Trip Report: Getting Lost in Hunza's Passu Village
Hunza's History:
[1] The Hunza Valley is a hilly valley in northern Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan area, created by the Hunza River and bordered by Ish Koman to the northwest, Shagar to the southeast, Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor to the north, and China's Xinjiang province to the northeast.
[2] The Hunza Valley floor is 2,438 meters above sea level (7,999 feet). The Hunza Valley is divided into three regions: Upper Hunza (Gogal), Central Hunza, and Lower Hunza.
The predominant religions in the area were Buddhism and, to a lesser extent, Hinduism. The region is home to various Buddhist archaeological monuments, including the Sacred Rock of Hunza. Buddhist shelters were once located nearby. The Hunza Valley was strategically important as a commerce route from Central Asia to the subcontinent. It also protected Buddhist missionaries and monks who visited the subcontinent, and the area played an important role in the spread of Buddhism across Asia.
Passu Village (the heart in the heart)
Passu hamlet is located in the heart of Hunza and is known as "the tiny Heaven in Heaven." Passu is a small, secluded village with only one shop, one cafe, and a few motels. The Cathedral Range's 6100m high craggy peaks dominate the landscape.
The villagers speak Waki, the same language spoken in Tajikistan and Afghanistan's Wakhan Valley, which we assumed was not far behind us.
Our hotel's youthful managers are the ideal mix of laid-back and helpful. When the electricity is turned on, the Wi-Fi also works nicely. Our accommodation was located in the rear, which was ideal. Not only is it great to be at the end of the hallway, especially when there is a window seat at the end, but we also had a view of a few of fruit trees and the Passu glacier flowing down the slope as if approaching us. It was strange to go from being able to lie in bed and gaze at a 7766m mountain top a few days ago to now being able to gaze at a snow-white 20.1km glacier.
We were content to spend the remainder of the day relaxing. Doing some blog catching up, conversing with the hotel men and their friends who came to hang out in the garden, and being captivated by the beauty. We're still amazed at how calm the highway is. The minimal traffic on it is mostly domestic visitors travelling to or returning from the border and the National Park it is in.
A local guide and his Bulgarian visitor were there during supper. They had just arrived to lunch there since she was allergic to spicy cuisine and our hotel served ginger chicken. They graciously shared their leftovers with us so that we could sample them (it tasted like ginger chicken...). The guide, like we'd discovered earlier, was generous in imparting his local expertise.
Our motel had at least eight rooms, but there were only us and a Pakistani couple there, and after the generator shut down for the night, it was blissfully silent. The mattresses were quite comfortable, and it was chilly enough to sleep at least half under the large soft quilted duvet. Needless to say, we were in no hurry to leave the next day.
When we did manage to get ourselves vertical, we relished a hottish shower. Our objective for the day was to first organize ourselves in preparation for crossing the border into China. We've heard from previous Travellers that the Chinese will carefully search our baggage and go through all of our images and data on our gadgets. Photos with firearms are an issue if they are discovered, and border guards all across the world are notorious for wiping your whole memory card if they find something they don't like. So, we spent the morning downloading every harmless photo with a gun to the Cloud, then concealing the rest of our photo files on our tablets (fewer to look through = faster) and hiding backup.
We wanted to find Pasu's suspension bridge before we departed. It is longer than Husseini's suspension bridge and has its original slats. Husseini's had been flooded at some point, and when the water level dropped, the slats were in such horrible form that they had to be replaced
By the time we were ready to leave to find the bridge, it was noon. Even though it was a gloomy day, it was still warm, and we were thankful it wasn't scorching hot. We double-checked the basic directions we'd been given by Rehman with a person at the hotel: travel the road a little farther and, at a bend, take up a trail that runs down the side of the bank.
We did as direct, finding a bend and a route off it as we made our way down towards the river. When we came across some stone homes, we got a feeling we weren't on the right track. There was no one nearby to inquire. We were not deterred and discovered a passage between the animal paddocks to the rocky bank on the other side of it. When that trail led nowhere, we reasoned that the bridge couldn't be far away, and that if we acquired some height, we'd be able to see it and figure out how to rejoin the route. We uncovered a false crest after scrambling up the hill, and there was no trace of a bridge on the side of the river we could see.
We opted to climb the next rugged peak. To cut a long tale short, we never found the bridge (we concluded we must have taken the wrong bend off the Highway, and it must have been a farther bend). Instead, we had a great time free ranging through a steep slope before clambering back onto the Highway via a little brook.