A REMOTE side-valley of the Kohistan region is rather a strange place for a woman to visit on her own. And, to be frank, really not recommended although I enjoyed myself tremendously.

Having been invited to visit the area by a family friend, a native of this very wild and very mountainous northern wilderness, I felt it was safe enough to go, even though any tourist-related guidebook strongly warns people not to venture into such places as the local people resent the intrusion.

Ten hours of arduous driving from our home in Bhurban, through Nathia Gali, Abbotabad, Mansehra, Batagram, Thakot bridge, then taking a right, up and up an extremely narrow road with hair-raising view of the Indus river thousands of feet below, to Karak and tackling a rough track, in a regular saloon car, through two rivers, getting stuck in one — left me shaking with exhaustion by the time my host, sitting grimly in the back seat with his wife and two travel-sick children, announced “You can park here”.

“Here” was nothing I could really see in the pitch black, looming mountain, forest-filled night. He pointed to the left but I still couldn’t make out a thing. It turned out that I was to manoeuvre the car onto what looked like the mud roof of a house at the bottom of a steep bank. I looked at the bank, at my host, at the mud roof and figured that even if I got the car down onto the roof, I’d never get it back up and, furthermore, had visions of the car sinking, rapidly, through a roof of that nature.

“I’ll have to leave it here” I told him.

“No. You can’t park here or else the bandits will get it!” was his stoic answer.

“What bandits?” I asked.

“Those over there” he informed me, gesturing to a ridge up ahead. “All the people who live there are bandits”.

“I can’t park it on the roof. It will fall through,” I insisted.

“It’s a strong roof. I built it myself.”

“It’s a heavy car and if it falls through, how will we ever get it out?!”

Scratching his beard and scowling at the night, he pondered for a while then said, “Park on the bank and I’ll find someone to stand guard.”

I just about managed to get the car off the road a few inches when a deafening gunshot shattered the darkness and my equilibrium with it. The engine stalled, died and that was that.

“Why are you on the floor?” my host laughingly inquired. “That wasn’t the bandits. It was my brother firing a welcoming shot.”

I emerged, somewhat sheepishly, from the confines of the car as a menacing figure, shotgun in one hand and a burning brand of wood in the other, appeared around the side of the house below. He looked like something out of the pages of a history book and the interior of the house gave the same impression.

No electricity, no running water, more to the point, no bathroom so a trip to the loo behind a bush on the mountainside was a daring venture after dark!

The wooden roof beams actually did seem strong enough to support a car but I still wasn’t going to risk it. Gaily decorated with flowers and geometric symbols, the beams had been hewn from the huge cedar trees which covered the mountainside above us. Wooden ledges, circling the huge living room a couple of feet below the roof, were laden with recently harvested, dull gold pumpkins, brownish round cucumbers and bunches of onions dangled down here and there. A mountain of corn on the cob, waiting to be taken to the water powered mill to be ground into flour, filled one corner and the most magnificent, hand-carved, painted, wooden cradle that I’ve ever seen, swung slowly from chains fastened to a roof beam.

The mud plastered walls and floor were immaculately clean, which is more than I can say for the swarm of children who peered at me from all sorts of nooks and crannies.

The ladies of the house, all eager to meet me, giggled from behind chadders as the men of this extended family shyly lined up to shake my hand.

Just as I finished an excellent meal of vegetables and rice, a loud bellow, right beneath my feet, startled the living daylights out of me. My host sprang to his feet in amusement, dashed to the other end of the room, lifted up a trapdoor and invited me to follow. One of the ladies grabbed an oil lamp and accompanied me to the gapping black hole. A steep wooden ladder led down into the bowels of the earth below and I was wary of what I might find.

However, down I went into an underground chamber — home to six, very fat, buffaloes! “How did you get them in here?” Silly question I suppose but maybe they’d fallen through the roof!

“Aah!” my host said dashing off into the darkness, “Come and see this.” He vanished like a genie then called from a distance, apparently outside. The lady with the lamp lead me to a door in the far wall, then through a short tunnel which emerged in a steep bank below the house. My host, delighted with himself, disappeared again only to re-emerge about 50 yards away. Above us now.

“Tunnels,” he laughed. “Come and see my tunnels.” His incredible system of tunnels, excavated over many years, lead from various points in the house to various points outside. Some tunnels connected to each other, some went up, some went down. “Why have you made all these tunnels?” I asked as we drank tea by the light of the cooking fire.

“Bandits,” he said with glee. “If the bandits come we can hide, or when they come near the house, I can go out, get behind them and shoot. Look at this,” he instructed pointing to the roof where a heavy metal square perched next to the chimney. “When we are not using the fire, we close the chimney with that so that the bandits can’t shoot bullets down it!”

I slept, rather badly, squashed in between numerous women and children, dreaming of bandits, burning brands of wood, buffaloes and tunnels. Early next morning the tunnel man took me onto the roof to show me something which I’d missed the previous night. A long wooden pole, surmounted with a rams horn, rose from the roof to pierce the brilliant blue sky. I was astonished. It resembled a Mongols standard minus yak tails.

“Why is it here?” I asked.

“It is our family tradition” he said shrugging his shoulders. “Goes back to my grandfather’s grandfather and before that. We’ve always done this. It is our pride.”

For the rest of my stay there, I continuously wondered if these people were descended from the ‘Hordes of Genghis Khan’ and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is the case.