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Triple K “expedition” (#35 in teaser series: heading for the border)

 

 

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.

Although not in fact the world’s highest border crossing – an oft-made, false claim – Khunjerab is handsomely the highest border that can be accessed via a sealed highway.

A future, multi-image post will reveal more of what we saw (and endured) on 23.05.2024.

At 8.09 am, that day’s destination was circa 150 kilometres away, via a mostly-excellent, uncongested highway.

However, Tashkurgan – the first substantial town on the Chinese side of the frontier – proved many hundreds of minutes “further away” than would have been the case if China’s approach to “border control” had been efficient and reasonable.

Instead, it was a cavalcade of lengthy delays, “robotic” behaviour, intrusive but inept searches, and a series of paranoid repetitions of idiocies already-endured –  a veritable “case study” in the absurdities a totalitarian state can impose upon those who visit it, or return to it.

Published in Americas and Eurasia and Africa nature and travel photographs