1886. After traveling 20000 km walk through Manchuria, China and Turchestan and cross the snow of the Karakorum with a handful of porters and without any alpine experience, the young English soldier Francis Younghusband reached Kashmir as a hero. Few people can boast of such a journey, activity carried out as "complementary" to its military leave.
After starving, being robbed and assaulted, threw himself from a slope of snow over 500 y feet leaving several villages throughout the Prisa for fear of being asesinado, scented water bath Srinagar official residence is all a counterpoint to many months of adventures. Reception and party with the Viceroy wait Younghusband, you borrow a uniform since the last one was finished wrapping her feet on the Baltoro glacier decline, where an enormous pyramid of rock and ice climber surprised this budding. Mountain will receive for the Indian geographer unattractive catalog name K2. Little did this obscure official who few decades later, these two letters would become synonymous with adventure, tragedy, cold and ecstasy for millions of mountain lovers all over the world ....
After starving, being robbed and assaulted, threw himself from a slope of snow over 500 y feet leaving several villages throughout the Prisa for fear of being asesinado
The celebration is a success, Francis is at the peak of his career, women whisper as he passes them. It was worth!!!! And the wife of the Viceroy, perhaps the most powerful woman of the Raj, makes a knowing wink to come closer to chat. Can not get higher!!!.
-In earnest, Mr. Younghusband, We are very proud of you. It would be great if next time we meet you can use, bathtubs in the official residence. Its scent is living proof of the incredible adventure that just made.
There are subtle ways to eliminate the brightness of a hero ......
Ascend in the direction opposite to that found Younghusband, completely by accident, the quintessential Karakorum glacier
Ascend in the direction opposite to that found Younghusband, completely by accident, the Karakorum glacier par excellence .... Slag the Baltoro glacier huge start to the giants who rise to their feet covered by ice from end to end of the glacier. Just get some small streams pierce the vast mass of ice, The largest accumulation of glacial zones outside the poles.
The porters who accompany us walk whistling and singing under impossible burdens, de fireplace in Concordia, at the head of the great glacier, where four of the mountains over eight thousand meters in the world unload their avalanches in a magical and terrible at once.
Some of the porters who accompany us baltis bend over and begin to pray, with the word Allah on their lips
It has been 3 days to overcome the head of the ice tongue. Trango Towers overcome and the Muztagh pass behind us, where Younghusband risk down to break their necks pushing their porters at gunpoint ..... And at the end, suddenly, all leave our burdens on the floor and look to the left. Some of the porters who accompany us baltis bend over and begin to pray, with the word Allah on their lips. And there, one of the highlights of my traveling life more intense, rises between the red and black clouds the great pyramid of K2. A childhood dream fulfilled in a picture from a story about Kipling.
And that night, trip to the volume of Younghusband peeking out from my sleeping bag (purchased at a travel bookstore in Peshawar Kipiling .... again ....), I try to reconcile the altitude sickness and the enormous odor given off my boots, thought that even the most daring of the explorers of old ever had the same feeling of fullness that I have at this time, with the slopes of K2 shining beyond the walls of nylon of my tent under the glare of the moon ..... And the fragrant evidence of the need of a bath tarry to enjoy many more days. Luckily, I do not expect an official reception. While that's another story. ....
