Scaling Pakistan's mountains: A tale of expedition resilience
By SAAD MOHAMED — Originally published on Dawn News Climbing mountains is an annual ritual for me; sometimes it’s even bi-annual. My siblings inherited the travel bug from our father, but for me, the decisive year was 1996, when I took my first ski course with Adventure Foundation Pakistan (AFP). For the next 10 years, a multitude of treks and adventure activities followed. Then, in 2006, my focus shifted to mountains. What began with trekking peaks only in Shimshal, gradually expanded to other destinations. But I keep going back to Shimshal; it is, what I like to call, my training ground. For people who are not familiar with Shimshal's location, it is a cluster of villages 55km off the Karakoram Highway (KKH) east of Passu (Gilgit Baltistan), accessible only through a narrow jeep road that runs through a rocky gorge perilously along a tumultuous river. It is from this cluster of villages that many major trekking trails and their varia...