Into the Karakoram

Today, we flew from the capital of Islamabad to the mountain town of Skardu. Our stay in Islamabad happened to overlap with the storming of the Red Mosque. We were woken at 4am of "Operation Silence" (we'd never get away with such a name back home) to the rumble of bombs, 5km away. Despite the warfare not far away, we were never exposed to it in any real sense. Pakistanis seem pretty embarrassed about having such militant extremists in their country. Anyways, the flight today was incredible. We even got a clear look at our objective, along with Nanga Parbat, K2, and a host of others. Five 8000m peaks in a 40-minute flight! In the morning, we leave for Askoli (the road-head). Pakistani civilization again in about a month.