Guys
We did this trip on october 1st.- dont remember exactly which date it was but it was 10th muharram that night. Me and one of my friend on suzuki gs 150. Its the same 150 we have been travelling on in past. We left Islamabad around Mid night 12 pm. Then by 6 we were in Naran. It was color, as it was off season almost. In Naran we had breakfast and headed towards Tarshing. Did some rest in Naran and left for Babu sar pass, I think it was around 11 am or so when we were at Astore turn on KKH. From there I think around 4 30 pm we were in Tarshing... So you can say if we left on October 1st, we arrived in Tarshing on October 1st. We are use to of staying up at nights so we can ride nights when theres less traffic. Plus balakot bridge was damaged I think so we dint get any traffic at all. Ill share some pictures. Not a whole lot to tell about this trip because it was pretty simple and straight forward, No hick ups in between. I think I should share pictures now for you guys so you can see. I dont have any professional camera, not a fan to keep one either. So I used my Iphone or blackberry to click pictures. One interesting thing in the trip was an avalanche we saw on Nanga parbat and a hot water spring on KKH.
This is how simple we roll. 1 bag 2 rides and thats about it. Ready to leave
Arriving Naran. It was cold as you can see from the twilight. Green or Blue, beautiful kunhar river flowing in full swing.
Breakfast in Naran, Short sweet and simple. Then after the breakfast we wanted to fins salvation in Sun! We work nights so we dont get to see a lot of sun in our lives. So trip and then the sun, it was like icing over cake for us. We love every bit of what we do on trips. We are totally synced when we go on a trip. Can leave mid nights, ride for hours without brakes. Any way, I can write tons, but I think ill show you pics and ill continue telling my story. oh yes so I was saying about sun, right after breakfast we wanted to stop by any place where there was sun shining, so it was like sun chasing game until 8 am or so.
Thanks to Almighty for this beautiful country and then thanks to all these north people who make this sort of omellete ( not complaining. I love the fact that I tell them every time, ustad g pyaz mand k dalna but they hardly care lol )
Here is when we caught up with the sun!..
Road towards astore, watch this video if you feel like:
lol tell you some thing about chucks bike riding: he never goes above 60. some times he will just drive half hour behind a truck finding the best time to over take and I am like man for Gods sake over take. Well its fun. I dont know why I am being so descriptive, looks like I feel like another trip. I am telling you guys I am going to go to herlingkofer base camp again in summers ( a planned tour ) If any one of you can match up our schedule, is most welcome.
Now this is when you get the legit shock.. After astore you ride till gorikoth which is around 13 kms... takes around half hour due to road condition. You cant really speed up . Once you turn right from gorikoth towards tarshing you see nanga parbat right ahead, which is beautiful ofcourse. How easily on your way you see 9th mountain highest on this planet? Not so often eh
We arrived tarshing by 4 or 430ish i think. Chuck my partner kicking it with a cup of Tea. What a beautiful village, you can see nanga parbat right in front, majestic, magical, amazing, mesmerizing. No hiking required, no nothing. Beautiful. When we got to tarshing we were super happy because we dint go through hiking with bag packs or any sort of khawari other than bike ride. Which is fine for us. Writing this post I wished it was summers now and I could go there again. This time around I dint plan to go for a long time but next time I will go there with proper supplies and camp and herlingkofer base camp and live there a couple of days like a boss. While I am writing and uploading, I noticed pak wheels interface has also changed. Thumbs up! any way we slept at around 7 or so because we were so tired of travelling last night.
Oh i forgot to tell you when we arrived in tarshing there were quite a few hotels. One of the hotel guys approached us and took us to his hotel and we went there right away. I think we paid 600 rs per night and were happy to be there to rest. So this set of pictures is from the premises of the hotel we stayed in.. since we were tired, we dint bother to take proper pics with complete hotel premises etc. You will see that later on. But it was beautiful Seeing nanga parbat right there from village.
Since we went off season there were no tourists. The hotel dude locked us in the hotel and left for his home We arrived around 4ish and we went to sleep by 630 or 7ish since we were super tired. By 3 am or so, I got up for no reason, woke chuck up and this is how it looked at night...no bijli and interior of the hotel out side our room.. well i should say guest house. we hung in for a while at nigh and went to sleep. this is how it looked. pretty spooky! Since kausar our guest house guy locked the entrance door we couldnt get out.
thats chuck looking at nangi from the window.
Next morning we woke up around 7 or so. told kausar about being stuck at night. He said sir, woh dusra darvaza jo hai ap woh khol laity... the other door gets locked from inside not out side. We were like duh! we were so tired of all the bike ride and in middle of the night we thought jis darvazay say ham andar aye thay thats the only way out. Brain hardly works right when you get to a higher altitude in quick shot and then after all this bike ride too.
Next morning when we woke up we attacked on breakfast, some omelette, parathas and tea in nanga parbat view, again the view was beautiful. we got our selves some juices, fruits, candies and headed towards herlingkofer base camp on our bike ofcourse. From tarshing to herlingkofer you have to pass by a glacier right after tarshing village, then after the glacier you enter into rupal valley, from rupal you end up in herlingkofer basecamp. From tarshing to base camp it took us around 2 hours or so if I am not mistaken, with a lots of breaks ofcourse. The ride on glacier wasnt so easy, after the glacier towards rupal it was nice ride and even after rupal it was easy. When you are about to arrive at herlingkofer basecamp you have to climb up sandy mountains with not a whole lot space to drive up. Very narrow and steap. Any way this is the glacier crossing right after tarshing..When I got tired, chuck rode the bike, when he got tired I rode the bike. Since we are not professional bikers, we get tired handling a heavy built gs 150.
We dint click any pictures of the breakfast in nangi view, though we should have. Any way here is a video when we are on the way to bc from tarshing. this video is right after tarshing you climb a mountain to get to nanga parbats glacier i think its called tarshing glacier... this glacier is so big and vast. The tons of stones makes it easier for jeeps and bike to cross by. Amazing nature and adventure!
After going up to this mountain you have cross this glacier.
This is rupal.. arriving in rupal... and then leaving rupal
After rupal when you head towards base camp you see glimpse of nanga parbat at your right and you are like, wow. Me and chuck kept on discussing one thing. Kia baat hai yar, no hike and we get to see this. It wasnt so easy though. Handing a 150 bike on such terrain is no easy.
About to arrive at base camp... this is a sandy mountain you have to go up at.. very steep on left hand side.... since i am not so tall, the bike was shut down and I wasnt able to get off the bike until my partner came and got me off the bike... so while he came I clicked some pictures to show how steep this place was... it would have been very easy to handle a 125 but with 150 it was kinda tough... to get to base camp we had to climb another of this mountain which was not so feasible for us so we ditched the bike like 5 mins away from the base camp and marched towards base camp. if you so closenly koi track nai hai to follow and its sandy tire can slip if you get shaky.
Wallah! here is the base camp, gorgeous and beautiful. I washed my self before we decide to move closer towards the mountain. after ditching the bike, we walked a little and then when we arrived at base camp, I took off winter clothes. Before going closer to mountain of course we chilled out for around an hourish i think. ofcourse chuck was fully loaded with his down jacket in crouching heat.
Since we were almost the only tourists there, my clothes made a huge store in tarshing village.. what happened was, I left my jeans, jacket, socks etc at the camp site and we started walking towards nanga parbat far ahead, and on the mountain you see on left hand side to see the glacier and to see the mountain up close... we were gone for like 6 hours or so... when we were gone... some australian tourists came with local guides and left.. when we went back to tarshing village there were people discussing that some ones clothes were laying on the ground at base camp..and they tried to look for the people and couldnt find, so they were probably contemplating that we were either lost or had some sort of tragedy trying to cross glacier.. but at the end when they found out it was us chilling at farther side of the base camp all day long, they were relived. the story dint unfold until we met those tourists and local guides at a local shop in tarshing, ill share the picture of the shop later in this post.
So this set of pictures... are the ones when we were walking towards nanga parbat... if you see in first few pictures at the very back is the place where we were cleaning up and left our clothes... so this is how far we went ahead then there was a curve to right and then the place where we came from will totally disappear and we will be right in front of the mountain from where we will witness couple of tiny avalanches..amazing eh! and also the height is i think 3500 meter up here so breathing wasnt a very easy task i think its almost the same height as babusar top ... If you see the pictures of the base camp there is a mountain on our left hand side... which is what we climbed walking towards nanga parbat.... in this set of pictures you can see the glacier emerging from the mighty mountain... we dint bother to go down to cross the glacier, we just sat up on the ridge ( the mountain on the left ) right in front of nanga parbat... it was almost a few hundrad meters from where we were, mighty, majestic, marvelous, magnificent!
Chilling right in front of Nangi!
While relaxing we saw a baby avalanche. Not sure if you guys can figure it out in video. - Again Chucks great idea to tilt the mobile and get a vertical shot. I dont know where he thinks from but he is a legend! Nevertheless, saw an avalanche live.
Chucking trying to figure out how tall the mountain is... Chuck is information bank ( atleast he thinks he is ) whenever you talk about anything in front of him, he will give you a fact about the same topic.Be it false, he dont care, he just needs to say back with a fact.
Then after chilling for a few hours we decided to head back to tarshing village.. this set of pictures will show our way back... it was beautiful hike. to get back first we had to go back to the base, where we left our clothing and then 5 mins walk to bike and then boom to tarshing. In tarshing we ate local sabzi and tons of rotis, had coke, tea... had 2 ask the guy 2 give us a big good cup of tea, those tiny truck hotel tea cups dont cut it! Should have taken food pic, but dint. in these pictures you see on the right side is mighty glacier then a mountain ridge in between and we are on the left side.. we walk straight for like 15 mins or so then arrive at the huge base camp ground.
We arrived safely in tarshing and spent night... next morning we chilled in the village and left for home.... in this set of pics you can see the beautiful village, the shop where we use to chill... oh when we were clicking pictures there a local Astore reporter approached us and took our interview.. seemed like only thing he spoke about was masla masails of roads in astore. was fun. ...
The shop we chilled at.. the village.. wheat distribution ( the winter stock )
Some local reporter from Astore, said he was from K2 tv interviewed us. Here it is.
Then there is the Tea in hospitality. The View... The village.. The chuck ready to roll.
Leaving the beautiful tarshing village.
From Tarshing we headed back to karakoram highway and stayed in a road side newly constructed truck hotel in Tattapani..
Next morning.. the grand finale.. we found out that there was a hot water spring close by we went to see it and it really was warm as hell.
review video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-makjUXBLnk
you will have to closely notice the steam emerging from the water. it was warm!
so after the hot water spring we left for home... we had munchies in between on our way back.. final food we ate at a hotel in manserah some chicken karhai and it was lovely! .. patch from manserah till islamabad kinda sucks.
So this is it guys.. we left from tatta pani by 10 or so and arrived Islamabad by 3 am or so I believe... this was a quick shot trip but to the point. Review my fb: https://www.facebook.com/maxventures1/