The search begins in Peshawar, a frontier city that feels like the edge of the world. The name means exactly that—frontier town—and it sits at the northern fringes of Pakistan, a country wedged between Afghanistan, India, and China. I’ve come here to do research, looking for a book called Lost Horizon, a British novel that has sent me on this journey. There’s a shop in Peshawar that should stock books by British authors, the London Book Company, so that’s where I head.
Lost Horizon was written in the 1930s by James Hilton, and it became a sensation. It’s an escapist fantasy about a utopia hidden somewhere in the Himalayas, the story of four travelers escaping war-torn Afghanistan who get lost in the mountains. They’re rescued and taken to a Buddhist monastery called Shangrila, a haven of peace and harmony where people live to be over two hundred years old. Hilton himself insisted the place was fictional, but with the Western world on the brink of World War II, people wanted to believe it.
A myth grew up around the book. Maybe Hilton was hiding something. Maybe Shangrila was inspired by a real valley somewhere down there. The only clue Hilton gives about the whereabouts of Shangrila is that the plane in his novel flew past K2 and Nanga Parbat, two of the highest mountains on Earth.
After that, it simply disappeared. That’s the thread I’m following. From Peshawar, I head northwest into the Hindu Kush, then east toward the Hunza Valley in the heart of the Himalayas. This is some of the most extreme terrain on the planet, and you feel it immediately.
The cold is brutal, the air thin, the snow deep. I try to reach a viewpoint of Nanga Parbat, but the snow gets too deep and we turn back. My mouth is freezing up, so I sound a bit odd when I speak. It’s around minus twenty degrees.
This is without doubt one of the most hostile places on Earth. Yet despite the conditions, people have been coming here for centuries searching for Shangrila. The first was Alexander the Great, two and a half thousand years ago, when his armies marched in search of the fountain of youth. His quest started where mine starts, in the Bumboret Valley, a remote corner of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan.
This is the home of a mountain tribe called the Kalash. My guide, Juno, takes me to see the living Kalash, but first he takes me to see the dead. What’s left of their graveyard is scattered bones and broken coffins, destroyed by grave robbers and vandals. Pakistan is a Muslim country, and the Kalash are the last surviving non-Muslim minority.
For a thousand years, their Muslim overlords have called them kaffirs, the non-believers. They are an oppressed people, and this desecrated graveyard is one example of their persecution. When I ask if Kalash people did this, Juno is clear. No.
The Kalash wouldn’t take Islamic people. Once, eighty thousand Kalash lived in this valley. Today there are barely two and a half thousand. They’re a striking people, with an amazing prevalence of blue eyes and blonde hair, more European than Pakistani.
There may be a reason for that. It’s said that even if Alexander the Great never found his Shangrila, some of his soldiers did. They stayed on and intermarried with the Kalash, who still carry their genes. They’re also remarkably hospitable.
Any visitor must drink the obligatory cup of tea. I ask an elder if he’s heard of Shangrila, a mystical place. He nods. The name is known to him.
It’s a good place, he says. Do I think it’s possible to find it? He laughs. It’s very far from here, and I have a long way to travel.
Maybe it’s in the Gilgit area somewhere. He thinks it’s special. I can’t stay long in this beautiful valley. Juno is heading south to Chitral, where there’s an event on in town.
But there’s another reason I must keep moving. The snow-clad peaks glow in the alpine light and send a chilling warning. Winter is approaching. My search for Shangrila will be a race against time, before the early snows of the Himalayas cut me off and imprison me in this remote corner of the Hindu Kush.
Every autumn, the wild horsemen of northwest Pakistan test their strength, courage, and horsemanship in a game as old as Central Asia itself. It’s called buzkashi, and the object of attention is a headless, legless goat. I’m in Chitral, near the Afghan border, watching this ancient Afghan sport. It isn’t for the faint-hearted.
Once a horseman has the goat, the opposition does everything in its power to take it from him, which means a melee of grabbing, struggling riders until someone breaks free. As far as I can see, there are few rules. Anything goes. Juno tells me a lot of old scores are settled on the buzkashi field.
It started as practice for warriors to pick their wounded comrades from the battlefield, and new heroes are still made with every game. But if I’m to find Shangrila, I must keep moving. The first autumn snows are already falling, and there’s only one road out of the Chitral Valley. Time to hitch a ride.
We’re coming up to the Lowari Pass, about 2,800 meters high, which is cut off by meters of snow for four or five months of the year. That’s what makes these valleys so separate and why the cultures are so different, because you simply can’t travel for much of the year. It should be open now, even in November, but you just never know if you’ll get through. Because of the snow, the road is too narrow for passing, and there’s no regulation of traffic up here.
Vehicles going up come face to face with vehicles going down, and everyone stops and argues. Eventually they dig away the snow. It happens every autumn. It takes nearly eight hours to travel just fifty miles or eighty kilometers, but we make it.
I’m now in the Swat Valley, which should by rights have a claim to being the inspiration for Shangrila, because this valley was the birthplace of Tantric Buddhism. Not long ago, there were over fourteen hundred Buddhist monasteries in this one valley alone. Today, Islam holds sway, and the relics of its Buddhist past have suffered accordingly. I’m shown sculptures scattered all over the place, remnants of a Buddhist civilization, but they’ve been stoned.
Because in Islam you can’t portray a deity, they stone them. It’s one of the sadder realities of this part of the world. Where once there was a peaceful Buddha’s face, the icons of Western consumerism have been pasted over. This is how James Hilton envisaged Shangrila, and the words of his novel come flooding back.
Shangrila was touched with mystery. The travelers could hear gongs and trumpets and the massed wail of voices. The high lama had skill in telepathy and powers of healing. The monks had discovered the key to longevity, to semi-immortality.
Thirty years after Hilton wrote those words, another group of people searching for Shangrila flocked to the Swat. The hippies. This was a stopping-off point on the hippie trail leading from San Francisco to Kathmandu. The Swat has always been something of a haven for foreigners.
A hundred years ago, the British came seeking relief from bustling towns like Peshawar, and it was they who stocked its rivers with trout. My companion, Mowar Khan, has benefited from both associations. He likes fish, and he used to run a boarding house catering exclusively to hippies, even if he didn’t always approve of them. If a woman’s legs are showing, he tells me, that’s bad in Islam.
If I were wearing short pants, they’d throw stones at me. They’d think I was a very bad man, like an animal, going out in the street with no clothes. The hippies are long gone. Free love and Islam were never going to mix.
Two valleys east of the Swat is the town of Bisham. Gunfire racks the streets here, and no one bats an eyelid. Guns are a way of life, and blood feuds are an institution. These interfamily, intertribal battles cause thousands of deaths every year, the penalties of an ancient system magnified a thousand times by modern weapons.
Machine guns, rifles, shotguns, pistols, all made right here. Despite what the labels say, made in Italy. They’re not made in Italy, they’re made in Bisham. They make ammunition here too.
It’s estimated that sixty percent of all Pakistani men own a gun, and more children will learn to use a gun here than will finish school. A valley that makes so many deadly weapons is hardly a place of harmony and boundless peace. Like the hippies, it’s time for me to go. But my next stop is hardly Shangrila either.
I’m about to come face to face with the supernatural at a Pakistani exorcism. I’m high in the Himalayas on the Karakoram Highway, the main road linking Pakistan to China. Each year in Pakistan, they hold a competition to see who has the most beautifully painted truck. Trucking here is a family affair, and each family takes pride in making its truck more gaudy and highly decorated than the next.
There’s a religious side to it too. The paintings are spiritual symbols meant to protect the trucks from the dangers of the road. It’s in one of these mobile art galleries that I hitch a lift. The highway takes me deep into the Karakoram ranges, which boast some of the world’s highest peaks, including K2, the second highest mountain on Earth.
As we drive, I follow the valley of the Indus. In Hilton’s novel, Shangrila was supposed to be near the source of this great river, so in theory, if I follow the Indus Valley, I should find Shangrila. At the wheel is a Pathan, and my traveling companion is also a Pathan, members of a warlike tribe that lives up near the Afghan border. Across Pakistan, Pathans dominate the trucking industry.
They tell me I’m the first visitor to this area, and when I ask if a beautiful truck means more business, they correct me. It’s not for business. It’s for pride. The trucks are wonderful, and very comfortable in the back.
It’s a good way to ride. But the higher we go, the closer we get to the roof of the world, and if I want to reach my spiritual Shangrila, I must abandon the truck. Where I’m going, there are no roads. As I draw closer to my destination, I’m warned to be careful.
The locals believe powerful spirits, fairies, live on the snow line. Keeping on the right side of these fairy spirits is very important. This is a superstitious world. There’s an old man believed to be the subject of a curse.
He’s not responding to conventional treatment. He’s feverish, his body racked with pain. So they call in a shaman, a medium who communes with the spirit world, hoping he can locate the cause of the problem. The shaman inhales smoke from smoldering juniper leaves, and the combination of smoke and deep breathing induces a trance.
He starts screaming, which seems almost theatrical, not real, but it’s not to be taken lightly. People here have unshakable faith in the supernatural, and those who believe themselves cursed often die. All at once, the shaman runs outside. I suspect a trick, but the ground is undisturbed.
I watch carefully. He knows exactly where to dig. He thinks there’s something here causing the old man’s disease. And then he finds it.
A piece of skull wrapped in a rag. An evil spell placed by an enemy. A curse. The trance isn’t over.
He continues communing with the spirit world until, totally exhausted, he faints. A few days later, I’m told, the old man begins to show signs of recovery. As for the shaman, his job isn’t over. The next day, in an extraordinary public seance, he becomes a prophet for the whole village.
Maybe through his otherworldly contacts, he can help me find my Shangrila. Much of Pakistan is extreme in its Islam, but up here in the far north, villages still commune with the supernatural. Today the shaman uses his powers to establish contact with the dreaded mountain spirits, trying to find out what they have in store for the village for the rest of the year. I’ve never photographed anything like this before, never seen anything like it anywhere I’ve traveled.
Once more, the juniper smoke induces a deep trance, and the shaman begins to hallucinate. In his ecstasy, he translates the fairy prophecy. If he looks sad, the news is bad. If he looks happy, the news is good.
Fortunately for the villagers, he looks happy. At pagan rituals like this, they slaughter a goat, and in a macabre twist, the shaman grabs it. Here, the blood of a goat’s head is said to be fairy milk. I had half a mind to ask the fairies through the shaman if they could help me find Shangrila, but I guess this was their reply.
The trance lifts, and the shaman leaves his fairy world, completely exhausted. His party may be over, but it’s just starting for the villagers. As he washes the blood from his face, they celebrate the fairy message. It will be a good season, a prosperous year for the farmers of this valley.
As for me, I have an appointment further up the Karakoram Highway, toward the Chinese border. My destination is Gilgit, a town little known outside Pakistan. To the locals, it’s known as the home of a game that has become associated throughout the world with the rich and famous. Polo.
I’ve ridden horses all my life, but I’ve never played polo. In Gilgit, you don’t have to be rich to play. You just have to be a good rider. The game had its origins in Persia, but it was Gilgit that gave it its name.
Polo means ball in the local language, and hitting the ball isn’t easy. Back in the days of the Raj, when the British army was here, cavalry officers were captivated by the game, and that’s how polo traveled to England and then to the rest of the world. It just doesn’t seem to be my game. These guys are brilliant riders, and I’m terrible at it, but at least I got to hit the ball once.
It’s a fantastic game, and I’m really bad at it. I tell my companions why I’m here, searching for the lost valley of Shangrila. They tell me they know of a crashed plane near a town called Skardu. Maybe it’s the one that inspired James Hilton.
According to his novel, Shangrila was supposed to be near the headwaters of the Indus, not too far from Nanga Parbat. That makes Skardu a candidate. But it hardly looks like paradise on Earth. The upper Indus Valley is one of the most barren places I’ve ever seen.
It’s also Kashmir, disputed territory claimed by both India and Pakistan. A war zone is an unlikely setting for Shangrila, but it’s here. On the edge of town, there’s a so-called Shangrila resort, a 1970s theme destination where I’m staying. As we drive closer, I see the remains of the crashed plane I was told about.
The buildings have a Buddhist air about them, but closer inspection reveals my journey is far from over. An outdated tourist facility cashing in on the Lost Horizon myth might be someone’s idea of Shangrila, but it’s hardly mine. The lake does lend an air of peace, though, and after ten days on the road, the tea is wonderfully therapeutic. Tomorrow I travel to the Hunza Valley, a place where people live to be well over a hundred years old, and where I hope to find my own private Shangrila.
Skardu is a mecca for climbers, where they hire camping and rock-climbing equipment before attempting some of the world’s highest mountains. I’ve traveled more than five hundred miles from Peshawar on the Afghan border. From Skardu, I head north toward the Chinese border, into the Hunza Valley. But first, a game that penetrated the remotest corners of the old British Empire.
Cricket. The crew and I are challenged to a match, Australia versus Pakistan, and it’s not long before they have us on the ropes. Back in the days when the British army ruled India and what is now Pakistan, this was literally the ends of the earth, or the earth as the British knew it some seventy years ago. Below this fort’s walls was the known world, cities, order, civilization.
Beyond was the great unknown, the setting for James Hilton’s novel. This fort commands quite a presence over the valley. These were the last bastions of the British. Beyond here, it was unknown.
When Hilton wrote his book in the 1930s, if anybody traveled even this far, it was eminently possible that a place like Shangrila could exist, because no one knew what lay beyond. To find the place that provided Hilton’s inspiration, I have to enter that great beyond. The Hunza Valley is on the other side of these ranges. The roads are rocky, and few people pass this way.
As I enter the valley, I immediately get a sense of the timelessness I’m looking for. It’s beautiful, and there’s an air of peace to it. There are also a great many old people. The Hunza is legendary for its healthy elderly population, with people regularly living well past one hundred years of age.
And if this is the valley of Shangrila, there must be a Buddhist monastery. There it is. At the head of the valley sits a building with a distinctly Buddhist look, fitting the description of Shangrila better than anything I’ve seen anywhere in the Himalayas. A group of pavilions clings to the mountainside.
Under the ancient building, I enter, unsure what I’ll find. Is this a place of enlightenment? Could it be a place that, once entered, you never want to leave? I sense I’m alone, and then again, I’m not sure.
As I move through the narrow corridors and catch glimpses of the beautiful valley below, I feel this may well be the place that inspired Shangrila. In the book, the travelers who arrived at Shangrila always had a sense they were being watched, that the monks and other residents never had more than a faint physical presence. As I wander the corridors and rooms of this strange, deserted building, I too get a faint sense of the people who once lived here. History relates that this fort was built in the fifteenth century by a family that ruled the Hunza.
When a daughter got married, craftsmen came from Tibet to create the beautiful buildings seen today. That may explain a building that’s more fort than monastery. But the question remains, was this the inspiration for Hilton’s fantasy? As I read on the terrace above the valley, the answer appears.
Eaz is the custodian of this building. He’s lived in the Hunza all his life. If anyone knows of its links to the Shangrila myth, surely he does. Before the arrival of the British, he tells me, this was an independent kingdom.
The British feared a possible Russian movement through this valley down to India, which is why they fought a battle with British troops in December 1891. And after the British came, it didn’t change until 1938. Probably this was the time when James Hilton, the writer of Lost Horizon, might have come here. Eaz believes he did.
He believes this might have been what Hilton designed Shangrila after, an inspiration for his famous novel. Eaz may believe Hilton came here, but I’m not so sure. Though it doesn’t matter either way. I set out on this journey knowing Shangrila was the invention of a master storyteller, and it does no harm to believe that heaven could exist on earth.
James Hilton believed each of us needed a place like Shangrila to escape to, even if only in our imagination. A place of hope, a safe haven from the rigors of the world. For me, this has been as much a search for inner happiness as it has been an external journey to find Shangrila, my heaven at the ends of the earth.
