Memories of the Swat Valley, Pakistan – 1996

The Swat valley has hit the headlines in recent years for all the wrong reasons. It was overrun by the Taliban until an offensive by the Pakistani Army drove out the militants in 2009. However, in years gone by the Swat Valley was a hot spot for  tourists (both Pakistani and foreign) drawn there by the incredible mountain scenery.

Although the Swat Valley is slowly recovering, it is still pretty much off-limits to foreign tourists. I was privileged to visit in 1996 during an eight-week backpacking trip from Mumbai, India to Peshawar in Pakistan. This is an account of my visit, with photographs that I took at the time.

Saturday 17th August 1996 (Day 45).

I left the hotel early, eager to escape the heat and get up into the cooler climate of the Swat valley after the extreme heat of the southern Punjab and Peshawar. For the first stage of the journey I took a rickshaw to the General Bus Stand where I boarded a wagon that was heading for the twin towns of Saidu Sharif and Mingora, which have merged to become one town.

We headed east down the Grand Trunk Road and then north through the small town of Takht-i-Bhai; where a small group of men were loading large bails of dried tobacco leaves onto waiting trucks. From there the road climbed sharply up into green bush-covered mountains to a height of about three thousand feet allowing spectacular views of the Vale of Peshawar. At the top of the climb we crossed the MalakandPass and gradually descended into the lower Swat valley. Even from that point it was still a fairly long drive to Mingora, and the road passed through an area which contained many important Ghandaran Bhuddist sites. We saw one site, the large Shingerdar Stupa, from the wagon as we drove past. It was a large dome of red-brown bricks with many shrubs sprouting from the top. The river and the valley itself were only occasionally visible through the trees but they were an impressive sight. At this point the river had spread out across the valley in a great grey sheen; the colour was caused by the large amount of sediment carried down from the mountains in the water.

At the bustling and congested town of Mingora I changed wagons, climbing on board one that was heading for the tiny town of Madyan, much further up the valley. As we drove higher up the valley side the scenery became more and more dramatic and by the time we had arrived in Madyan, my final destination for the day at about 4000 ft, the air had become cooler.

The Town of Madyan, Swat Valley, Pakistan

The wagon dropped me in the middle of a very small bazaar and I carried my pack a short  distance to the north, along the muddy street and over a bridge to the Nisar Hotel. After a brief rest I set off with my camera to walk up the Madyan Khwar, to a meadow area called Chil. The Madyan Khwar is a side valley that runs east out of the little town (the bridge that I had crossed on the way into town spanned the river emerging from it). My guide book claimed that the walk took only a few hours and was safe. Initially I found it difficult to find the start of the small path up the south side of the valley, but eventually I realised that it began in a dingy alley leading out of the bazaar. This soon emerged onto a wide stony track and I found myself walking with a Pakistan Fisheries worker who told me that I was going in the right direction and, as we climbed further up, he pointed out the trout farms where he worked that were down by the riverside. Close by was a set of steps that lead down to a restaurant housed in a smart wooden building with a beautiful garden.

The Trout Park Hotel and Restaurant was spectacularly sited on an outcrop by the river side. The garden was cool, green and criss-crossed by gurgling irrigation channels and behind the hotel the mountains soared skywards, thickly covered in Indian Deodar trees. The meal I had was good and was washed with bottles of Sprite with small lumps of ice in them. It was exactly the sort of place I had day dreamed about as I had sweltered in my hotel room in Multan. I was joined by two Pakistani tourists who were about to return to Peshawar after a holiday in the Swat valley. They invited me to have some of their tea and we had an interesting conversation. One of the two men was a civil court judge in Peshawar and I had thought that perhaps with his knowledge of the area he could tell me if the Khyber Pass and the gun village of Darra Adam Khel would be open to tourists or not. He said that the Khyber Pass would probably be open and that Darra Adam Khel definitely would, in fact he said that the village was totally safe. However, he confirmed the advice given in my travel guide that visiting the areas of the Swat valley north of the little town of Kalam (where I was heading next) was not safe without a trustworthy local guide.

I thanked them for the tea and continued my walk up the valley. I was very cautious throughout my walk, aware that the inhabitants may not have been friendly as I came upon each little group of houses. As it turned out, I had no need to worry, the Pathans who lived in this part of Swat were all extremely friendly, and by the end of my walk it seemed like I had said hello to, or shaken hands with, almost everyone who lived there. The short trek was idyllic as I made my way first up one side of the noisy rushing river, then the other, through the green fields of maize. The mountains above were still forested, and small wooden houses clung to their lower slopes. When I reached the furthest point that I could get to that would allow me time to return to Madyan before nightfall, I checked the altimeter on my watch. It was showing a new record for the journey of 5,580 feet. At this point I took off my boots and socks and dangled my feet in the river in a deep pool that was refreshingly cold. I could have stayed there for hours but nightfall was getting closer.

Walking up Madyan Khwar

The Waterfall at the Highest Point on my Walk

The Light Begins to Fade, Madyan Khwar, Swat

On the way down I was totally relaxed and completely lost in my thoughts, when suddenly I was brought back to reality by a sharp pain in my shin and I looked down in time to see a large stone bounce away into the grass. When I looked up I saw the group of kids who had thrown the rock standing out of my reach on the other side of the river. There was nothing I could do as they picked up another large rock and hurled it at me. Luckily it fell harmlessly away to my right. I waved my fist and shouted at them before deciding that my best option was to run for it. Following this unfortunate incident the rest of the walk back down was peaceful, I walked at a relaxed pace and paused occasionally to dip my face into small waterfalls, which was always cooling and invigorating.

After nightfall I stood on the hotel balcony and watched one of the most incredible lightning storms I have ever seen. Long bolts of lightning forked sideways from one wall of the valley to the other, illuminating the whole of the town.

Sunday 18th August 1996 (Day 46).

Early in the morning I boarded a wagon which took me further up the valley to Kalam. On the wagon I met Said, a Pashtun from Madyan who was the manager of the Benazir Hotel in Kalam and he suggested that I stay there during my visit.

When we arrived in Kalam, the Benazir Hotel was one of the first buildings that we came to, perched on the side of the river with a large veranda built on stilts above the brink of the raging torrent. Said lead me to my room, which had to be one of the most incredible places I had ever stayed in, owing to the fact that it faced the river and by sitting on my bed I could look out through the open door and see only icy water thundering past. After I had left my equipment in my room, I was taken back to the opposite side of the hotel which faced the road and shown into the sitting room which doubled as a reception. It contained a large table which was covered in flies and these would suddenly rise in a great cloud if I made a sudden movement. Shortly another older man entered from outside, and I was introduced to Abdul Khaduz, the cook, and he promptly disappeared somewhere to cook me a massala omelette for breakfast.

Said at the Benazir Hotel, Kalam

When I had finished breakfast, Said told me that for Rs 300 I could take a jeep ride north of Kalam and up into the mountains to LakeMahodand. His offer meant I had to make a difficult decision. My travel guide stated in no uncertain terms that the area north of Kalam (known as Swat Kohistan), is dangerous because it is populated by armed tribesman who do not welcome outsiders. They obey only their own tribal law and the law of the gun, the influence of the Pakistani government and police in the area is practically nil. Furthermore, the guide advised that trekking or camping in the area should not be attempted without an armed escort. In a way the area is more dangerous for westerners than the tribal territories on the border with Afghanistan since you need a permit to enter them, and these are seldom granted to foreigners, whereas anybody can wander into Swat Kohistan with no protection whatsoever. Against this grim advice I had to balance the other facts: the guide did say that the road up to Lake Mahodand should be reasonably safe and that visiting the area would allow me to see the most spectacular scenery on offer in the whole of the Swat valley. In addition I would be travelling with a local guide who would be aware of the dangers, and I would be in a jeep and therefore would be spending much less time in the area than someone walking through. It did not take me long to come to a decision, I would take the jeep ride and hope for the best.

Said and I walked up to the bazaar to find his friend with the jeep and once he had agreed the price of three hundred rupees, we set off. I was seated in the front, while Said was in the back.

The muddy track lead out of the bazaar and quickly entered a dense wood of pine trees, which reminded me of the Naltar valley [another valley that I had trekked in in Pakistan, two years earlier]. Shortly after this we came across the first Kohistani tribesman, armed with an AK-47, but he stared blankly into space as we passed. The air cooled down rapidly and I soon realised that, in a T-shirt, I was not exactly equipped for travelling to a high altitude (we were now easily above 6,000 feet). Soon the pine forest gave way to a beautiful valley of carefully tended, terraced fields and small groups of neat houses. I was amazed to see an irrigation system which used thin hollowed out tree trunks to carry water down from the mountain. The wooden viaduct was supported on wooden stilts about ten feet high, and wound its way down over the fields and across the road. We passed through the village of Ushu where the road really began to climb up towards the lake. At one point we were stuck in front of a convey of jeeps coming down the valley and it seemed like an eternity before they moved out of the way. I looked at the countryside around us, it was full of trees, boulders and forests – in short it was a sniper’s paradise. Anyone who had wanted to could have taken a pot shot at us while we sat there waiting for the road to clear.

As we climbed higher, the engine of the jeep straining all the way, we could see jagged peaks and pure white glaciers along the side valleys. We drove through the last village, Matiltan, and from there the road climbed very dramatically, snaking to and fro along the side of  the gorge. Rounding a bend, we could see that up ahead there was a river with a small tea shop next to it, and that immediately in front of the river were three youths, each one armed with an AK-47. One of them was aiming his Kalashnikov across the road, and the rest were staring at our approaching jeep. It was a tense moment, I didn’t know whether they would be hostile or not, so when our jeep stopped I got out and shook hands with them. Luckily, like the vast majority of Pakistanis, they were very friendly and they even let me take a photograph of them as they posed with their machine guns. We all went over to the tea shop, and Said and I sat down to have a drink. The seating area was a wooden platform which had been built over the river and it was fantastically refreshing to sit there drinking tea and listening to the crashing of the water.

The Armed Tribesmen I Met on the Road Above Kalam

Unfortunately, Said had some bad news, he had learnt that the road was far too dangerous beyond the tea shop and I would not be able to travel any further towards LakeMahodand. There was no choice but to do what can only be described as a hair-raising three point turn on the edge of the cliff and set off back down to Kalam.

On the way, I asked our driver to stop at each point where I had seen the mountains and glaciers so that I could take some photographs. At each stop I was worried that myself and the jeep were easy targets because we were no longer moving, and so I leapt out, took the photograph as quickly as possible and dived back into my seat.

Mountains Near Matiltan, Swat Valley, Pakistan

It was as we neared the bottom of the valley that I spotted the three tribesmen by the side of the road and in an inexplicable way I immediately knew that we were in for trouble. I saw one of them turn his head towards us and as soon as he spotted me he reached for something under his wide shawl (patu). In what seemed like slow motion, he pulled out a sharp, long metallic object – a bayonet, and attached to the bayonet was an AK-47. He raised the machine gun slowly and deliberately to his shoulder, and with his finger resting on the trigger, aimed it straight at my head. The jeep took an age to drive past, and all the time I could see that he kept me in his sights. At last we rounded the bend so that we were out of his line of fire and everyone breathed a very audible sigh of relief. I believe that his intention was only to scare us, probably in the hope that such acts would discourage any more tourists from venturing into Swat Kohistan.  If  the tribesman had actually opened fire and had really wanted to kill me, or anyone else, he would not have missed from that range and I wouldn’t be writing this now.

Back in Kalam, adrenaline still racing through my body, we visited Said’s brothers shop (where I was given a bottle of Pepsi) and then made our way back to the Hotel. After a pleasant meal of rice, curried vegetables and nan bread we went back up the road to see one of Said’s friends in another hotel. As we made our way there through the bazaar we heard a long burst of automatic gunfire coming from high up in the hills; perhaps the result of the frequent blood feuds between the tribal families or just someone letting off steam.

Returning from the other hotel, we sheltered from a rain shower under the covered outside seating of a nearby cafe. Said and Abdul Khaduz had work to do and soon set off back to the Benazir Hotel, leaving me to sit there and think about how extraordinary the day had been. When the rain had subsided slightly, I went a bit further down the road to a small general store. It was here that I met Engineer Hikmal Ullah Shinwari (Engineer is used as a title in Pakistan, in the same way that Doctor is), a Pathan of the Shinwari tribe from the Khyber Agency. We had a very interesting chat about Swat Kohistan, and he told me that tribal law did indeed apply up there and that it was enforced in the traditional way by a jirga, which is a council of elders. He said that the police did occasionally venture into the area but that they did not have much authority. I didn’t manage to find out what an Engineer from the Khyber Agency was doing running a general store at the top of the Swat valley, but he did tell me that he used to work in a mine somewhere between Gilgit and Skardu, which held deposits of topaz, tourmaline and apatite. I couldn’t begin to imagine what conditions must have been like in that job, tunnelling under some of the most geologically unstable and earthquake prone terrain in the world. After our chat, I bought some supplies and went back to the Benazir Hotel.

Later on, I went up the road to the Hotel Ali where, unlikely as it may sound, most of the staff were watching American WWF wrestling on the television. I only went there briefly to get a pot of tea, before returning to the Benazir, where Abdul Khaduz had prepared a delicious omelette for dinner, which we ate by gaslight.

Me at Kalam, Swat Valley, Pakistan

Monday 19th August (Day 47).

All of the locals that I had spoken to in Kalam and Madyan had said that they thought it would not be possible to travel from Kalam, over the LowariPass and into Chitral in one day,  but the details of the local transport in my guidebook suggested that it could be done. I had decided to try the journey, reasoning that if it took longer than a day I could always stay overnight in one of the small towns on the way, and for this reason I said goodbye to Said and Abdul Khaduz and left the Benazir Hotel early in the morning, on board the first wagon bound for Mingora.

The sun had not climbed over the mountains when we set off and it was very cold, particularly because I had become acclimatised to the heat down on the plains. Eventually we emerged into brilliant sunshine just above Madyan and it was great to feel the temperature slowly rising as the day began. At Mingora I changed wagons and boarded one heading for the small town of Timargarha. We descended to the lower Swat valley, using the same road as before, reached Chakdara and then travelled north. One of the passengers on the wagon spoke a little English and pointed out Churchill’s Piquet, a famous landmark. The small stone sentry hut sits atop a low khaki hill and is one of the places that Winston Churchill was stationed at while serving on the North West Frontier. During his time in the area, while writing as a war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, he wrote the following famous account of a battle between the British Army and the Pathan tribesmen, which took place in 1897:

 ” There was a ragged volley from the rocks; shouts, exclamations, and a scream.One man was shot through the breast and pouring with blood; another lay on his back kicking and twisting. The British officer was spinning round just behind me, his face a mass of blood, his right eye cut out. Yes, it was certainly an adventure.

It is a point of honour on the Indian frontier not to leave wounded men behind.Death by inches and hideous mutilation are the invariable measure meted out to all who fall in battle into the hands of the Pathan tribesmen…… We all laid hands on the wounded and began to carry and drag them away down the hill.

I looked round to my left…. Out from the edge of the houses rushed half a dozen Pathan swordsmen. The bearers of the poor Adjutant let him fall and fled at their approach. The leading tribesman rushed upon the prostrate figure and slashed at it three or four times with his sword. I forgot everything else at this moment except a desire to kill this man. I wore my long Cavalry sword well sharpened. After all, I had won the Public School fencing medal. I resolved on personal combat à l’arme blanche. The savage saw me coming, I was not more than twenty yards away. He picked up a big stone and hurled it at me with his left hand, and then awaited me, brandishing his sword. There were others waiting not far behind him. I changed my mind about the cold steel. I pulled out my revolver, took, as I thought, most careful aim, and fired. No result. I fired again. No result. I fired again. Whether I hit him or not I cannot tell…. I looked around. I was all alone with the enemy…. I ran as fast as I could…. I got to the first knoll. Hurrah, there were the Sikhs holding the lower one…

We fetched up at the bottom of the spur little better than a mob, but still with our wounded, while the tribesmen, who must have now numbered two or threethousand, gathered in a wide and spreading half-moon around our flanks… The Colonel said to me, “The Buffs are not more than half a mile away. Go and tell them to hurry or we shall be wiped out….”

But meanwhile I heard an order: “Volley firing. Ready. Present.” Crash! At least a dozen tribesmen fell. Another volley, and they wavered. A third, and they began to withdraw up the hillside. The bugler began to sound “Charge”.

Everyone shouted. The crisis was over, and here, praise be to God, were the leading files of the Buffs.”

A little further on he drew my attention to a big stone archway on the opposite bank of the river that the road was following. This was the entrance to the Bajaur Tribal Area, beyond that gateway Pakistani law did not apply and every man would have carried an AK-47 as a matter of routine. However, this was as close as I was ever going to get to the tribal area, since no foreigners are allowed to enter without a permit and these are hardly ever granted. My travel guide revealed that according to Hugh Swift (author of Trekking in Pakistan & India), when the road we were on was built in the 1930’s the builders had to make sure that it stayed out of range of the small arms fire that in those days frequently came across the river from the tribesmen. As we drove parallel to the tribal territory I saw a couple of the houses, which were built like miniature fortresses with high castellated walls and gun turrets to protect the occupants during blood feuds.

The town of Timargarha turned out to be little more than a big noisy wagon yard nestled in a bowl shaped valley. It was here that I caught a mini-bus to Chitral and left the beautiful mountains of the Swat Valley far behind.

All words and photographs copyright Rowan Castle 2013.

Indonesia’s Iconic Volcanoes

Friday 26th February 2010 was the Islamic holiday of Maulud Nabi Muhammad – celebrating the birth of the Holy Prophet Muhammad – and so the school at which I was teaching English was closed for the day. The long weekend was a good opportunity to visit one of the most photographed natural wonders of South-East Asia – the mountain panorama of Bromo and Semeru, active volcanoes in East Java.

On the Thursday night, I took the 23:00 bus from Solo (the city I was living in in Indonesia) to Surabaya from the Tirtonadi Bus Terminal and we headed north initially along the dark highway. I’ve seen some bad driving in my travels in Asia, but nothing compared to this journey. The Driver didn’t just have a death wish – he’d made concrete reservations! He was trying to keep up with a ‘Super Fast’ Surabaya bus in front of us, and was overtaking the lumbering trucks that blocked our path no matter what the risks. At one point we were doing fifty to sixty miles an hour approximately five feet behind the other bus. If the other driver had even dabbed his breaks, we would have been history. Eventually I decided the best policy was to stop looking out of the front windscreen so I put my MP3 player on full blast and tried not to think about it any more.

At about 4 am I arrived at the bus terminal in Surabaya, and boarded the first available bus to Probolinggo. After that I was so tired that the journey is a bit of a blur, as I fell asleep. That was a shame because if I had stayed awake I might possibly have seen the famous mud volcano south of Surabaya. This volcano was a man-made accident that could have come from the plot of a science fiction film. An gas extraction company drilled a well at the site, but hit a pocket of mud under pressure, and it hasn’t stopped flowing since! It has covered a large area of land and swallowed several villages. Attempts have been made to plug the borehole with concrete spheres, but to no avail. Scientists now predict that the mud may continue to ooze from the ground for several decades, and attempts are underway to channel it into the sea.

I was still asleep when we arrived at the small bus terminal at Probolinggo. From there I got a small Colt minibus  south for the steep climb up to the small village of Cemoro Lawang, which sits on the lip of the Bromo Caldera. The first and second hotels I tried were full due to the holiday weekend, but eventually I checked into the Café Lava which had a clean room, good food, cold beer and very friendly staff.

Photo: Cemoro Lawang village – the base for exploring the Bromo area.

The mist had rolled in to Cemoro Lawang almost as soon as I arrived, so I spent the Friday recovering from the journey, talking to the staff of the hotel and booking my jeep to Mount Penanjakan for the next morning. Mount Penanjakan is a high peak on the rim of the volcano and features a viewing area from where the famous photographs are taken of Gunung Bromo and Gunung Batok with Gunung Semeru behind.

With my jeep to Penanjakan booked, I was outside the hotel at 4 am waiting to be picked up. The scene was an extraordinary one – jeep after jeep laden with tourists queued in a traffic jam to pay the fee at the entry gate and then race down the road to the ‘Sand Sea’ and up to Penanjakan for the sunrise. Eventually Mr. Echo from the Café Lava motioned to me to get in one of the jeeps. It was too dark to see the other passengers and without further ado we joined the line of jeeps. Before long we were in a crazy night time rally across the desolation of the Sand Sea, overtaking other jeeps and motorbike taxis whenever we could. At the far side, a narrow tarmac road wound up through the darkness to Penanjakan. When our jeep could not go any further we pulled over into a lay-by. I put on my head torch and started walking up the hill through a melee of jeeps, motorbikes and tourists, all heading up to the viewpoint. When I got to the stone viewing platform, I was amazed at the number of people that were there – I’d estimate about five hundred to one thousand. I could not even get to the front to see the view properly, let alone set up my tripod and camera and take any photos. Luckily I spotted a few stone steps that led down to a steep slope where there was more room to manoeuvre. I set up my camera gear and waited for the sun to come up. The view was really spectacular. Occasionally puffs of smoke could be seen rising from the summit of Gunung Semeru in the distance.

Photo: View of Batok, Bromo and Semeru Volcanoes from Penanjakan, East Java, Indonesia.

As soon as the sun had risen the crowds began to disperse. I made my way back down the hill and tried to find our jeep. Fortunately I had made a mental note of the registration number before I set off and managed to find it eventually. Now I could see my fellow passengers, who were much more talkative in the daylight. They turned out to be a Malaysian man who was working in Indonesia, a Dutch guy who was backpacking around Indonesia and two girls from Spain.About half the way down from Penanjakan we stopped at a second viewpoint which offered a different perspective of Bromo and Batok. We could also see Gunung Arjuna in the far distance on the other side of the ridge. Then we headed down to a car park on the Sand Sea. From there we trekked across the sand, past the Hindu temple to the base of Gunung Bromo itself. It was a steep climb up to the rim of the Bromo crater in the heat and very crowded. Fortunately there are concrete steps up the last and steepest part. Once I reached the top I was able to look down into the impressive crater, where the huge plume of volcanic gas was billowing up from the bowels of the Earth. I also walked a little way along the narrow path past the safety railing, and took some photos of the lip of the crater. Luckily the atmospheric conditions were such that the huge column of toxic hydrogen sulphide gas was rising vertically in the air and not causing me any breathing problems.

Photo: The Crater of Bromo Volcano, East Java.

Back at the hotel, I had a cold beer and then rested for the remainder of the day. At sunset I walked through the village in the direction of the Lava View Hotel, set up my camera and waited for sunset. The sky was spectacular, but unfortunately just as the colour of the sunset was at its best, thick clouds rolled in and all but obscured the view. Even so I got an atmospheric shot of the outline of Gunung Batok against the red sky.

Photo: Bromo and Batok Volcanoes at Dusk, from Cemoro Lawang village.

Photo: Gunung Batok at Sunset, Cemoro Lawang village.

My plan for the Sunday morning was to get up at around 2 am, take my photo gear and trek out across the Sand Sea on foot. I also hoped to climb to the crater of Gunung Bromo for the sunrise. In the end I managed to set off from the hotel at around 3 am. The road down to the Sand Sea was eerily quiet. Reaching the entrance to the Sand Sea I found that there were already a lot of people walking across the dust in the direction of Bromo. Fortunately the sky was very clear, and lit by a full moon. Looking up at the stars, I realised that (being in the Southern Hemisphere) I didn’t recognise a single constellation, but I soon spotted the famous ‘Southern Cross’ which was just to the left of Mount Bromo. I took a short detour off the trail, set up my tripod and took a long exposure shot of the stars above the mountains.

Even with the moonlight, the Sand Sea was very dark and misty. Eventually I reached an area where the foot prints and tyre marks showed that I was in the car park area I had visited the day before. Marker stones and sticks lead off towards the Hindu Temple (which was not yet visible in the dark) and in the distance I could see torches indicating the path of the people who were already climbing up to Bromo. I soon reached the foot of the mountain and began to climb too. I had got about half way up, when I came across a young group of Indonesians who had stopped on the trail. I wondered why they had halted, but in the next few steps that I took on the trail above them the reason became obvious. The mist was collecting in the valley below, and I think it was likely that there was a temperature inversion in the caldera, so that the air was warmer higher up, rather than colder. This was forcing the fumes from Bromo to roll down the mountain, instead of venting straight up as they had done after sunrise on my previous visit. The fumes were acrid and had that tell-tale ‘rotten eggs’ smell of hydrogen sulphide. I could feel my lungs tightening and my eyes began to sting. I decided it probably wasn’t sensible to carry on up the mountain until I could see what I was walking into. So I waited on the edge of a rock outcrop for a while where the air seemed to be a little bit less polluted. While I was waiting the sun began to rise and I got a couple of nice photos of the Hindu Temple in the mist, and the sun rising over the mountains.

Photo: Sunrise from the flank of Gunung Bromo.

Photo: The Hindu Temple in the morning mist.

Resuming the climb, I made it to the lip of the crater once more, but the hydrogen sulphide fumes were almost overwhelming. I followed the example of the other tourists, and covered my mouth with my sweater. Breathing through the fabric seemed to help. I tried to walk along the crater path to get out of the way of the gas, but it was no good. I could hardly breathe and in the end I stayed up there for no more than a few minutes before making my way back down to the Sand Sea.

Near the car park area, I found a man and his horse and paid for a ride back to my hotel. It turned out that the horseman was named Joko and my horse was called Andi. I had assumed that Joko would lead my horse by the reins, and was somewhat alarmed when he handed control of the horse to me and just walked alongside. Generally I was able to control the horse and get it to go where Joko indicated, but it did have moments of stubbornness. If it misbehaved Joko whipped it on the backside which made it trot off up the path with me bouncing around in the saddle. When we got near the start of the road up to Cemoro Lawang the horse seemed to mutiny altogether and trotted around in a circle with me hanging on! Luckily Joko was soon able to get us going in the right direction again. Before no time I was back at the hotel, had checked out and only had a short wait for my 9 am bus back to Probolinggo.

The staff at the Café Lava had suggested that rather than getting the public bus back to Surabaya and then another to Solo, I should get a private minibus all the way to Solo from Probolinggo. This should theoretically have saved time. They had asked the driver of the bus down to Probolinggo to arrange it for me. He dropped me at a small travel agent where I was able to pay for a direct connection.

After a very hot wait of around half an hour, the minibus arrived and I climbed on board. We set off down a side street and pulled into what looked like a breakers yard, but was in fact a garage. We were there to pick up the other passengers, a large family whose car was up on bricks while a mechanic dismantled the brakes. They loaded up the back of the bus with a large cargo of Salak (snake fruit) and baskets. After a while we set off. It turned out that their house was not directly on the route to Solo, so we took a very interesting detour to the south of Jombang. On the way to their village, I saw an impressive volcano on the horizon with a dramatic rock spire at the summit. I later learnt that this was Gunung Kelud.

It was a very long haul back to Solo after that, although the minibus was comfortable. Just before we got into town, I had a great view of Mount Lawu at sunset. The fiery orange sky was reflected in the water of the paddy fields that we were passing. Unfortunately it was impossible to take a photo from the bus. I should have asked the driver to stop. Lawu looked imposing even from that distance, and it was hard to believe that I had stood on the summit only a few weeks before!

*****

Although that trip was my first and last visit to Mt. Bromo, it wasn’t the last time it influenced my stay in Indonesia. In December 2010 I visited the turtle beach at Sukamade in South-East Java, and at this time Bromo was closed to tourists due to a dramatic eruption of gas and large boulders. As I passed through Probolinggo on my way back to Solo, I had a clear view of the black ash cloud from the eruption, rising thousands of feet into the air.

Nemrut Dagi – Turkey’s Mysterious Mountain

A year ago today I set off on a memorable trip to Nemrut Dagi, one of the most mystical and awe-inspiring places in Turkey. Nemrut Dagi (Mount Nimrod) is a 7001 ft. (2134 m) high mountain in the south-east of Turkey. Atop the mountain sits a mass of stone chippings, piled high into a conical summit. Either side of this man-made summit dome or tumulus, to the east and the west, are stone terraces which originally hosted enormous statues of several Greek, Armenian and Iranian Gods and of the architect of this strange place – King Antiochus I Theos of Commagene.  It is thought that the site is actually the royal tomb of King Antiochus I, who constructed it in 62 BC. Over the centuries since then, the site has crumbled into ruins. Earthquakes have toppled the enormous stone heads from the shoulders of the statues and left them scattered around the mountain top and iconoclasts have damaged the faces of the statues. However, this has only added to the atmosphere of this lonely, high place and drawn tourists from all over the world. Such is the importance of the ruin that it is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Photo: Stone Heads at Nemrut Dagi.           

I had first read about it in the excellent book Danziger’s Travels by Nick Danziger (who visited it in the early nineteen-eighties enroute to Iran and Afghanistan) and it has fired my imagination and been at the top of my wish list of places to visit in Turkey ever since. In April 2011, I finally got my opportunity to travel there. At this time I was living in Iskenderun, in the Hatay region of southern Turkey, near the Syrian border. I had only arrived in Iskenderun on 29th March to teach English at a school in the town but I wasted no time in making travel arrangements. My main problem was that I only had one day off a week, and the mountain was a considerable distance from Iskenderun (235 miles to Kahta, the nearest town to Nemrut Dagi). It seemed to me that the only way to get there and back within the time available was to hire a car in the late evening as soon as I finished my last lesson at school, drive overnight to Nemrut Dagi to arrive in time for sunrise over the eastern stone terrace, explore, and then drive all the way back to Iskenderun in time to return the hire car. It was an ambitious plan that would involve about 20 hours of travel and a lot of uncertainty. I had only driven in Asia once before (for about 15 minutes in Indonesia) and never on the right hand side of the road with no-one else in the car. It was going to be a challenge and an adventure.

I found a hire car place in town and with the help of Google Translate and my Turkish phrasebook I made arrangements a week or so beforehand to pick up a car at 21:30 on 18th April. The next day I told my adult students about my plan, casually asked about the price of petrol in Turkey and received a nasty shock! The price of 1 litre of petrol in Turkey at that time was 4.20 Turkish Lira or approximately £1.85. I hadn’t realised that Turkey has one of the highest petrol prices in the world! It soon became clear that relative to my wages as an English teacher this trip was going to be extremely expensive as a solo venture, but I was looking forward to the trip too much to back out at that point.

I had other concerns apart from the cost of petrol. April was the very beginning of the tourist season for Nemrut Dagi. It was easily possible that the road to the summit would be blocked by snow. It would help if I could find out if it was open for sure – but how? Luckily, I hit on the idea of looking for recent photos of the summit on flickr.com and quickly confirmed that someone had taken photos up there just a few days before. I could see from the photos that there was still snow on the summit and the stone heads were poking through. It made for interesting and unusual images. The second, and perhaps biggest problem was navigation. I had found a route planner on the internet that gave me the shortest road route to the mountain but the difficulty remained of navigating on my own at night, while driving on difficult roads. I scoured the shops of Iskenderun for a road atlas to no avail. In the end there was no alternative but to trace out the entire route on Google Earth and program waypoints into my handheld GPS device. I also plotted the positions of almost all of the petrol stations en route, so I could be sure I would not run out. Breaking down in a hire car in the middle of Turkey at night was something I really hoped to avoid!

At last the night of the 18th April arrived. I finished my last English lesson of the evening at 9 pm, collected my equipment from the staff room and set off to meet the owner of the hire car shop, who was opening up especially for me to collect my car. Initially things went well. We completed the paper work quickly but when we went out to the car he found that the vital ownership documents were missing. We wasted valuable time driving across to the other side of town, collecting his friend, driving across town again and finally collecting another car that I could use. We then had to drive all the way back to the office in the town centre so that I could sign the release form. I was nearing the limit of my patience but eventually, at 10pm I set off out of Iskenderun and on to the coastal motorway, heading north to Dortyol.

The initial motorway section was probably the easiest part of the drive. I just had to be vigilant of metal debris on the carriageway (which was frequent) and the large Turkish trucks in the slow lane, which quite often had no tail lights or red reflectors and would loom suddenly out of the darkness ahead. After the coastal town of Dortyol the road swung east towards Osmaniye and the motorway eventually took me to the north of the city of Gaziantep, before I had to turn off on to a more minor road. It was then that the driving became much more challenging in the dark – looking out for potholes and avoiding the odd stray dog when I passed through small towns. Without doubt the worst part of the journey was the section between Besni and Adiyaman where the road wound up into the mountain but was being resurfaced. Miles of loose chippings, no road markings and clouds of dust made driving at night extremely difficult and slow. It seemed to go on forever and I was grateful when I caught sight of the lights of Adiyaman in the distance. At one point in the journey the batteries in my GPS ran out, and I stopped in a layby high in the hills to get a new set out of my rucksack in the trunk. It was a lonely place. The batteries had run down quickly because I was using the back-light on the display, so to  avoid draining the new set as rapidly I drove the rest of the way with the car interior light on!

Once I reached Khata and turned off on the road to Nemrut Dagi I really felt a growing sense of excitement and adventure. It seemed like I was in the middle of nowhere and the terrain outside was a rocky, scrubby wilderness. At Narince, the road forked off onto an extremely narrow track and the climb began in earnest through the mountains. Passing through the tiny hamlet of Karadut (Black Mulberry), with it’s little mosque lit up with strings of neon green lights, confirmed I had nearly arrived.

Finally, at an altitude of just over 5000 ft, I reached the small ticket office at about 4.30 am. There were no signs of life as I pulled up in the small grassy car park. I got out my kerosene stove and made myself a welcome cup of coffee and stretched my legs after the long drive. Fortunately it was quite a sheltered spot. No sooner had I drained the dregs from my mug than a minibus turned up with the first batch of tourists ready for the sunrise! The driver honked his horn, waking the poor attendant who had been sleeping in the ticket booth. Seeing this, I hurriedly packed away my stove, bought a ticket for the summit, and set off in the car on the final climb up to the top.

The road writhed around a series of switchbacks over precipitous drops (which thankfully I could not see in the darkness). In places thawing patches of snow and ice lay by the side of the road, dribbling water across the track. In a short space of time I arrived at my destination, the small car park and cafe below the summit of Nemrut Dagi. The wind was howling outside and it was extremely cold. I put on all of my warm clothes, walked up past the cafe, and took the right hand fork in the path up towards the eastern terrace. At that altitude and carrying my camera gear and tripod it was hard work and I had to pause to catch my breath many times. Just before the eastern terrace, the path cut a channel in a slippery snow field, over a nasty drop. I tip-toed across rather gingerly and now I was at the base of the huge tumulus of stone chippings. As I rounded the hill, I reached the eastern terrace and there were the enigmatic stone heads and the remains of the seated statues behind.

Photo: The Eastern terrace of Nemrut Dagi at Dawn.

I had arrived just in time – there were already a small group of tourists on the terrace from various different countries. They had mainly come up in mini-buses on guided sunrise tours from Khata.

Photo: View from the Eastern terrace, Nemrut Dagi, Turkey.

When sunrise came, it was unfortunately disappointing. The sky was cloudy and mostly overcast, but this was not unexpected at this time of year. About 15 minutes after sunrise I found myself suddenly and completely alone – the others had all had to go back on their various tours and I was left to take in the tranquility and eerie majesty of that strange perch in the mountains. The advantage of having my own vehicle was now obvious and considerable. I took some photographs of the heads in the pale dawn light. They were an unusual sight, one with a high conical hat,  another with a full beard, and on the far right the head of a lion. What stories those faces could tell if only they could talk! Of centuries being buried by snow, blasted by the winds and baked in the summer sun! They had been sitting on that high plateau since before the birth of Christ and before the Roman invasion of Britain, unknown and forgotten until they were discovered by chance by a German engineer in 1881.  The constant freeze-thaw cycle of those isolated centuries had riven their faces with deep cracks and lines, like the wrinkles on the faces of old, wise men. I found them fascinating and they held my attention in a way that no other ancient ruin I had visited had done before.

It was bitterly cold in the wind, but I spent a couple of hours up there before retreating to the warmth of the cafe and a much needed cup of Turkish coffee. The cafe was snug and comfortable, lined floor to ceiling with Turkish rugs and selling an assortment of photo books and  carved stone trinkets.

It took some will power on my part to head back out into the wind, and hike up the trail to the western terrace, which proved a much more tricky proposition than my earlier outing. Large, steep snowfields soon covered the trail and without the benefit of crampons, I had to carefully kick steps in the snow and ice to keep my footing. It was painstakingly slow and exhausting work. In between the ice field, where the snow had melted, were jumbles of rock and among these hundreds of ladybirds were emerging for the spring. Their little red shells were easy to spot between the stones.

Photo: Snow slopes on the flank of Nemrut Dagi.

The reward for risking my neck on these steep slopes came when I reached the western terrace, where the heads were even more photogenic and better preserved than their counterparts on the opposite flank of the hill. They seemed to peer out from holes in the snow, waiting for the spring and the warmth of the sun. I couldn’t believe that I was completely alone up there, and I took a lot of photographs before I headed down again, picking my way slowly over the snow once again.

Photo: Stone head on the Western Terrace.

Photo: The Western Terrace in the snow, 19th April 2011.

By the time I reached my car it was around 11 am. My original plan had been to return to the car park by the ticket booth, get some sleep, have some lunch and then set off on the drive back to Iskenderun. However, absent-mindedly I completely forgot, and drove straight past the car park and on down the mountain. So instead, I stopped in a lay-by once I was off the worst of the road, and had lunch standing in a rock-strewn field full of small stunted trees. Eventually a farmer appeared with some sheep and looked a little surprised to see me, but he returned a friendly wave.

Photo: My hire car at Nemrut Dagi.

After that I set off in earnest for Iskenderun. At least now I had the benefit of daylight and the driving was easier, although navigating the now-busy streets of the town of Adiyaman was more challenging. When I had driven through in the small hours of the morning they had of course been deserted. For the first part of the drive I didn’t feel particularly tired, but eventually needed some sleep and saw the opportunity to turn down a side track in a small town, park up and rest. When I woke up perhaps half an hour later, a large herd of fresian cows were heading my way and so I decided to move on! A couple of stops at service stations, and another sleep break near Osmaniye saw me back on the coastal motorway. The blue of the eastern Mediterranean was a welcome sight and, passing through Dortyol, it wasn’t long before the mosques and minarets of Iskenderun were in sight, clinging to the flanks of the Nur mountains.  My journey was nearly over.

I managed to find a parking spot opposite my flat on Pınarbaşı Street amongst a jumble of vehicles. It was about 6.30 pm when I got back to my flat and I was really exhausted. I was extremely relieved to hand back the hire car, undamaged, later that evening.

Of all the places I visited in Turkey Nemrut Dagi remains my favourite. Indeed, I liked it so much that I revisited it later that year (the black and white photograph at the start of this article was taken on that second visit). I really recommend that you try to visit if you are in Turkey. There are organised trips available from Kahta or Malatya and I even saw trips advertised as far away as the tourist hub of Cappadocia. It is definitely worth making time in your itinerary if you can.

All photographs copyright Rowan Castle 2011.