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The Gilgit Region
The point of Gilgit, now as always, is
strategic. High above the snowline, somewhere midst the peaks and glaciers
that wall in the Gilgit Valley, the long and jealously guarded frontiers of
India, China, Russia, Afghanistan and Pakistan meet. It is the hub, the
crown's-nest, the fulcrum of Asia. (The Gilgit Game)
Facts F
History
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Diary F
People
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Roots of the Kashmir's issue
 Gilgit, like Kashgar, was an outpost in the 'Great Game',
the imperial hide-and-seek between Britain and Russia, well into the
20th century. A succession of political agents managed by grace or guile
to stay in charge, and in 1935 Britain actually leased back the entire
Agency from Kashmir. At the end of the 1940s, Britain split India into
two separate countries, a Muslim-majority Pakistan and a Hindu-majority
India. Kashmir - with a Hindu ruler, a Muslim majority and a lovely vale
beloved by both Hindu and Muslims - was the biggest hot potato.
Following a jihad, a holy war, proclamed by tribesmen from
the Noth-West Frontier Province, the maharajah flew to Delhi and asked
for military help. India accepted, subject to an eventual vote by
Kashmiris. The people of the Gilgit region would have none of this and
staged their own rebellion, arresting the new governor and demanding to
become part of Pakistan. The two newborn countries went into war, war
which still goes on.
Meeting point
Three mountain ranges, the Himalayas,
the Karakorum and the Hindu Kush, meet in one single point. Click
here for more!
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[22 Aug. ensoleillé Baltit-Gilgit-Chilas bus 250 km
Hotel Shangrila]
 Mont
Rakaposhi (7788m) et Buddha de Gilgit.
Ulrich (60 ans!) me compare au 'Loup
des steppes' d'Hermann Hesse parce que j'ai réussi à dégotter de la
bière alcoolisée à Baltit.
 Route
bloquée. Les militaires font le ménage à la dynamite. Je m'écarte pour
lire, plus loin plus haut. Bruit de météorite, de stuka. Une bombe, un
morceau de roc s'écrase à très peu de mètres de moi. Destin. La
prochaine fois, peut-etre...
Le
continent européen et asiatique se serrent la pince. Un rocher a failli
niquer Klaus sur le site du Buddha de Gilgit. Generiont-nous sa placide
tranquilité? Arrivée de nuit à Chilas. Précipices tout proches.
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Views F
Landscape
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Orientation F
Maps
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 Check
out the photo album.
A traveller would be constrained to
wonder whether such an inhuman mass of snow, lifeless mountain and
ravine was not meant to be denied to mankind. |
 Gilgit
and beyond.It is a small
township inthe heart of the Western Himalayas. Remote in the extreme the
place is today the administrative centre of Pakistan's sparesely
populated Nothern Areas. Beyond it, and on all sides save for a
vulnerable supply line back to Kashmir, there stretched virgin
territory. South to the Punjab of British India, west to Badakshan in
Afghanistan, north to Tashkent in Russia and east to Sinkiang in China,
this rectangular sea of mountains stretched for hundreds of all but
impenetrable miles. The Gilgit Game is simply the story of how and by
whom such a wilderness was explored and appropriated. |
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