The huge mountain is there behind the clouds. But for today no chances to see it. We hope for good weather tomorrow.

Tonight we’ll sleep in one nice little cottage.

The jeep arrived safely in Thatto (wow!!) and we immediately started to walk up to Fairy Meadows. Rather steep trail that we completed in about 3 hours. It’s a very familiar alpine landscapes that on the Italian alps is usual located at 1600-1800 meters.

Ops, what has happened here ? An apparently “new” torrent just washed away part of the road… The stones are unstable and it’s full of slippery and very watery mud. Great. Our driver quickly fixes the road (it must be a routine for him). This is a small example of what happens when it’s rainy (today is sunny): the mountain becomes a river. We wait on the safe side for the jeep. The jeep quickly passes over the stones without too much trouble. Good. Let’s continue.

This is one of the scariest and hair raising jeep trip I’ve done in my life. From Raikot bridge to Thatto it’s about 14km of very steep mountain road. The road climbs up one side of the mountain of a very deep gorge. On the left side there is a very steep fall of some hundreds meters. On the right side there is very an unstable mountain with high risk of rockfalls, especially when raining (when we arrived in Thatto we discovered that half of the village has been washed by a huge mud avalanche during the spring). The road is very narrow, enough only for one jeep. When another jeep is coming from the other direction, the drivers need to find a wide enough area where the two jeeps can fit at the same time. And one jeep is going to be really close to the edge of the road. The road is built only with stones, they haven’t used any concrete and it’s open only during the summer time. It is only trafficked by local jeep drivers who ask for a rather expensive fare for the trip. Anyway, the locals says that the only accident that ever happened in this valley was caused by one external inexperienced driver who wanted to drive this road with his own jeep. Two passengers and the driver died. Their bodies were lifted up from the very bottom of the gorge by the rescue team. Of course, the jeep is still down in the canyon. The road was built in ‘95 and originally it was reaching Fairy Meadows (3 hours walking time further up from Thatto). The legend says that only two jeeps reached Fairy Meadows. This happened in October ‘95 when the road was inaugurated. During the winter period, snow and water damaged the road to the point that no other jeeps ever drove any further than Thatoo. And, believe me, when you finally put your feet back on the ground after the jeep trip from Raikot bridge, you thank God that the jeep cannot go any further than Thatto.

Today we start the trip to the base camp of the Nanga Parbat. First, we take a jeep to the bus station where we’ll catch a local bus to the Raikot bridge. There we’ll catch another jeep to Fairy Meadows. We’ll spend two nights there and then we’ll come back to Gilgit