Nanga Parbat basecamp

This is the view from Fairy meadow, a camping spot on the way up to Nanga Parbat base camp. Nanga Parbat is a massive 8200m in altitude, so it is quite humbling to sit at the foot of this mountain.

I trekked with my new companions (Chris from Schweiz and Martin from the UK) up to Fairy meadow and almost up to the base camp. We were rudely interrupted by the weather just before we were about to attempt a glacier crossing across to the base camp.

Whilst this was an another fantastic spot, my experience was dampened by ongoing stomach problems. So any time that i wasn't trekking, i was either gazing up at the peak or squatting akwardly over a hole in the ground (sorry, i'm just trying to articulate my take on the experience). Thats enough said about this.

On the bright side, we were lucky enough to be in Fairy meadow for a polo game between the local fairy meadow village team, and a nearby village. This made for quite an interesting morning. I felt sorry for the horses, they get a pretty rough ride really. Getting smacked up by the ball itself, and by the polo sticks.

The road up to the beginning of the hiking track was probably the scariest 'ride' i have ever been on. Imagine driving up a jeep track cut into the side of a 1000m deep canyon! The jeep track was so narrow that half the time you couldn't see the edge of the track when you looked off the side of the jeep. To make it worse, our driver looked like Osama - I thought this may be something to do with the Jihad that had previously been declared on me by an irate pakistani, after a questionable decision i made as umpire in a local cricket match 2 weeks earlier.

At this point it occurred to me that terrorism was not the greatest threat to my life in Pakistan. In reality, i knew this all along.