The road from the settlement of Jaglot, on Pakistan’s Karakoram Highway, to the village of Astore had been one long stretch of rock-strewn, slipshod track winding upward thousands of feet above the boiling, lime-green Astore river. Boulders and sun, granite walls and crumbling chasms, frigid winds and glacial torrents came crashing down from vertical heights to drum on the roof of the van in which I rode. Every time I looked out the window I had to look away, feeling fear in the soles of my feet, waves of nausea, a shortness of breath. The van was crammed with men of the local Shiite Shina tribe, among whom hooked noses, scraggly toes, turbans and Islamic beards predominated. Their features were peppered with faults—missing teeth, glaucomaed eyes, goiters, protuberant ears—and awakened a sort of primitive revulsion in me, but the revulsion seemed to be mutual. Although I had greeted them upon boarding with salam alaykum, not one responded or even looked my way—the Shina were famously hostile to Westerners.

Shina notwithstanding, I had good reason for heading to Astore: Rama Lake, supposedly a three-hour hike away. One of the most awesome sights of the Karakoram, Rama is a 10,000-foot-high oval of sapphire-colored glacial water, the very image of crystalline purity, and I had been obsessed with the idea of seeing it. After arriving, I asked the hotel receptionist, a friendly Pattan man, to find me a trekking guide (a necessity—Westerners hiking alone had disappeared in the past, possibly the victims of Shina robbers) and he told me he knew a Shina who would take me up.

The next morning I learned no trekking guide was available; but the Pattan had found me a jeep and driver. We hadn’t driven a hundred yards before we came upon a chest-high pile of gravel blocking the road up to the lake. “Not my fault,” said the guide. I gave him a few rupees and got out. Because of my schedule I couldn’t wait another day, so I would risk a walk to Rama alone.

I circumambulated the gravel and set out on the road up the valley. The sun was hot but the wind was cold, pouring down from the empyrean heights of the lake. My breath grew short from the altitude, I began sweating through my shirt. Veiled women passed by, carrying firewood on their heads. “Dadada! Dadada!” they jeered at me, imitating foreign speech. Soon I was trailed by five or six boys shouting, “Give me one pen! Where is my pen? One pen!” I ignored them. Now and then one would toss a rock that would fall astray of me.

“Sir! Sir!” a young Shina man called out to me from a promontory. The boys scattered. “Your country, sir?”

The U.S., I told him. He came running down to the road and offered to walk with me to keep the children away. Hamid was his name. He wore a clean blue shalwar qamize and sandals; his features were Shina but without blemish.

Hamid said he had just graduated from a university in the Punjab, and he had something to tell me. “Forgive me for striking your country, sir, you are my guest. But your country is doing many wrong things to my country.”

“Like what?”

“India is exploding bombs but your country is telling us not to explode ourselves. Yet explode we must, for our own security. Can you not understand?”

“I can.”

“I am a Shiite. Your country kills many Shiites.”

The higher we walked, the more Rama Lake began to feel like a fantasy. Each winding stretch of trail led up to a new plateau, a new ascent. Hamid kept up his monologue, a steady stream of facts, dates and points of history—all basically correct. “The U.S. was Pakistan’s great friend...We helped you fight the Soviets in Afghanistan...We helped Kissinger arrange his visit to China for détente...China is our great friend...But your government now kills many Shiites...Your government hates Iran and turns its back on Pakistan...”

I asked him if most Shinas knew history as well as he did.

“Certainly they know the main points. For us history is local news. Muslims are our brothers in every country. My people know this. But they cannot talk to you because they know no English. They believe you hate them.”

Two hours later, a Shina in a dirty smock, leading a donkey loaded with firewood, stopped and told Hamid (he would not acknowledge my presence with so much as a glance) that from the next ascent the road onward to the lake was snowed under and impassable on foot. Hamid shrugged sympathetically at me. Then rather abruptly he wished me well and walked off toward the slopes.

I turned and began heading back to Astore. As disappointed as I was not to see the lake, I was impressed by Hamid’s talk, and I started thinking about it. He had received a university education, and this had allowed him to learn the history behind the cultural rifts between his world and the West, rifts felt on a gut level by his people. Even Astore, high in the Karakoram Mountains, had been touched by politics, presidents and secretaries of state. Despite all the cant in the West about globalization, Americanization, the information revolution, new world orders, the end of history and so on, politics remained local and people polarized. Reconciliation seemed impossible; in fact, judging by what I saw in Astore and elsewhere along the Karakoram Highway, it looked as though differences between the East and the West were growing and hostility increasing.

I neared the village and the women came out again, laughing “Dadada!” as I passed; the “one pen” children renewed their taunting assault; the men, as before, lashed their laden donkeys down the dusty roads and ignored me. Looking for geographic idylls amid a human landscape that breathed hostility in my face, I felt like a rank intruder on a selfish, even ridiculous, mission, and the image of Rama Lake lost its grip on my imagination.

I walked into the ramshackle huddle of huts that made up Astore’s center, booked a seat out on the van for Jaglot the next day, and returned to my hotel to pack.

Jeffrey Tayler is a correspondent for the Atlantic and the author of five books, including, most recently, River of No Reprieve: Descending Siberia’s Waterway of Exile, Death, and Destiny. His book “Facing the Congo” ranked 28th on World Hum’s Top 30 Travel Books of all time. He was the subject of a World Hum interview, and his last essay for World Hum was The Woman in the Kuffiya.

Photo by bongo vongo via Flickr, (Creative Commons).