re-entry my Pakistan Visa is valid again for 3 months. The Afghan Visa is really easy to get, I am surprised also by the competence of visa officers at the embassy. After 2 hours I have the sticker. Wow, never it took that short to get a Visa – except the Nepali one which one gets at the immigration at the border.
The border at Torkham is quite chaotic, trucks, people, women in carts pushed by children to the other side of the border where they would board another public transport bus to Peshawar or Kabul in the other direction.
In the evening I am safely back in Peshawar at Zarin’s place.
About the rest of the usually peaceful days spent with playing cards and cooking nice food, shopping a few necessary things for Chitral aso I hear more rumors then days I have actually spent there. The love for rumors here is not even comparable if you sum up the love of Austrians for coffee, cake, beer, ski and soccer.
Well, I am used to the gossip which I heard in Bhutan, a country where only 2 newspapers are published twice a week. But at least 90% is fact there. People know where and what you bought for dinner, when you come and go, but rumors I have never faced in this extent.
But soon I go back to the valleys for Chawmos festival. Lawari is really closed without hopes for reopening.
So I have to take the flight, for which I also have to wait a little as Lawari has its test for everyone. For the plane it’s the clouds which are piled around the mountain, making it impossible for pilots to fly through them with zero sight.
But now it’s still December and usually clear, so back home to Chitral – with the army aircraft, that has taken over the service to Chitral after the PIA Fokkers had been grounded due to a lethal accident in southern Multan. A few months later the new ATRs should arrive.
So in the meantime people and luggage is squeezed in the army transporter. The seats are not transverse in pairs but lengthwise as a long row, some read cloth stripes are stretched around an iron frame usually serve as handy soldier seats.
Women are squeezed in first, then Tourists, then Pakistani men. If once seated one can’t get up anymore – well, where to? No toilets as far as I have seen.
The plane gets started with loud roaring engines and finally takes off for Chitral.
Lunchboxes are handed out, or better should be handed on. If you are lucky you get one.
After 40min I am eventually back – compared to 15 hours going down a week or so ago