Sir Christopher MacRae was British High Commissioner in Pakistan for three years until his retirement in 1997. Having had no time to spare during his term of office, he used retirement to fulfil a dream of trekking in the Hindu Kush and got together a group of friends to accompany him. This is an account of our travels, from Chitral to Gilgit in Pakistan's North West Frontier province, parallel to and close to the border with Afghanistan's Wakhan corridor. The date is July 2000.

In the months before departure, the party had dwindled, due to injury and decrepitude, from fourteen to seven. Charles and Sophia Wrangham were old friends of mine; Charles works for the European Bank for Regional Development - tall and bearded, he could easily pass for a distinguished Pakistani; Sophia is quintessentially English. Anthony Allsopp is a retired civil engineer who has worked all over the world - my picture is of his hunched figure plodding (far ahead of me) in the footsteps of our guide Murad. Jean-Ives and Michele Chambon are a doctor/pharmacist couple from Provence. Everywhere we went we were warmly welcomed, partly due to the very wide acquaintance and esteem in which Christopher is held, and partly also on account of the Chambon's medical skills and supplies (about which more below).

We gathered in Chitral (1500m), a delightful small town linked to the rest of Pakistan by two jeep tracks over high passes which are closed in winter, and by a daily flight from Islamabad which operates when there is not low cloud. Chitral was famous for fifteen days in 1895 when 300 British troops were besieged in the fort and were rescued by two separate expeditionary forces that set out from Gilgit and Peshawar and arrived together after heroically crossing high passes in early spring. That was about as far North-West as British troops penetrated in the course of the Great Game. Sir Francis Younghusband described the area in the 1890's. Eric Newby wrote of his expedition in the 1950's but he was rather further North. Now Isobel Shaw explores the region and edits Trekking in Pakistan (Vanguard Books).

We were entertained to lunch in the fort; and then in the Officers Mess of the Chitral Scouts, where the commanding Officer shared with us an unusual problem. The Band of the Chitral Scouts was due to play at the Shandur polo festival, just about to begin. This festival, though played at 3900m, has become a big tourist attraction with international dignitaries attending. This year the Sultan of Brunei was expected to attend - what is the National Anthem of Brunei? (For the record, the Chitral A, B and C teams all beat their Gilgit opponents - a rare feat in an event usually won by Gilgit.)

I wish to mention here the Hindu Kush Heights hotel at Chitral, a wonderful hotel on account of its location, comfort and cuisine. Our complex trekking requirements were very capably handled by Hindu Kush Trails. Both are run by the ul Mulk family, descended from the dictatorial mehtars (mayors) of the district in the 19th century.

The geography of the Hindu Kush is dominated by rivers, turbulent masses of grey silted water hurrying towards the distant Indian Ocean down deep trenches that are mostly hot and arid. From Chitral, we were driven by jeep for ten bone-shaking hours up one such trench to Rua (2800m), our starting point. From there we walked towards a great wall of snow-capped mountains representing Afghanistan, then turned right and ascended a gorge to temperate pastures high above. Here and elsewhere we camped on green meadows by springs of clear water with goats and cattle feeding round us. The next day we walked on up through meadows full of flowers, wading across side streams bordered by thick bushy undergrowth, to another idyllic campsite at 3450m. We were accompanied by two guides (Murad and Jagir), two cooks (Karim and Ibrahim) and about fifteen porters, who erected tents on arrival and provided us with three hot meals a day.

At this stage, we were not properly acclimatised, and any exertion, even sitting up in bed left me temporarily breathless. Before leaving England, I had had two concerns about the trek, the first whether I would be fit enough to survive. In the event, eight hourly sessions in a local gym and two strenuous days in Snowdonia proved just about sufficient. My other concern was about the camping - in my old age I have become accustomed to a soft mattress, and I imagined myself tossing with bruised hips on stony ground waiting interminably for the relief that dawn would bring. My concerns were heightened when my mattress developed a puncture during our first night. So I was surprised and pleased to find that I slept soundly all night and every night for our twenty nights of camping.

Our third day saw us reach the Shah Jinali pass (4250m). Shah Jinali means 'Royal polo ground', and indeed the pass is a large area of flat meadow, studded with flowers including lots of edelweiss, with small lakes and ringed on all sides by magnificent crenellated mountain ridges. A table and chairs were put up, we had our hot lunch, and lay and sunbathed, until a sudden cold wind and a flurry of snowflakes roused us and sent us on our way down the other side.

Although we were the first trekking party of the season to cross the pass, there is a good path all the way, created by flocks and their herdsmen and by farmers who ascend in the summer to cultivate every available acre. These people live in summer settlements with flat mud roofs or domes of heather that looked grossly permeable to rainwater. Descending from the Shah Jinali pass, we camped by one of these settlements and excited the curiosity of its inhabitants. There were lots of children, the girls in brightly coloured clothes and with mud(?)-painted faces, that flowed round rapidly in tight groups, like drops of mercury. One such drop attached itself expectantly to me as I sat reading a little distance from the camp. I told them the stories of Goldilocks and the three Bears, and Little Red Riding Hood. They did not understand a word, but sentences like 'Who's been sleeping in my bed?' and 'All the better to eat you with' produce a thrill in any language. Then I got a small boy to sing me a song, which he did with excellent intonation and rhythm, so I took him down to repeat his performance in front of Jean-Ives' video camera. When it was clear that a return song was required of us, Christopher proposed 'Old MacDonald had a Farm' which was a noisy and chaotic success.

But the focus soon shifted to Jean-Ives and Michele. Here and everywhere a queue developed of locals looking for medical treatment. Jean-Ives took this seriously, and spent hours on most afternoons doing consultations. He and Michele had brought 9kg of drugs with them; half these were dispensed along our route and the remainder were handed to semi-qualified medical assistants in the villages. Michele was invited by the women into the summer settlement and I accompanied her. There we were given tea and invited to stir our cups with what looked like an ordinary stone but turned out to be rock-salt.

Our walk down to Lasht completed the first third of our trek, and it was in Lasht that we passed the only other foreign trekkers, a Danish couple, that we encountered between Chitral and Gilgit. Villagers were keen to act as porters for us, and there is all too little such work available. But union rules prevent porters from one valley carrying our loads through other valleys. So we had to say goodbye to our first (and best) set of porters. To mark the occasion, they crowded into our mess tent and put on an entertainment of singing and dancing.

Chitrali music is jolly basic. Every song is based on the eight notes of a major octave, nothing higher or lower and no sharps or flats, with (on a notional scale of C Major) the tonic and dominant notes being D and A respectively. Someone finds an empty barrel and strums a rhythm; someone sings one of a large repertory of songs which all sound much the same; someone does a very sedate dance step in the ring; and everyone else claps in time. After a few verses, the audience starts a rhythmic whooping, the music speeds up, and the dancer becomes more and more frenzied, until abruptly he gives up and the music dribbles to a close. As time went on, the Europeans were invited to participate and it became my turn to dance. I started slowly but responded to the whoops with a great series of satanic leaps, pointing alternately at the audience and the sky until I collapsed to resounding applause and a great feeling of satisfaction. That was a memorable evening, but one not to be repeated. Successive groups of porters seemed obsessed with song and dance, often performing at quite inappropriate times and inordinate length, until I became tired of it.

From Lasht, instead of going over the Darkot pass (glacier with crevasses) we went a long way round in order to cross the Zindikhar pass. After two days of approach march, we had a rest day beside a violent waterfall. Most people walked over to the Boroghil pass, an easy way to and from Afghanistan over which in ancient times the Chinese had chased and slaughtered thousands of Tibetans. But we saw no sign of any Afghan refugees. I wandered off separately and sat listening to a refrain of larks and marmots. I heard one cuckoo. J'ai trouve un nid d'alouette avec deux oeufs. (Alouette = Lark, as in the Franglais 'Soddez cela pour une alouette'.) But that day was the low point of the trek for me. A combination of altitude, dry air and dust from the path created nasal problems for all and they hit me that day. I felt run-down with a prolonged nosebleed and diarrhoea, like a candle being burned at both ends.

I have used French because quite a lot of our conversation was in French. Jean-Ives and Michele were unable to contribute to conversations in English. Christopher's French is fluent and everyone has a smattering. I was able to express simple sentiments moderately well, but frequently lost the gist of the reply. Michele has wonderful diction and an infectious laugh, but it was often frustrating not to understand the jokes. Still, I had plenty of practice, to the extent that I had a dream in French towards the end of the holiday. But our games of Scrabble, which were played most afternoons, were entirely in English.

Going over the Zindikhar pass (4670m) involves walking up, over and down the Zindikhar glacier, which is virtually crevasse-free. We camped in an ablation valley in the lateral moraine, a bleak spot. Where we had become used to green meadows with donkeys braying, now we had boulders and the more faecal noise made by yaks. Our 'bed tea' was delivered at 4.30am, so that we could walk up the glacier before the sun softened it. The glacier is not slippery - there is dirt and gravel and the top cm of ice is friable. Little torrents of water gather in runnels before cascading through holes into hidden depths. The sun shone as we walked up in a crocodile, and we perceived a party coming down towards us. This proved to be two men leading two yaks each bearing a richly dressed woman. The party had crossed the pass the day before (the first to do so that year) in order to bathe in the hot springs at Rawat on the other side and were now returning. A consultation took place on the glacier, and Jean-Ives dispensed alternative medication for their ailments.

After three hours walking, we reached the top, a substantial flat region of ice, to find a table laid and Karim busy preparing our lunch of chicken-noodle soup, chapattis, tuna and biscuits, washed down with lots of green tea (very popular). The porters sat astride a crevasse (for resonance?) and did their song-and-dance routines. The sun shone and great mountains and glaciers gleamed all round. This was the high point of the trek. A previous party was said to have played football against their porters (and lost, of course) but we were pleased just to have got there. Considering that our average age was 58, we were fit and (mostly) fast and did well to avoid any significant accident or injury in three weeks during which we covered 200km and crossed some difficult terrain.

Getting off the glacier involved descending steep snow or steep unstable boulders and was unpleasant. Then the path led on down 1600m past the hot springs to Rawat, where our campsite was the best of the holiday with fabulous views all round. We left it reluctantly and walked on down over a gorge to the village of Darkot, where we broached our secret bottle of whisky and drank a toast in memory of George Hayward, murdered there at dawn exactly 130 years ago (on 18 July 1870), an event which provoked a huge outcry in the British press.

Pakistan is 97% Moslem, mainly strict Sunni, but the North-West frontier region is mainly the more relaxed Ismaili Shiite sect of which the Aga Khan is the titular head. Perhaps for this reason, the Aga Khan Foundation was very much in evidence everywhere we went. This is a professional Development Agency that provides not only funding but also expertise by means of which funding from other sources is sucked in. New hydro-electric schemes, roads, health centres and schools were in evidence in Darkot and in most other villages, together with elaborate and effective irrigation channels. With wheat and maize ripening in every tiny field, and apricots laid out to dry on every convenient boulder, it seemed to me that the agricultural economy in this remote region was stable and thriving.

While we were in Darkot, there was a thunderstorm and the weather changed. Although the region has plenty of water, rain is not expected in the summer months. But we left Darkot under a leaden sky and never really saw the sun again. Our final objective was the Atar pass (4590m) with a beautiful lake on the far side, but it is not used by locals and is said to have been crossed by no more than about ten foreigners. Where our porters had used donkeys on the Shah Jinali and yaks on the Zindikhar, our new porters carried our loads themselves, 25kg bound with two yak ropes, one over each shoulder with the ends held tightly in one hand - terrible for balance but they seemed to glide over fields of boulders. The Atar pass is quite different from the other two, a three-hour ascent up steep unstable shale leading to a sharp notch in a high ridge, and followed by an eight-hour descent down steep boulder slopes. Both Rakaposhi (7788m) and Nanga Parbat (8126m) should have been visible from the pass but were obscured by cloud. But the lake was beautiful and the summer herdsmen were grateful for medical help. The porters were happy too. In recognition of what had been a tough day, we bought (for £12) and gave them a sheep, and I remember drifting off to sleep to the smell of roast mutton and the sound of their singing and clapping round a crackling fire.

As the porters struck camp, we had our final breakfast. There were cornflakes and chapattis, and bowls of apricots, hard-boiled eggs, honey, porridge, unsweetened yoghurt and delicious goats cream, the last two supplied by the grateful herdsmen. Then it was six hours walk down a beautiful wooded valley with fir-cones and pine-needles underfoot to the road, and seven hours by jeep to Gilgit (not as nice as Chitral, and they lost the polo!), where we were entertained to dinner by local members of the Aga Khan Foundation. The Western face of Nanga Parbat (5km high) was hidden by cloud as we drove down the Karakoram Highway, but the drive was fine with the Indus valley turning from grey to green as entered the monsoon region. Our last evening in Islamabad was spent at a party, put on for Christopher's benefit by Naeem Zarfraz who was just back from giving a talk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Under a military dictatorship, Pakistan gets a poor press in Britain, and even without that there are obvious difficulties in getting a thriving tourist industry going in a Muslim country. But the natural beauty and grandeur of the scenery provides a huge potential for tourism. I count it a privilege to have been able to explore such a wonderful and remote part of the world.

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