In search of the ice cave
The Oxus River has long lured and seduced travellers. From seventh-century Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to Marco Polo, George Curzon (later Viceroy of India) and Captain Francis Younghusband, many have set out with the intention of solving the mystery of the source of this great river in the High Pamir.
By the end of the 19th century, four rival theories had been proposed, with their various supporters fighting it out in print and in lecture halls, particularly in the Royal Geographical Society. Then, following his 1895 expedition, Lord Curzon announced to the world that he had found the source, and that he alone had seen it: an ice cave in a fairytale setting at the very point where the five great mountain chains of Central Asia merge at the far end of Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor.
But despite the strident Curzon’s assertion that he had found the source, the Oxus issue remained unresolved for more than 100 years. As far as I was aware, no-one had visited all four possible sources of the river to answer the question that had intrigued both the Victorian public and the explorers themselves.
Up the riverbed
In late June 2007, I set out with two companions, Anthony Kitchin and Dillon Coleman, to settle the argument once and for all. We crossed the river into Afghanistan at Ishkashim at the western end of the Wakhan Corridor, having visited Lake Syr Kul in Tajikistan’s Great Pamir, claimed as the source of the Oxus by Lieutenant John Wood in 1838. Two days by vehicle took us to the end of the road at Sarhad. We then crossed the Wakhan Massif, emerging on the 4,500-metre Little Pamir plateau, and headed southeast up the Wakhan-i-Pamir, following the Wakhjir River, which should lead us to Curzon’s ice cave.
Our party consisted of Dillon, Anthony and myself, as well as our local guides, Sakhi, Nadir and Sheffi, and Mirza Mohammed, the only one of our horsemen who claimed to have some prior experience in the valley. He was a tall, strong man with hands like mill wheels, only harder. He wore a bright green-and-gold Kyrgyz hat, which he later gave to me as a present. He seemed far too large for his horse and almost dragged his feet along the ground.
We were now travelling east and a little south. Ahead of us would be the place we know as the very centre of Asia, the apex of the Pamir Knot, where the great mountain chains meet. We began to turn what had to be the last bend in the valley before we would see the glacier itself. We knew that it should be about 300 metres above us if our readings were correct.
Within less than eight kilometres of us were both Pakistan and Xinjiang. To the left, up a steep ridge, were the tracks that led to the Wakhjir Pass and the Chinese border. This was the very entry point used by Younghusband and Curzon. It was rumoured that there was some trading activity through the pass and that the Chinese had marked their side with a concrete bollard, but no-one we met had been there.
We were now, for the first time on the journey, walking along the riverbed itself. The going was as easy as it had been at any stage in the previous ten days. It seemed that all we had to do to reach our objective was walk up the moraine bed. We were clearly reaching for a cul de sac that ended in the mountain-face barrier that now absorbed almost the whole view ahead.
The valley narrowed, and high above us, the face of the glacier slowly emerged. We searched its base with binoculars, looking for the ice cave, but it clearly petered out into bare rock, with no sign of a conjunction with the river; it wasn’t even part of the valley. Not for the first time, I considered the possibility that the ice cave might not even be there any more.
We continued up the long bend for a while, and then, directly in front of us, there emerged a much larger glacier, with its base apparently accessible and low. The valley ended abruptly at a wall sliced apart by a central ice field. It led back into the mountain, sloping much more steeply as it rose, and turned south, into Pakistan and the Karakoram. The ice cave had to be at the base.
For a moment, we felt a twinge of disappointment that our target, the prize we had been dreaming of, should be so easily obtained. But still, at the back of my mind, the question of altitude remained; surely we were still far too low. And, indeed, the altimeter reading confirmed that we were.
Tempers fray
Now, as we approached the valley end, what had seemed to be a flat, grey approach path refocused into jumbled layers of moraine and boulders. The base of the glacier had disappeared behind hills of shale and other stone, and the route to our goal was no longer clear.
It was naive to have imagined that the ice cave would relinquish its secrets so easily. The route ahead now looked difficult; there was no access to the south of the river, as the valley side was black, precipitous rock, leading only to the upper part of the glacier. The one apparently simple route was to go straight up the northwest bank, above the moraine jungle. There seemed to be a plateau 100 metres or so above the valley, which we could use to approach the glacier from the north and then come down into the face of it from above.
What wasn’t clear, however, was whether or not we would then be met by further barriers, as yet invisible. It was now close to 4pm – too late in the day to be attempting something of this uncertainty, and at this altitude.
Nadir made what seemed to have been his first independent decision en route and took himself, and his black stallion, straight up the hill. We tried to follow. Very quickly it became clear that the hill was much steeper than it appeared. The route around the top, although passable, looked less promising than expected. It led to a point well above the bottom of the glacier, with no obvious route down again.
A fierce, pointless exchange between Nadir and me resulted in a standoff between his stallion and two of the mares high on the hill. Tempers frayed. I had premonitions of being so near and yet failing at the last moment. I abandoned my horse and started down the cliff side, telling Nadir and Sheffi to do the same, and to send the horses back with one of the horsemen.
This expanse of glacial moraine was fearsome. There were boulders up to five metres high piled up everywhere and no obvious path through. Climbing over and around these smooth, slippery boulders became increasingly awkward. We were tired, irritable and in a hurry: a certain recipe for injury.
Then we ran into two streams rushing between the boulders. They were strong and cold, even for the Wakhjir, but not impassable in width and depth; the problem was finding a place to cross. We contemplated trying to skirt the rivers and cross higher up, but decided against this, as we didn’t know how far we would have to go.
It took an hour to deal with the problem, by creating man- bridges and swinging each other across, leaving the more agile Sheffi to last. The boulder clamber continued.
Coal smile
Our precious time was draining away. I could see Anthony, now some 100 metres ahead; he had taken a better route. He was also fitter than me. Dillon was between us.
We couldn’t see the glacier; the view was blocked by hills of loose shale moraine the size of double-decker buses and as secure as quicksand. It was difficult to see how hills so high could have been created by the glacier unless its base had been moving backwards. The slate dunes absorbed feet and legs in plunging steps that advanced only inches a time.
Sheffi had got ahead of all of us and was valiantly cresting the first of the hills, from where I hoped he would give a wave of success, an indication that he could see the glacier base. Instead, he merely glanced back and then scrambled over the top, and then down, presumably to tackle the next one. I was fighting for air and strength, and, not for the first time, conscious of a little extra weight around the middle, despite what I must have lost in recent days.
Anthony was ahead again, and higher, trying to reach the top of the same hill Sheffi had climbed. Then Sheffi reappeared; this time he was waving enthusiastically at us. Almost reluctantly, I set off up the shale again. The view ahead had been reduced to two remaining hills, but beyond that and below was churning water, indistinguishable in colour from its grey shale channels. Beyond that was a black ice wall, and then, finally, a revelation: the ice cave, still some distance off. It was much smaller than I had imagined – the entrance wasn’t even a metre high, no more than a coal smile cracked into the mountainside – but flooding out from under the black ice came the river. Surely this, at last, was it.
Navel of the mountain
We were still 40 or so metres above. I was happy, but I hadn’t actually managed to get down to see into the cave. At that moment, I couldn’t face the extra effort of the climb there and back. It was a distance that at low altitude would have posed no problem, but here I was using most of my energy just breathing.
Dillon, thank goodness, had other ideas, and set off without a word down the shale. Anthony followed, and after a deep breath or two, so did I. Only a few minutes later, Dillon was down at the river’s edge and looking excitedly to his left. When I struggled down to where he was standing, I could see why. It was then clear that the bulk of the water wasn’t coming from the small black cave; indeed, the black cave wasn’t what we thought it was. Instead, hitherto hidden behind the moraine was something much bigger and much more impressive; something almost frightening.
Here was a white wall, sheer for 20 metres, then sloping off up the mountain. At its base, a hole opened up, shaped like an upturned cauldron, maybe ten metres wide and almost as high. And from it came not a stream or a trickle but a deep, wide gush, flowing as if from the belly of the mountain itself. Here was indeed exactly what I had secretly sought all along. This was the ice cave – open navel for the mountain, the way to its secrets. We were intruders in its private place, which had remained largely undisturbed for centuries.
Official source or not, this is how a river should be born; not at a little spring in Lechlade, like the Thames, or a quiet pool in the Rockies. This was a river born fully formed, belching and bellowing from the very heart of the Roof of the World. Its water was almost certainly coming from ice formed beyond even the end of the Wakhan and in the Karakoram, where three countries and five great mountain chains meet in the very apex of the Pamir Knot.
There had clearly been a recent roof collapse, which had filled the base with icefall, but there could be no doubt that this was the cave found by Curzon. In every way, the caves and surroundings met the description in Curzon’s report to the RGS.
Nadir and Mohammed Mirza hadn’t come down into the amphitheatre of the ice caves. It was a pity because they were also now enthused with their own interest in the river. But by the time we had scrambled and crawled back up the moraine towers to where they were watching from above, they had, following the tradition of the mountains, built a little memorial cairn out of stones to celebrate the journey.
A mysterious visitor
When we got down again, it quickly became clear that the horses were gone, and certainly had not been brought down into the valley, where we were to exit. When we found them, it was getting dark, and progress became much more dependent on the skill of the animals in the fading light.
I had made the mistake of giving my warm clothing to Sheffi, who rode off far ahead, forgetting that he had it. During the long ride back to camp, I gradually froze in semi-summer wear, while I could see Sheffi, oblivious, in the distance. When we finally reached camp, I must have had six successive cups of the ubiquitous tea before I was even ready to talk.
We were up early the next day to re-cross the rushing Diwanasu River before it became too strong. We marched on, retracing our steps back down the Wakhan Valley, but stopped early, around 3.30pm, and set up camp.
It was a very hot day, perhaps our hottest. But late in the afternoon, a strong wind blew in, and it became cold again. Ahead of us was the cornflower sky that sheltered us most days; but behind us, it was a very different colour. It looked as if the devil had risen over the Pamir Knot and punched it in the eye. It was purple, chestnut and maroon, backlit with orange fire from the setting sun; the mountains it seemed, were boiling a storm to chase us back from their secrets.
Shortly before dinner, a young Kyrgyz boy, the only traveller we were to see in the Wakhan-i-Pamir, arrived in camp looking for a moment’s respite. We gave him tea. He was only about 15 years old, with an androgynous face, so that for a while I thought he was a girl, but no female would be out travelling alone and stopping to talk to a camp full of strangers.
We tried to persuade him to stay the night with us, as it was now cold and getting dark. But after drinking the tea, he mounted his donkey and departed. He was small, but the donkey was so tiny that the boy’s feet were touching the ground as he rode off into the semi-darkness.
Thick, white duvet
As night fell, the weather changed, and the rain started. We hadn’t seen rain in Wakhan since a few drops in Ishkashim, but this made up for two dry weeks. It was a storm with all the fireworks; the horses had sensed its coming long before we had, setting up a whinnying chorus across the Pamir. There was little we could do but get into the shelter of our tents as the rain and wind increased in strength. I lay for a long time, guiltily warm and dry, wondering how our team were faring with no shelter other than their Russian blankets and a few rudimentary tarpaulins, more often used as table cloths.
As the noise of the rain decreased, I relaxed and slept for several hours. When some light began to show, I unzipped my inner tent and then pulled at the outer zip. It came back and the canvas fell away, but it was strangely quiet, and I could see nothing. The rain in the night had turned to snow. The whole camp was covered in a thick, white duvet.
The men were already awake; maybe they hadn’t slept. I hardly dared ask how they had fared in the night. But they astonished me with their equanimity. ‘Just one of those things God sends us. We have seen worse. It is over and needs no further comment.’ I had been impressed with the Afghans all through the journey, but never more so than that morning.
The reward for all of us was the astounding beauty of the newly white Pamir. I wondered all day, how the travelling boy had survived, and also from where he had come, since there were no more camps to the east. The Kirghiz camp where we had been given cooking lessons was now deserted, with just one, solitary yurt left standing.
Afterword
After leaving the Wakhan-i-Pamir, the author and his companions travelled west again up the Wakhan, where they discovered a new claimant for the title of true source of the Oxus that unified two of the 19th-century claimants, and in doing so, superseded the Curzon solution. The rest of this story is told in Halfway House to Heaven (Bene Factum, £14.99).
January 2011
By the end of the 19th century, four rival theories had been proposed, with their various supporters fighting it out in print and in lecture halls, particularly in the Royal Geographical Society. Then, following his 1895 expedition, Lord Curzon announced to the world that he had found the source, and that he alone had seen it: an ice cave in a fairytale setting at the very point where the five great mountain chains of Central Asia merge at the far end of Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor.
But despite the strident Curzon’s assertion that he had found the source, the Oxus issue remained unresolved for more than 100 years. As far as I was aware, no-one had visited all four possible sources of the river to answer the question that had intrigued both the Victorian public and the explorers themselves.
Up the riverbed
In late June 2007, I set out with two companions, Anthony Kitchin and Dillon Coleman, to settle the argument once and for all. We crossed the river into Afghanistan at Ishkashim at the western end of the Wakhan Corridor, having visited Lake Syr Kul in Tajikistan’s Great Pamir, claimed as the source of the Oxus by Lieutenant John Wood in 1838. Two days by vehicle took us to the end of the road at Sarhad. We then crossed the Wakhan Massif, emerging on the 4,500-metre Little Pamir plateau, and headed southeast up the Wakhan-i-Pamir, following the Wakhjir River, which should lead us to Curzon’s ice cave.
Our party consisted of Dillon, Anthony and myself, as well as our local guides, Sakhi, Nadir and Sheffi, and Mirza Mohammed, the only one of our horsemen who claimed to have some prior experience in the valley. He was a tall, strong man with hands like mill wheels, only harder. He wore a bright green-and-gold Kyrgyz hat, which he later gave to me as a present. He seemed far too large for his horse and almost dragged his feet along the ground.
We were now travelling east and a little south. Ahead of us would be the place we know as the very centre of Asia, the apex of the Pamir Knot, where the great mountain chains meet. We began to turn what had to be the last bend in the valley before we would see the glacier itself. We knew that it should be about 300 metres above us if our readings were correct.
Within less than eight kilometres of us were both Pakistan and Xinjiang. To the left, up a steep ridge, were the tracks that led to the Wakhjir Pass and the Chinese border. This was the very entry point used by Younghusband and Curzon. It was rumoured that there was some trading activity through the pass and that the Chinese had marked their side with a concrete bollard, but no-one we met had been there.
We were now, for the first time on the journey, walking along the riverbed itself. The going was as easy as it had been at any stage in the previous ten days. It seemed that all we had to do to reach our objective was walk up the moraine bed. We were clearly reaching for a cul de sac that ended in the mountain-face barrier that now absorbed almost the whole view ahead.
The valley narrowed, and high above us, the face of the glacier slowly emerged. We searched its base with binoculars, looking for the ice cave, but it clearly petered out into bare rock, with no sign of a conjunction with the river; it wasn’t even part of the valley. Not for the first time, I considered the possibility that the ice cave might not even be there any more.
We continued up the long bend for a while, and then, directly in front of us, there emerged a much larger glacier, with its base apparently accessible and low. The valley ended abruptly at a wall sliced apart by a central ice field. It led back into the mountain, sloping much more steeply as it rose, and turned south, into Pakistan and the Karakoram. The ice cave had to be at the base.
For a moment, we felt a twinge of disappointment that our target, the prize we had been dreaming of, should be so easily obtained. But still, at the back of my mind, the question of altitude remained; surely we were still far too low. And, indeed, the altimeter reading confirmed that we were.
Tempers fray
Now, as we approached the valley end, what had seemed to be a flat, grey approach path refocused into jumbled layers of moraine and boulders. The base of the glacier had disappeared behind hills of shale and other stone, and the route to our goal was no longer clear.
It was naive to have imagined that the ice cave would relinquish its secrets so easily. The route ahead now looked difficult; there was no access to the south of the river, as the valley side was black, precipitous rock, leading only to the upper part of the glacier. The one apparently simple route was to go straight up the northwest bank, above the moraine jungle. There seemed to be a plateau 100 metres or so above the valley, which we could use to approach the glacier from the north and then come down into the face of it from above.
What wasn’t clear, however, was whether or not we would then be met by further barriers, as yet invisible. It was now close to 4pm – too late in the day to be attempting something of this uncertainty, and at this altitude.
Nadir made what seemed to have been his first independent decision en route and took himself, and his black stallion, straight up the hill. We tried to follow. Very quickly it became clear that the hill was much steeper than it appeared. The route around the top, although passable, looked less promising than expected. It led to a point well above the bottom of the glacier, with no obvious route down again.
A fierce, pointless exchange between Nadir and me resulted in a standoff between his stallion and two of the mares high on the hill. Tempers frayed. I had premonitions of being so near and yet failing at the last moment. I abandoned my horse and started down the cliff side, telling Nadir and Sheffi to do the same, and to send the horses back with one of the horsemen.
This expanse of glacial moraine was fearsome. There were boulders up to five metres high piled up everywhere and no obvious path through. Climbing over and around these smooth, slippery boulders became increasingly awkward. We were tired, irritable and in a hurry: a certain recipe for injury.
Then we ran into two streams rushing between the boulders. They were strong and cold, even for the Wakhjir, but not impassable in width and depth; the problem was finding a place to cross. We contemplated trying to skirt the rivers and cross higher up, but decided against this, as we didn’t know how far we would have to go.
It took an hour to deal with the problem, by creating man- bridges and swinging each other across, leaving the more agile Sheffi to last. The boulder clamber continued.
Coal smile
Our precious time was draining away. I could see Anthony, now some 100 metres ahead; he had taken a better route. He was also fitter than me. Dillon was between us.
We couldn’t see the glacier; the view was blocked by hills of loose shale moraine the size of double-decker buses and as secure as quicksand. It was difficult to see how hills so high could have been created by the glacier unless its base had been moving backwards. The slate dunes absorbed feet and legs in plunging steps that advanced only inches a time.
Sheffi had got ahead of all of us and was valiantly cresting the first of the hills, from where I hoped he would give a wave of success, an indication that he could see the glacier base. Instead, he merely glanced back and then scrambled over the top, and then down, presumably to tackle the next one. I was fighting for air and strength, and, not for the first time, conscious of a little extra weight around the middle, despite what I must have lost in recent days.
Anthony was ahead again, and higher, trying to reach the top of the same hill Sheffi had climbed. Then Sheffi reappeared; this time he was waving enthusiastically at us. Almost reluctantly, I set off up the shale again. The view ahead had been reduced to two remaining hills, but beyond that and below was churning water, indistinguishable in colour from its grey shale channels. Beyond that was a black ice wall, and then, finally, a revelation: the ice cave, still some distance off. It was much smaller than I had imagined – the entrance wasn’t even a metre high, no more than a coal smile cracked into the mountainside – but flooding out from under the black ice came the river. Surely this, at last, was it.
Navel of the mountain
We were still 40 or so metres above. I was happy, but I hadn’t actually managed to get down to see into the cave. At that moment, I couldn’t face the extra effort of the climb there and back. It was a distance that at low altitude would have posed no problem, but here I was using most of my energy just breathing.
Dillon, thank goodness, had other ideas, and set off without a word down the shale. Anthony followed, and after a deep breath or two, so did I. Only a few minutes later, Dillon was down at the river’s edge and looking excitedly to his left. When I struggled down to where he was standing, I could see why. It was then clear that the bulk of the water wasn’t coming from the small black cave; indeed, the black cave wasn’t what we thought it was. Instead, hitherto hidden behind the moraine was something much bigger and much more impressive; something almost frightening.
Here was a white wall, sheer for 20 metres, then sloping off up the mountain. At its base, a hole opened up, shaped like an upturned cauldron, maybe ten metres wide and almost as high. And from it came not a stream or a trickle but a deep, wide gush, flowing as if from the belly of the mountain itself. Here was indeed exactly what I had secretly sought all along. This was the ice cave – open navel for the mountain, the way to its secrets. We were intruders in its private place, which had remained largely undisturbed for centuries.
Official source or not, this is how a river should be born; not at a little spring in Lechlade, like the Thames, or a quiet pool in the Rockies. This was a river born fully formed, belching and bellowing from the very heart of the Roof of the World. Its water was almost certainly coming from ice formed beyond even the end of the Wakhan and in the Karakoram, where three countries and five great mountain chains meet in the very apex of the Pamir Knot.
There had clearly been a recent roof collapse, which had filled the base with icefall, but there could be no doubt that this was the cave found by Curzon. In every way, the caves and surroundings met the description in Curzon’s report to the RGS.
Nadir and Mohammed Mirza hadn’t come down into the amphitheatre of the ice caves. It was a pity because they were also now enthused with their own interest in the river. But by the time we had scrambled and crawled back up the moraine towers to where they were watching from above, they had, following the tradition of the mountains, built a little memorial cairn out of stones to celebrate the journey.
A mysterious visitor
When we got down again, it quickly became clear that the horses were gone, and certainly had not been brought down into the valley, where we were to exit. When we found them, it was getting dark, and progress became much more dependent on the skill of the animals in the fading light.
I had made the mistake of giving my warm clothing to Sheffi, who rode off far ahead, forgetting that he had it. During the long ride back to camp, I gradually froze in semi-summer wear, while I could see Sheffi, oblivious, in the distance. When we finally reached camp, I must have had six successive cups of the ubiquitous tea before I was even ready to talk.
We were up early the next day to re-cross the rushing Diwanasu River before it became too strong. We marched on, retracing our steps back down the Wakhan Valley, but stopped early, around 3.30pm, and set up camp.
It was a very hot day, perhaps our hottest. But late in the afternoon, a strong wind blew in, and it became cold again. Ahead of us was the cornflower sky that sheltered us most days; but behind us, it was a very different colour. It looked as if the devil had risen over the Pamir Knot and punched it in the eye. It was purple, chestnut and maroon, backlit with orange fire from the setting sun; the mountains it seemed, were boiling a storm to chase us back from their secrets.
Shortly before dinner, a young Kyrgyz boy, the only traveller we were to see in the Wakhan-i-Pamir, arrived in camp looking for a moment’s respite. We gave him tea. He was only about 15 years old, with an androgynous face, so that for a while I thought he was a girl, but no female would be out travelling alone and stopping to talk to a camp full of strangers.
We tried to persuade him to stay the night with us, as it was now cold and getting dark. But after drinking the tea, he mounted his donkey and departed. He was small, but the donkey was so tiny that the boy’s feet were touching the ground as he rode off into the semi-darkness.
Thick, white duvet
As night fell, the weather changed, and the rain started. We hadn’t seen rain in Wakhan since a few drops in Ishkashim, but this made up for two dry weeks. It was a storm with all the fireworks; the horses had sensed its coming long before we had, setting up a whinnying chorus across the Pamir. There was little we could do but get into the shelter of our tents as the rain and wind increased in strength. I lay for a long time, guiltily warm and dry, wondering how our team were faring with no shelter other than their Russian blankets and a few rudimentary tarpaulins, more often used as table cloths.
As the noise of the rain decreased, I relaxed and slept for several hours. When some light began to show, I unzipped my inner tent and then pulled at the outer zip. It came back and the canvas fell away, but it was strangely quiet, and I could see nothing. The rain in the night had turned to snow. The whole camp was covered in a thick, white duvet.
The men were already awake; maybe they hadn’t slept. I hardly dared ask how they had fared in the night. But they astonished me with their equanimity. ‘Just one of those things God sends us. We have seen worse. It is over and needs no further comment.’ I had been impressed with the Afghans all through the journey, but never more so than that morning.
The reward for all of us was the astounding beauty of the newly white Pamir. I wondered all day, how the travelling boy had survived, and also from where he had come, since there were no more camps to the east. The Kirghiz camp where we had been given cooking lessons was now deserted, with just one, solitary yurt left standing.
Afterword
After leaving the Wakhan-i-Pamir, the author and his companions travelled west again up the Wakhan, where they discovered a new claimant for the title of true source of the Oxus that unified two of the 19th-century claimants, and in doing so, superseded the Curzon solution. The rest of this story is told in Halfway House to Heaven (Bene Factum, £14.99).
January 2011
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