Pakistan’s K2 porters transition between tradition and modernity

It’s a twelve-day round trip, some 270,000 lumbering steps in lopsided plastic loafers, dyed headbands, and leopard-print pajamas, climbing to a glacial perch beneath one of Earth’s most breathtaking sights: the vertex of the Karakorams of 8,611 meters. (28,251 ft) above.

Pakistan’s drag economy encourages them into this risk, even as it depletes the rewards. Nature is shrinking with the stealthy advance of roads, promising safer routes but with less work. The mountains enamor their souls, even when the peaks and valleys punish their bodies.

Seven decades after the first K2 summit, the difficult lives of the men who carry out expeditions to such heights are at a crossroads.

“I love the mountains,” says Yasin Malick, 28, tasked with transporting a box of 180 eggs for a tour group joined by AFP journalists.

“My paternal grandfather, my maternal uncle, my father were all in this line of work,” he explains. “Now is my turn.”

However, at the same time he promises that the tradition will not be passed on to the younger generations: “I will carry burdens until the day I die, but I will not let them carry them.”

Tour operators typically quote between $2,000 and $7,000 for the journey that begins in Askole, a village in Pakistan’s northeastern Gilgit-Baltistan region, where jeeps end their jumbled journeys and spill trekkers sporting neck pillows and umbrellas, as well as tougher mountain climbers.

The porters, who do the dog’s body work by hauling luggage, dining tents and provision pantries, earn around 30,000 to 40,000 rupees ($105 to $140) each trip in the four-month summer season, less than the price of high-end hiking pants. one firm recommends that clients use.

Over the past year, the purchasing power of that meager wage has waned, with inflation running at 28 percent in July, as Pakistan hit the apex of default before an IMF intervention offered negligible relief.

“Now with this job, it’s hard for me to pay for household needs,” said Sakhawat Ali, 42. “I have no choice but to come here and work hard.”

But his tone rises irresistibly when he describes the mountains. “They each have different colors, allowing me to witness different worlds,” she says.

The porters, all men, from adulthood to retirement age, report carrying up to 35 kilograms on the 2,000-meter ascent, mostly crammed into blue chemical storage drums strapped to the metal frames of the backpacks.

On the odyssey to Basecamp, hikers take a leisurely pace, pausing for picnics, while porters advance at dawn on spartan diets of chai and chapati after a night under plastic sheet shelters.

Mules also carry a large part of the load, their stuffed carcasses littering the half-formed trails.

“Sometimes it’s cold, sometimes it rains, sometimes the weather is harsh,” goalkeeper Khadim Hussain said.

“Young age is unrivaled,” says the 65-year-old. “He wasn’t afraid of anyone, of anything, he wasn’t afraid.”

“My age is no longer the same: my age has passed.”

Today, K2 Basecamp has fake plastic fruit bowls, wine glasses and fairy lights, a sign that the “wild mountain” has been tamed by trading forces mounted on the backs of porters who are “the livelihood of mountaineers,” according to the Alpine Club of Pakistan. President Abu Zafar Sadiq.

But those little luxuries haven’t trickled down to the porters, who must hassle tourists for rudimentary medical treatment, batteries for headlamps and power banks for mobile phones.

New routes are being carved through the valleys and cutting through the ice, with the promise of making their lives easier and safer. But shippers are concerned about how it will affect job prospects.

At Urdukas – an eagle’s nest campsite on the Baltoro glacier, an undulating and restless labyrinth of ice and stone that must be navigated for five days – a plaque pays tribute to three porters who died from a rockfall while “serving the cause of tourism”. in 2011.

But here the porters stage a celebratory song-and-dance session, taking turns twirling to the beat of a jerry can drum on a harrowing cantilever.

“My connection to the mountains is like a small child’s connection to his mother,” says chief porter Wali Khan, 42.

“It’s like crazy,” he says. “Many of our climbers have been buried under the snow up here. They also knew they would die one day, but they would still go.”

“Their hearts were united,” he says. “The way your heart joins a loved one.”