Embracing Eternity

Pervez A. Khan

An intrepid mountaineer and author reflects on a moment when he stood all alone in the heart of the Siachen Glacier in Pakistan.

Siachen my companion, my dream, my

champion for more than six decades

Covered and guarded by a range of

gorgeous giants

Secluded in beauty and mystery

Setting eyes on it was seeing heaven on earth

It was forever ours

Until we lost it

Your beauty wounds me today

—Ashraf Jahangir Qazi

It was my first day upon the Siachen Glacier—vast, solemn, and said to be the greatest icefield outside the polar regions. Our camp clung precariously to the lateral moraine, pressed against the snow peaks to the south. Before us, stretching northward, lay the glacier in its full majesty: a white plain, seemingly endless, unmarred by crevasse or fissure, until it met the dramatic descent of the Teram Shehr Glacier, joining at a sharp and restless angle.

The urge to cross seized me. Two miles of ice lay between, and for safety I asked Hussain to walk beside me. He was more than a companion—his family had been with mine since my birth in Simla, and he was woven into the fabric of my life.

Saltoro Kangri with cloud cover and Hawk Peak on the right (photo courtesy, author)

We reached the far side within the hour, where the glacier’s serenity broke into chaos: great crevasses torn open by the force of Teram Shehr pressing down. We turned back, and at the halfway mark I asked Hussain to leave me. I longed to stand alone, to feel the immensity of this place without distraction.

And so I remained, solitary in the middle of that vast ocean of ice. A strange nostalgia stirred within me, an ethereal sensation beyond words. The hour was three; a gentle breeze whispered from the west, cool and kind. I turned slowly, surveying the horizon.

To the west the glacier rose, widening into a distant amphitheater of ice. Beyond, a procession of peaks crowned the skyline—Gasherbrum perhaps, towering among them, an eight-thousander. Beside it, Hawk Peak, sharp as a bird’s beak, and Mt. Ghent, loftier still. To the northwest, the Teram Kangri range stood like sentinels, three peaks above 24,000 feet, their ridges merging into the junction where Teram Shehr met Siachen. Across the north stretched the Apsarasas group, equally formidable. To the east, the Terong Range unfolded, with Mamostong Kangri rising in the distance. Behind me, to the south, lay the Lolophond Glacier and above it the fabled Bilaphond La—the gateway into this frozen kingdom of the Karakoram.

The mountain I had come to climb was hidden still, lying southwest, reached by a smaller glacier. Yet the desire to glimpse it was irresistible. I walked upward, and soon a vision appeared: Saltoro Kangri, 25,400 feet, its north face sheer and vertical, a wall of six thousand feet. I was six miles away, yet its grandeur struck me like a revelation. I raised my camera, capturing its solemn majesty.

I stood transfixed, pondering the silence of unclimbed summits. My thoughts drifted to those few who had ventured here before: Henry Strachey in 1848, who saw only the glacier’s snout; Dr T. G. Longstaff, who surveyed the Siachen in 1909 and established the height of Teram Kangri as 27,000 feet plus, when actually it turned out to be 24,218 ft. At this everybody laughed; Fanny Bullock Workman in 1912, who attempted Saltoro but faltered; Sir Eric Shipton in 1957, the great wanderer of mountains, who came only to look. Did any of them stand where I now stood—in the very heart of this glacier?

I was twenty-two, a student, and the elation was overwhelming. That moment, alone in the immensity of Siachen, has never left me. Even the summits I later attempted and climbed some could not surpass the purity of that solitude. God was gracious indeed.

As the sun sank, shadows lengthened across the ice. I retraced my steps quietly, returning to camp where a steaming cup of tea awaited—a simple comfort after a day spent in the embrace of eternity.

---

Pervez A. Khan was born in Simla and on migration to Pakistan studied at St. Mary’s, Rawalpindi and graduated from Government College, Lahore. He is a member of 14 international expeditions, 7 sponsored by National Geographic, on mountaineering and high wilderness research in the Karakoram range, the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas. He is the author of Karakorum (Mondadori, Italy) in three languages. Three of his associates are among the world’s foremost people of the 20th Century: George Schaller (wildlife biologist); Reinhold Messner (mountaineer) and Ansel Adams (photographer). He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society.