05/05/2026
PAKISTAN 2023
PART 1:
We left the valley and started upward.�Step by step into thinner air, toward Fairy Meadows, where the ground suddenly opens into green silence.
A long jeep track first—dust, rock, edge of road.�Then walking. Always walking.
And then it appears.
Nanga Parbat—the “Killer Mountain,” 8,126 meters, rising like a wall that doesn’t negotiate with time.
We stayed in the meadows beneath it.�Grass, horses, small fires at night.�And above everything—the Rakhiot Face, holding snow and shadow like something ancient and alive.
No rush here either.�Just acclimatization. Breath becoming slower, deeper.�The mountain deciding how close you are allowed to come.
Then we moved higher.�To basecamp, at around 4,200 meters, where even sound feels different.�Glacier nearby. Wind that never fully settles.
We arrived without celebration.�Just arrival.
Sitting there, looking up at that immense wall of stone and ice, it wasn’t conquest or goal anymore.�It was proximity. Presence. A quiet kind of respect.
And like everything in these places, it ended the same way it began—
a breath.
PART 2:
We began with a breath.�A slow one.�Standing near the Passu Cones, where the air is thin and the mountains don’t ask anything of you.
No goals.�Just walking. Listening.
Through the Hunza Valley, green life stayed close—grass, animals, people—right up against the edge of the Batura Glacier.�A river of ice, nearly 57 km long, moving so slowly you only feel it if you become quiet enough.
Days passed like that.�Breath. Step. Silence.�Under the vast walls of the Karakoram, beneath the six peaks of the Batura Muztagh, all rising above 7,000 meters.
And then—June 12th.�My birthday.�I turned 51.
The doctors had said I would never return to places like this.�That these journeys were behind me.
But there I was.�Not to prove them wrong—�but to honor what was still alive.�Strength. Passion.�A quiet pull back to the mountains.
We reached the end of the glacier.�Not as an achievement.�Just as a place we had arrived to.
And we lingered beyond time.�By a fresh water stream, above 4,000 meters.�Cold, clear, alive.
We drank. Sat. Said little.�Let the day open and move through us.
The ice loosened its grip.�The mountains watched.�And everything returned�to a single breath.
An epic journey to Pakistan one year after I broke my back.Goal was to carry everything ourselves. NO help! Only using; Local informationStonemenfootprintsgo...