Due to a fourth member of our trip failing to get his Pakistan visa, and another losing his passport, we have had to cut our trip short, and ‘only’ managed to get two months of high water boating done out here. However, spending two months in a country with very little documented boating achieved, and leaving with a to-do list ten times bigger than what we have arrived with has only solidified my opinion that Pakistan, especially at high water, is the place to be.
MJ’s Landlide Rapid
After my last update we headed up to the Hunza valley to see what was on offer north of Gilgit and found some incredible big volume blue water, which was a nice change from the brown silty waters of the Ghizar, but we only got around 5-10km of paddling done due to the water being so continuous and gigantic downstream of the Nagyr confluence. It was definitely kayakable, but not by us. I just watched the teaser for the Congo footage today, and it looks like the Tribe boys have had an appropriate warm up for a high water Hunza now…
The Hunza river whilst it is still blue ‘low volume’
Towards the end of the trip, with Griff having lost his passport and my brother’s visa application rejected, leaving him twiddling his thumbs in India waiting for us to head over, we decided it was time to start doing bigger rapids due to a worry that “our footage wasn’t good enough.†Always a good motivator! Out of the fifteen or so ‘bat-shit-crazy’ rapids on the Ghizar river (they lurk somewhere between grade V and VI, having lines, just very silly ones) we managed three of them between us. I can guarantee all could be done by someone, but once again, not us.
Bat-Shit-Crazy on the Ghizar.
I’ve already got plans to revisit Pakistan next year as it’s been the most amazing place for me to push my own boating, but I also believe that it is a place that the pros at the top of our sport could visit to smash the boundaries of kayaking, stomping brown stouts in a genuine frontier. If hucking substantial flows is like going to church to these boys then they should pay good attention to this Azan; get out here, its epic! And the footage is going to look awesome too, which seems to be a big focus of paddlers these days. Pretty much all rivers are roadside, scenery is epic for those lovely time lapses River Roots love to do, and I’m sure Bomb Flow could add some pretty awesome special effects with all the surplus ammunition kicking around the country.
Stomping: a good reason to visit Pakistan
Epic Pakistani scenery
Brining a new meaning to ‘Bomb’ Flow
But, on a quick serious note, Pakistan is epic, under-visited, and so welcoming once you look past the media driven stereotypes (which do exist, but not everywhere). If anyone is genuinely interested in a trip and would like some more info, do not hesitate to track me down and I’ll send all the information and all important contacts I have.
And now for some more photos of rapids we didn’t do:
Upper Batret Nala, would be a cracking IV-V run in lower flows, or epic scary stuff in July
Bat-Shit-Crazy on Ghizar Nala. That hole is about 15-20ft high
The Indus is known for the low water big volume Rhonddu Gorge, but there is a lot more to it that the 120km that you’ve read about
