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.
Adventure Travel and Photography 