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“The contrast between the familiar and the exceptional was everywhere around me…the impression was of a plodding indefatigable and distant past that had crashed intact through barriers of time into its own future. I liked it.” – Gregory David Roberts
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It’s 10 am. There’s a box in the corner gathering dust. I haven’t opened it in about two years, but it’s the first thing I would grab in the event of a fire. In it I find an old notebook I had with me on a few expeditions, and proceed to play that time travel game of journal roulette when you randomly flip to a page and drop in on an earlier version of yourself:
Kashmir- 9/8/11. Motion. It’s been a non-stop travel sequence since I met up with climbers Stephan Siegrist, Denis Burdet, David Lama. and photographer Stefan Schlumpf in New Delhi a few days ago. We have been careening down endless bumpy roads, through dust, smoke and constant horns on our way towards Atoli, a village in the Jammu Kishtwar region of Kashmir. On the first day we drove 16 hours, and 12 more yesterday. At any point I could’ve reached out and touched another bus or truck with my hand- either with the grain or against it.
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Our driver is a maniac. He’s consistently playing a game of chicken with the bigger oncoming trucks, but fortunately for us, they can tell he’s not only crazy but 100% committed to either winning the showdown or getting into a head-on. The trucks have been giving us just the right amount of space to slip the gap and narrowly cheat the alternative.
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Our guy is pro though. He’s not really crazy, he’s legitimately cool, he’s just a veteran old timer who knows the language of the road here in India. We don’t. We have been audibly scared at points, and he likes that. He’s a sly chuckler when we tense up…I can see his face in his rearview mirror right now. But we do have a point: it’s not like these rigs are precision vehicles. They are flat out sketchy, inaccurate and awkward in how they drift. The odds are there, and none of us have any doubt that we are repeatedly getting lucky. We’re in his house, as the saying goes, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
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Stephan and i have been catching up, Denis is reading, and David is listening to music. Quick flashes of eyes from the streets meet mine, two very different worlds looking into the back of each others skulls, and then gone and on to the next interesting face. I can never look away– it’s like I get into a trance and try to find some answers in each set of eyes. All I am ever left with is: “I am far from home.” We really stand out here.
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Kashmir is feeling way fucking gritty. I like it and I like this team. We have about 5 more hours on this bus and then we start on foot- a four day trek that will take us up a long valley that has just been re-opened to folks like us after a recent drop in terror incidents. I’ve been seeing a lot of AK-47s but if our visas say it’s cool, then it must be cool. A little edgy nonetheless.
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At the end of the valley is a very small Buddhist village named Sumcham, and half a day’s walk above Sumcham will be our base camp, which lies in the shadows of our objective: a 6,155 meter mountain named Cerro Kishtwar. The photos I have seen are spectacular. It’s a beer label kind of peak. You never know until you see it for yourself, but if the rumors are correct, then this could be a rad climbing mission. I do feel like I’m only getting danger jobs at this point, but they’ve all been with some very dialed in climbers such as this crew. I’m getting to see some fringe stuff, and that is what I want.
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