Our team enjoying a delicious dinner at Restaurant Kabul

Salaam alaikum!

We have reached our first stop, Islamabad. I arrived here early this morning at 4 AM, checked into our hotel and got a few hours of sleep before I met the rest of the team at breakfast.

The guides had to do some paperwork for the authorities today while the rest of us could go to a supermarket or just hang out at the hotel. In the evening we had a nice Afghani dinner at Restaurant Kabul. It’s Ramadan at the moment, and it seems like the streets are much more busy with people in the evening than during daytime when it’s also almost 40 degrees Celsius outside.

Tomorrow we have to get up very early again. We will leave the hotel at 3 AM and have a 15-16 hours’ drive along the Karakoram Highway to Chilas in the Gilgit-Baltistan region in Northern Pakistan. From there we will continue on Monday towards Skardu which will be the last bigger town before we og further north to Askole in the Central Karakoram National Park from where we will start our hike into Base Camp.

I’ll check in again from Skardu.

P.S.: For those of you who have been following my attempt to order a new sleeping bag and get it delivered to Oslo – on Thursday (one day before departure) I got the message that it was in Oslo now, but only ready to be picked up the next day. Unfortunately, my flight left at 11:15, so I had to leave to the airport without my new sleeping bag and with another (thinner) one instead. At 9:15 while I was queing for check-in, I got the message that it now was ready for pick-up in my local store in Oslo. So I called my good friend Petra who drove to the store, picked up the parcel and came to the airport where I could receive my new sleeping bag at 10:50, i.e. 25 minutes before departure. Then I was denied to use the fast track at the security check (!), but I made it anyway through the security check, running through the whole airport to the non-Schengen-gates, through the passport control and to my departure gate. Now I’ve got a sleeping bag with 1250 grams of down instead of 750 which will keep me warm at Base Camp. Thank you, Petra!!