Drama over the Karakurams

Nazar Hayat Khan:

What a wonderful breathtaking article. I could alsmost visualize you sitting in the majesty of sunlight, snow light and rarified air above the Himalayas. It was a breathtaking description and somehow more uplifting the the descriptio of flying big passenger planes. The cultural background on China was excellent as well.

Keep it coming. And with your experiences, the pleasure of buying you driks will be all mine at your next visit.

Very well written. very vivid imagery. Thanks for sharing with us.

NHK:

This was an enjoyable piece. Really liked it. Both your description of how the relationship evolved with the Chinese and the dramatics of the fuel leak!

Cheers!

Thanks for sharing your experiences on Chowk.

agree with Stuka here. I felt I was the auto pilot in there with you....


PS: any tips how to overcome fear of flying. ( no that fuel leak incident didn`t help ) :)

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A beautifully narrated, suspenseful article. Was there actually a leak in the fuel tank? Or what? Not that it mattered after your safe and successful landing. But it`s good to know how such a defect remained undetected before the take off. Then again, if this was detected and fixed before take off, there wouldn`t be this story to tell.

Mohammad Gill

Very well narrated event. Thanks for sharing.

nazar:

held my attention till the end...good job

rgds

t

Beautifully written, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Also learnt a few things - e.g. where Rakapo$h got her name (from a mountain peak!! what is that supposed to mean?? and why was I so ignorant as to have never heard of this peak before?).

Also found some of the chinese names interesting: The aptly named Mao Tai (``death comes`` in urdu) drink, and Mr Hu who spells his name as Mr Nu (Why is that? Why not Mr. Gnu, while he was being creative coming up with a confusing spelling).

nazar sahib:

Very enjoyable article. I remember taking the Fokker flight to Gilgit many a time to visit my father who was posted on the Karakoram highway. Rakaposhi is a majestic sight indeed. PIA also had the ``Safari`` flights a while ago that went through those mountains. I guess they had to be discontinued because they become ``safarshi`` flights.

I vividly remember Chinese workers collected in a group, eating dried melon seeds which were heaped in the middle of the road! I believe the highway claimed over 10000 casualties, mostly Chinese.

later
-sac

Very interesting.

If I remember correctly a few pilots have actually crashed in the mountains, doing exactly what you did, i.e. ferrying aircraft from China. I know of at least one officer, who crashed, while bringing back A-5 aircraft, I think. We were told that his body was found and his face had a beard, meaning he had ejected, and survived for a few days.

The ejection seats on Chinese aircraft never work. You probably know that better than I. PAF puts in British ejection seats into the airplanes, after quite a few people have been killed. The ejection seats end up costing the same price as the airplanes. So its a good thing you did not have to eject. The seat probably would not have worked.

Its funny, everyone who goes to China to get aircraft, always mentions the soup, and how watery it is.

P.S. I have to so your generation really got to see the, ``good days`` of the military. China, Turkey and God knows where else. None of my group had similar opportunities. Judging by your experiences, you should look back at all these memories, fondly.....As a friend who is a chopper pilot in the Army in Skardu, says, ``The pay and locations maybe bad etc. etc. but how many people in the world get a chance to daily get the views of K-2 that I get.`` How true.....

You are lucky man, you should look at your military career with a more positive attitude......Thousands of people write software, write books on democracy and philosophy, travel a world as businessmen (like me), or in airlines (like you do now), but how many get a chance to handle a fuel leak at 35k over K-2? That, to me, is living a real life. Not flying 737s nor living in midtown USA working 9-5.

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Nice writeup; very interesting. My Mamoo and Chacha, both in Artillery interestingly enough, went to China for a long (4 months? not sure of the length) conversion course to various Chinese artillery pieces and they also have similary stories to tell about Chinese hospitality. According to my Mamoo, the only way to tell a Chinese officer apart from an OR was by the number of pockets on his tunic: ORs had four and officers only two. Absolutely no other rank insignia at all.

BTW, am curious about two things. I thought that the Uighurs in Sinkiang would have spoken Eastern Turki which is not really mutually intelligible with Osmanli Turkish. Are you sure that some of you could have conversed with the locals? Also, I`ve heard from some PAF acquaintances of long past that the F-6/Mig-19 handled about as well as a brick with wings and especially at lower altitudes handled like a brick without wings. But these were Mirage pilots who lusted after the F-16; maybe they were biased. You seem to suggest differently in your writeup. What is your opinion of the F-6?

Regards.

- Rakaposhi means ``Shinning Wall``. In local language, it is also called Dumani or ``Mother of Mist``

- Nanga Parbat means ``Naked Mountain``

Nazar Sahib - very nicely written. Although I had a bit of trouble imagining ``pin drop silence`` while having ``constant drone of the engines``.

Good job. And indeed I would be interested in knowing the cause of the oil leak.