Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
“White Sand Lake” is the most common of many names given to the pictured place.
Some call it a lake, others call it a mountain.
The lake’s surface is circa 3,300 metres above sea level, on the Pamir Plateau.
It is adjacent to the Karakoram Highway, around 150 kilometres south of Kashgar city.
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Not directly present in my photo, but close by and clearly visible to any sighted human, standing a few footsteps away from our table: Karakul Lake – the Pamir Plateau’s highest substantial lake.
The highest of the mountains that look down upon its shores is more than 4, 000 metres further above sea level.
Among mountains outside of the Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges, Kongur Tagh (7,649 metres, the Pamirs’ tallest) is the highest of them all.
Our lunch was absolutely delicious; “great view” and “great food” are not always mutually-exclusive.
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Upon reaching the very popular tourist stop beside Karakul Lake – just off the Chinese section of the Karakoram Highway, between Tashkurgan and Kashgar – I understood the purpose of the horse and rider pictured in this series’ previous post.
For the moment at least, they were engaged in the tourism trade, rather than herding.
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Obviously, the pictured horse is not a “Merc”, I am sure that Mercedes is not its name, and there is no reason to believe that the rider’s other horse is a Porsche.
Still, I was greatly surprised to see a 3-star-branded steed.
When I took this photo we were only a few kilometres from Karakul Lake, in China’s northwestern corner, where several international borders are very much closer than is Beijing.
At 1.21 pm on 24 May 2024, I thought we were looking at one of a group of several nomadic/quasi-nomadic herders, and their horses.
However, I was puzzled by the apparent absence of sheep, goats or cattle…
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On 24 May 2024 we travelled from Tashkurgan (China’s westernmost substantial town) to Kashgar, aka “Kashi”.
For many centuries Kashgar – the third of our “expedition”’s three Ks – was a major hub on “The Silk Road”.
In the direction we drove, our route was the Karakoram Highway’s final 291 kilometres.
The Chinese section’s landscapes are generally less “vertiginous, on both sides” than are those along the Highway’s actually-Karakoram, Pakistan section.
From Tashkurgan through to Kashgar, vistas tend to be much wider, more likely to be rimmed by mountains rather than absolutely dominated by them.
Big mountains and glaciers are still abundant.
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You are looking at the Passu Cones, aka “Passu Cathedral”, or Tupopdan.
These “cones” reach 6,106 metres ASL – a relatively modest altitude, by Karakoram peaks’ standards.
Nonetheless, the Passu Cones are among the more amazing mountains, anywhere.
I took the photo at 8.09 am on 23 May 2024; we had left the Hunza Valley one hour earlier, and were heading along the Karakoram Highway, bound for China.
At that moment the Pakistan/China border was less than 70 kilometres away, but a long way up; the border crossing sits atop the Khunjerab Pass.
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This post reveals the nature of what #33 in this series was also looking at – a glacier’s surface.
This post shows rather more of the same glacier, which is one of circa 7,000 in Pakistan.
Outside polar and near-polar regions, northernmost Pakistan is the most-glaciated place; the Karakoram has several of the world’s longest and biggest, non-polar “rivers of ice”.
You are looking at what is most commonly known as the Hoper Glacier, but sometimes rendered as “Hopper”, “Hopar” and “Hooper”.
It also has another name, altogether: Bualtar Glacier.
Its nickname: “the black glacier”.
Reportedly, the Hoper/Bualtar is currently the world’s second-fastest-moving glacier.
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…or is that very uneven surface a naturally-eroded rock face?
Did I take the photo through a microscope?
Was I merely a few centimetres away from what my camera “captured”?…or many metres distant?
All will be revealed in this series’ next chapter.
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Among “our” planet’s “settled” places, the Hunza Valley has very few peers in the “visual splendour” department!
It will get a deal of future attention, here.
However, this “teaser” series has just the one Hunza Valley image.
I took it from Eagle’s Nest which sits 2,850 metres ASL – around 500 metres higher than the (clearly-visible) Hunza River, on the valley floor.
Dominating the photo’s skyline is Rakaposhi; that huge mountain’s peak stands nearly five kilometres taller than the Eagle’s Nest.
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This post’s image does not at all resemble #30’s shot of a “Silk Road” remnant.
Its vantage point, however, was only a few footsteps distant from #30’s; #31’s photo was taken less than a minute later, from the same side of the Karakoram Highway, whilst en route from Gilgit to the Hunza Valley.
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