Next morning, when it was still dark, we shouldered our back bags and went off towards the bus station for the local bus to Pakistan. We wanted to go up to the lake of Karakul -- the ``Dark Lake'' in Kirghiz, located between two almost 8000 m high mountains. Our bags now had added quite some weight, in my case several heavy books, a rug, and a painting, and they were not really fun to carry around any more. At the ticket window, after the girl was done with chatting to her colleague and yawning her morning yawns, she gave us the classical Chinese answer ``mei you'', a generic for ``it does not exist'', ``is impossible'', ``I won't do it'' etc. Upon inquiries I first got the answer that there was no bus, a different bus station was suggested to us. After hauling our luggage to there, we realized that this was definitely the wrong bus station. We returned to the previous one and from a remark to a bystander -- the girl would not tell us directly -- we realized that there was ``no bus for foreigners'', because the directive was not to let foreigners go to the Pakistani boarder. She had not told us, because she knew that we would start arguing, and we did indeed. After a while she was tired of us and send us to the head of the station, who had a different legal opinion, more favorite of our cause of going to Karakul, and a few minutes later we were on the bus, which soon pulled out of the station.
The road leads out of the oasis and straight through the desert rising on a very gently slope. After an hour or so we stoped for breakfast of polo and tea, which we enjoyed very much. The bus filled up and the luggage had to go on the roof again. After a while we could see the mountains in the distance and the sky that had been cloud covered now started to clear up.
There are surprisingly few remarks on the Karakoram pass in Peter Fleming's report; they may have been hardened by their long journey through wild eastern Turkestan. The mountains, first in a distance, soon close in with steep slopes dropping towards the valley of the Ghez river. Except for small spots near the river, there is no sign of vegetation. A group of camels was standing in the gravel of the river bed. The eroded soil showed the whole spectrum of grey, black, green, brown, red colors. A few kilometers further into the valley the mountains tower thousands of meters over the frail pass road, the river is cut into a deep gorge below it, and huge blocks of rock are strewn over the slopes. The road looks as if it has to be rebuilt every spring, in several places one sees abandoned parts of the road in a different part of the valley, a whole bridge was flushed down a few hundred meters and the bus had to take a detour through the river bed. At the checkpoint of Ghez one first catches sight of the snow covered triangular peak of the 7700 m Kongur, an awe-inspiring sight from almost 6000 m below.
The valley gets ever narrower and steeper, the old bus
fights up its way in low gear, a final steep shoulder and suddenly the
valley opens up into a wide plane, the river just before a torrential mountain
stream, now peacefully meanders through a brown swampy meadow, at the other
side of which there are whitish sand dunes half covering the mountains.
The sky now was all blue and the colors warm. The road leads in a wide
swing around mount Kongur from whose south side several glaciers flow down
to the plane. The road keeps rising gently and on 3500 m we reached lake
Karakul.