Living life on the edge

The steep-sided Himalayan uplands provide a spectacular backdrop for stalking Pakistan's wellmanaged ibex population, but it's not a journey to be undertaken lightly, recalls Thomas Nissen

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My stomach flips again as Istare into the gorge that is racing past less than a metre from the car's passenger window. Far below the narrow, twisting road, I can see the thin line of a river. A sheer mountain wall that waits to crush any vehicle foolish enough to wander from its lane scrolls past on the other side of the car. A bend comes at us. I close my eyes but can't escape the centrifugal force and my sense of dread as we hurtle around the turn above the precipitous drops.

We're on our way from Islamabad to Gilgit along Karakoram Highway, one of the world's most dangerous roads. We didn't plan it this way.

When my friend Jens Kjaer Knudsen had invited me to accompany him on an ibex hunt in Pakistan, we intended to travel by plane to Gilgit Airport. However, that was before unfavourable weather forced the flight to be cancelled for three days in a row. Fed up with the delays, we decided to make the trip by car.

Machine guns

Now, darkness is falling, and the trip along the treacherous, snaking carriageway is still not over. At dusk, we're waved to a stop at a police checkpoint. Officers insist on escorting us through the next stretch of mountain passes to protect us from so-called bandits. Their vehicle, a pickup truck with three machine-gun armed, masked officers posted on the back, starts to follow us.

One of the policemen is standing with his weapon facing the road ahead; the other two are seated with their barrels pointing along the dark highway behind us. They take us as far as the next checkpoint. For me, the greatest danger seems to be the other motorists, all of whom seem inured to the fact that they're driving along a road with no crash barriers and certain death awaiting any driver who goes off the road.