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11am and I am crossing the border from Rwanda into eastern DRC again.  Faces are familiar and I joke about the constantly changing border policy with the woman who checks my passport.  This time my $35 buys me a 7 day visa for Goma alone, stamped into my passport.

The border activity seems to pick up on each crossing, more women with merchandise moving to and fro, more foreigners without NGO affiliation speaking little French.. are tourists really coming to Goma?

The town is safe now, save for the growing number of homeless youth pickpocketing on the streets.  Growing and changing, Goma is developing and modernizing.  Civil war in the rural areas or not, the West is coming.  Supermarkets have more products, new restaurants are opening and even a brand new club complete with swimming pool, day beds for lounging, two DJ booths, a restaurant and a bar.  The goal is outdoor day club parties by this summer.

The driver from HEAL Africa picks me up, he brings my letter of invitation and procedures move smoothly.  My first visit a distant memory of being stranded at the border after dark, having to be saved by Jo Lusi (HEAL Africa’s founder) in scrubs straight from the operating room.

Rather it is sunny and bright, and I am back for the next stage of my “Voices of Peace” project, the workshops.  Workshops on women in peace-building with my carefully cultivated women leaders from each sector of society.  We will have 30 women leaders in each Goma, Bukavu and Kinshasa, ministers, national assembly members, journalists, heads of religious associations, students, police, military, civil society and activists.

The women are coming together to watch the film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, and spend a day and a half with its star, the Liberian peace activist, Leymah Gbowee, and its producer, Abigail Disney.  The goals of the workshops are to provide a platform for conversation between women leaders, facilitate their creating unified goals of the women of the Congo that take them out of their divisions, and finally a strategy to fulfill them.

An hour after landing at Kigali International Airport, I am flying through the night, down a wide paved road on the back of a moto.  The air is cool and smoky, as the Rwandan air always seems to be, and I smile at the feeling of freedom from behind the scratched plastic visor of the well-worn helmet.  I wonder if my 15-year old driver realizes that his passenger-issued helmet will fly off in a crash without a chin strap…  such is life in Africa.

Dark and quiet, a bit eerie as Rwanda always feels for me.  Thoughts of the genocide creep into my mind, were there bodies on this road?  What atrocities did my driver experience?  Estimates are 90% of all Rwandans are traumatized, 30% severely so, unable to work full time and function normally in society.  All signs point to a country trying desperately to forget its past, but only 15 years ago Hutus and Tutsis were slaughtering each other.  Can the people really forget?

Apparently the ex-pat community can… I arrive at my destination, the Heaven Restaurant in Kiovu.  An elegantly appointed, open air restaurant on a hill overlooking a valley and the city below.  Soft music and lighting, hard woods and colorful fabrics, clinking glasses, low laughter, a table of diplomats, another of Western NGO workers.  Were any of them present?  I look at the waiter who gives a big smile and takes my order… was he a part of the genocide?  Did he take a machete to his neighbors or was he a survivor?

The rifts of the Great Lake Region run deep and wide.

The Trek

The Karakoram, the ‘Black Gravel Mountains’, a spectacular range of peaks and valleys in the northern reaches of Pakistan.  For centuries explorers have been allured by the splendor and massiveness of the brown and black metamorphic rocks, containing the highest concentration of the tallest peaks in the world.  Boasting four peaks over 8000m, the Karakoram is home to the infamous K2, as well as another 30 peaks rising above 7500m.

Skardu is one of the main gateways to the Karakoram, a peaceful, conservative town of Shiite Balti population, elevation 7,316 feet.  The main road is lined with small hotels, restaurants, tourist shops selling local gems, carpets and handicrafts, and supply stores packed with hiking boots, sleeping bags, tents, ropes, cramp-ons, carabiners and more, everything one would need to venture into the mountains.

The people are as diverse as the small town’s offerings, old men with lined faces in traditional robes and woolen hats, wide eyed children and handsome, young guides, geared in North Face and Patagonia, who would blend into any mountain town in America.  Rare is a woman to be found on the streets of Skardu, yet even though I stood out with my uncovered blonde hair, most people paid little attention.

Sharif would be my guide into the mountains, son of a famous Skardu guiding family, I had contacted him online and we decided upon a five day trek of mountains, scenery and villages across the Thalle La (Thalle Pass).  I would climb with him, his cousin and a porter.

From the village of Khasumik, we set off on foot.  Curious villagers peeked from doorways and small children huddled around giggling as we spoke.

Me with 40 pounds of gear, Sharif and porter with 50+, we set off on the trail, a small footpath for herders and animals, moving to higher grazing grounds late in the afternoon.  The Thalle River rushes in a green swath down the valley, bringing snow melt to the arid land.  Shephards care to flocks of sheep and goats, while farmers plant in terraced plots, using irrigated water from the snow melt.  Rocky mountains slope gently on either side to snow-capped peaks.

Days were long for walking, air thin and temperatures freezing.  Nights were searingly cold, forcing me into my sleeping bag immediately after sundown, fully clothed in down coat, wool hat and socks.  The night before our traverse, I laid awake at 12,000 feet with my chest heaving until 3am when Sharif came to wake me to start our ascent.  With thigh-deep snow, we needed to cross the pass before it became too soft to traverse.

The Thalle La lies at 15088 feet, higher than any point in the continental United States.  Thalle’s abundant pastures were formerly owned by the Raja of Khaplu, and the Thalle La was reportedly the main route between Skardu and Khaplu for British colonial officers because of the grazing for their pack animals. The pass is considered one of the easier passes in the region; yet, early in the season, the snow changes everything.

Thalle La gave us everything she had.  We started in the dark, the path illuminated by the full moon.  As dawn broke, the sky transformed to clear blue skies shining over the Thalle Valley and her imposing Thalle Peak.  Yet, as we approached the pass summit, the winds picked up and hail began pelting us, the entire sky a whiteout.  Clearing again when we reached the top for a mind-blowing, 180-degree view of the valleys below.

Rising in Tibet, the Indus River flows northwest into Pakistan, in a deep trough dividing the Himalaya from the Karakoram and the Indian subcontinent from Asia.  It turns south in Baltistan, one of Pakistan’s northern provinces, a land of glaciers, rivers and mountains inhabited by Balti people whose ancestors immigrated from Tibet.

Squeezed in between Pakistan’s two wars (one with India over Kashmir, the other with the Taliban over the North West Frontier Province), Baltistan is known for its trekking and mountaineering, rather than the violence of the rest of the country.  Home to the Karakoram range, the densest mass of glaciers and high mountains on earth, including 28, 416 ft. K2, second only to Mt. Everest, Baltistan and its capital Skardu have been tourist hubs for decades.

It is to Skardu I came to find another side of Pakistan, away from the conflict, the suffering and terror.  And from my Pakistan Airways window, gazing down upon endless snow-capped peaks, I knew that was what I would find.

Far from the border of Afghanistan and the right wing Islamification of Pakistan, lies the ancient city of Lahore.  A strategic trade route through Central Asia, Lahore has been fought over and conquered by marauding invaders since it was first written about by a Chinese traveler in 630AD.

Lahore is the cultural, artistic and intellectual capital of Pakistan.  Once you get past the heat, noise and crowds streets, Lahore’s inner beauty unfolds with gardens, mosques and Sufi shrines, providing blissful tranquility from the mayhem outside.  The city seems to politely ignore the influence of the Taliban, cinemas play Indian fims, CD and DVD stores flourish and women hawk their wares in Pakistan’s only red light district.

Foreigners, however, are hard to be found.  As I walked the streets, exploring the old city, Shamsi, my 78-year old self-appointed guide, complained to me of the lack of tourism in very broken English.  “The Taliban has ruined all of Pakistan.  No tourism.  Clean them all.”  The last comment referring to the Pakistani government’s offensive in Swat.

This has been the prevailing sentiment for all Pakistanis with whom I have spoken (though some do blame the US for pushing the Taliban out of Afghanistan into Pakistan).  They are victims of the Taliban; they live in terror of suicide bombings and losing their freedom.  “This is not Islam,” Shamsi states.  “Islam is peaceful.” Get rid of the Taliban and return Pakistan to the Pakistanis.