"There are four kinds of fish in this lake," Manzur Hussain said. "Golden fish, local trout, A-1 trout, and Rambo trout." "What are Rambo trout?" I asked. "They are this big," Manzur said, spreading his hands wide apart in front of his paunch. "They have pink scales and they eat the other fish." "You mean rainbow trout?" Abby asked. "Yes, Rambo trout," Manzur said. "Like Rambo, the actor who blows things up. Because they eat all the other fish."
Then the short, jolly man with sagging jowls turned away, walked into his hut and brought out two rods and grinned. "Maybe you will catch one today - it will cost you 500 rupees [Dh38]." A military plane flew overhead and I had a vision of Sylvester Stallone parachuting out of a USAF Warthog, commandeering a boulder and raking the lake with machine-gun fire, the fish darting around for dear life. The carnage in my mind ended with Stallone glaring at Manzur for overcharging him.
Abby, my travelling companion, and I were at Kachura Lake, in the Skardu District of northern Pakistan. Four days earlier, we had caught a bus north to Islamabad from Lahore, where I live, and then the small aeroplane that makes daily flights to Skardu from Islamabad. We had to confirm in the morning whether or not the 45-minute flight that weaves through mountain ranges would actually take off - any turbulence and it's grounded. Once in the air, Abby clung to my sleeve as I clung to hers. At one point the edge of the plane's wing seemed only a wingspan away from a mountain we were circumventing. The small craft finally landed in the middle of a desert stretch. The runway was surrounded by sand and encircled in the distance by poplars and peaks.
Two days before hearing of the scary Rambo trout, while walking the main street of Skardu town, we had met a well-tanned, diminutive man with a droopy moustache, bad teeth and posture to match. "My name is Iftikhar. I am Iftikhar Kachura. Come stay at my place at Kachura lake," he said as he whipped out a brochure. The laminated flyer pictured a garden with red chairs, two smiling blondes, a well-lit bedroom with a fresh coat of paint that was furnished with two beds and a fishermen at a lake surrounded by mountains.
Standing in Skardu market, where we were buying dried apricots - two varieties: soft mushy yellow apricots for me and hard orange apricots for Abby - we were seized by visions of breaking from our rough and tumble adventure trip with what, in comparison, would be luxurious accommodation and meals of giant, tasty fish. So too in the wilderness we would have a reprieve from the awkwardness that occurred every time we headed through town and the local men walking hand in hand spotted Abby, looked at each other, looked again at Abby and then broke out in giggles. With no other women on the street, I did appreciate that she was contributing to male happiness in northern Pakistan but I could stand to give it a rest for a while.
"Lots of foreigners come and stay at Kachura," Iftikhar Kachura grinned. "And we have fishing! 1,400 rupees, I will give you a room for 1,200." A break from tents, sleeping bags and roughing it with a night of luxury? And at a discount, no less? "We'll call you," I said. Two days later, Iftikhar Kachura's younger brother Mukhtar picked us up. It was night and we squinted as we loaded our bags into the beat-up white Toyota Corolla. Mukhtar, cheery and clean shaven, helped us.
...................................... "I go down to the cities to work in the winter, but I did not go this year because I am married now," Mukhtar told us during the ride. "We did not see any women on the street," Abby said. "We respect our women," he replied. "Is you wife educated?" "We are both matric-fail," Mukhtar said. Matric is the tenth grade examination. In Pakistan, passing it is a qualification in itself. My grandmother was also a matric-fail. My mother was an MA-pass. I am a BA-pass.
Mukhtar was driving us out of Shigar Valley, which is north of Skardu town. The valley is downwind of K2 (at 8,611m, the world's second highest mountain), the Gasherbrum mountains and the 62km-long Baltoro Glacier. In Shigar Valley we had walked around gemstone mines, we had checked out the historic Shigar Fort (now a hotel), we had cuddled baby goats in the village of Tissur - where many of the porters for K2 and Baltoro expeditions come from - and we had tried and failed to get to the Chutron hot springs (the bridge leading there had a hole in it).
Now we sped out of the valley towards Upper Kachura Lake. The area looked like the otherworldly set of a science fiction cult classic. It was dark as we crossed the bridge over the Indus river. In the distance we could see the snow-capped mountains looming. The riverbed around us was all sand. As we sped towards the mountains and leafless trees, I saw on my right white slabs of marble scattered unnaturally in the middle of nowhere. Ten years ago, this road was a stone track and tractors from Skardu town would drive to the base of the Shigar Valley, near the Indus. There, they would load marble brought down from mountain quarries by jeep. After the road was built, tractors went directly to the quarries so that now defective slabs of marble still lay by the roadside. Nobody has bothered to pick them up and today they rest in the mountain desert, broken monuments to developing commerce.
After driving for forty minutes Mukhtar stopped the car outside a grocery. "Go in and buy a lighter," he said. "They come with torches." "Torches?" "Yes, you need a torch to get to the hotel," Mukhtar said. "We will stop at the village and then we have to walk ten minutes to get to the hotel." "There is no light on the way?" "No light." Fifteen minutes later we stopped. The Corolla had wheezed up a mountain track, its bottom scraping the rocks. In the darkness, I struggled to make out the outlines of a few houses. Crickets chirped. A man in the distance came towards us. "Do you believe in ghosts and spirits?" Abby asked.
"Yes," replied Mukhtar. "White people don't seem to be afraid of ghosts. They walk around at night when we are shut up in the houses." "Maybe white people are ghosts," Abby said. Mukhtar laughed. The man turned out to be Iftikhar Kachura. "Hello, sir!" he said, gripping my hand. "This way." We trotted over a field, past two or three houses, over a stream, past a mosque nearby a droning tractor tilling a field by torchlight, past a hut dimly lit by gaslight lanterns and over a hedge. Then we skipped over an empty pit and stopped at a cowshed. Concrete blocks, unwashed plastic tables, wooden and steel chairs with no backs were scattered next to the shed. There was a dim light inside the cowshed. Mukhtar walked inside and deposited our bags.
We followed him. Framed within the unpainted concrete walls were two beds, a plastic table, no electric light, no curtains, no window panes in the window frames and an unbolted door swinging on its hinges hiding a Turkish toilet littered with cement shavings. A small gas cylinder was doing duty for both heat and light. It was cold inside. "Chicken will be served in twenty minutes," Mukhtar said and then vanished.
When I walked back outside I saw that the moon had grown and was like a bright torch illuminating the way. And the stars were many. The sign by the empty pit said it was a future trout farm. Mukhtar brought a spicy chicken curry with oily bread, which melted in our mouths and greased our gullets. We asked for curtains. Mukhtar brought bedsheets to hang in the window. Cotton popped out of a hole in a quilt. The moon, brighter and more beautiful than I had ever seen it, lit the room. We wished we had rented camping gear from town, but there was nothing to be done now. In the morning we met Manzur Hussain and he told us about the Rambo fish.
"We have to get the bait first," Manzur said. We had rowed to a rock wall on the other side of the lake. Manzur scaled it first. Abby, Iftikhar and I followed. We hiked to an empty water canal and started digging for earthworms. "They love the moisture. Unfortunately, it has not rained much yet, so very few of them are near the surface." Manzur's fingers were scratching the canal. Suddenly, he stood up. A red-brown earthworm struggled in his hands. Bait! He quickly found more and we prepared to turn back.
All except one of us, that is. Abby was still digging. "I want to find my own earthworm," Abby said. "We are here to catch fish," I reminded her. "And then get out of here, go and trek on the beautiful Deosai plains, and sleep with proper camping equipment on one of the highest plateaus in the world where we can see wild bears and exotic habitat." "When I was a kid my brother and I used to dig for insects," Abby said as she peered into freshly churned mud. "We once gathered so many worms it looked like spaghetti."
She kept digging. We finally made it to the boat and Abby rinsed her hands in the lake, upset at not catching her own bait. Suddenly, there it was -a Rambo against the shallow bed of the shore. It was still, sniper-like. I moved towards it, my battered old rod ready to cast, a juicy earthworm dangling at the end of the blue-green twine weighted with a stone. The Rambo lazily turned and swam away before I could let the rod fly.
I cast anyway, my blood rushing fast. To my left, I heard a splash and then it was gone without a trace. I was not deterred by having been outmanoeuvred early on. This is going to be my day, I told myself. I'd spent an awful night in our ramshackle lodgings which were lousy by even my low standards of luxury: ticks bit me, my toes were frozen stiff and now I felt as if I was catching a cold. But I assured myself that for the cost of my sacrifice, I would at least have my prize in this glorious lake surrounded by peaks.
A half-hour later, I cast elsewhere, still without success. Now my thoughts turned to Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, of humans' struggle against nature and all that. A plane circled overhead. Then we clambered into our boat and tried casting into the centre of the lake. The sun shone. It was peaceful. The boat drifted. Nothing bit. The Rambos ignored us. Why? They were probably eating all the other fish - the A-1 trout and the local trout and the golden fish. How could earthworms compete?
Three hours later we left, fishless. Manzur pocketed the five hundred rupees. "Fishing is like digging for earthworms," he said to me. "You play with your luck." Then he looked at Abby and giggled.
The flight Etihad Airways (www.etihadairways.com) flies daily from Abu Dhabi to Islamabad for US$645 (Dh 2,370) return including taxes. PIA (www.piac.com.pk ) flies daily from Islamabad to Skardu $212 (Dh777) return The drive Drivers can be arranged through hotels or can be found on the street for about $44 (Dh162) a day