Monday 17th October: Neelum - The valley of death

Monday 17th October: Neelum - The valley of death

Monday, instead of waiting around, I joined the Karachi team to go and provide medical aid to places where it wasn't yet available. These guys had tried to hike to a village in the Neelum valley the day before, but had to turn back due to inhospitable terrain.

In two ambulances, we drove upto "Nisar Camp", a few kilometers outside Muzaffarabad, towards the Neelum valley. Here, a tent was already setup where some of these doctors had been treating patients for a few days. We took out some of the medical supplies we had brought and put them in boxes and bags that we could carry.

Five of us, Dr. Farhan, Dr. Abid, Asif, Irshad and myself, set out towards a village further upstream from us, carrying whatever we could. The road was only open until a kilometer or two ahead, after which landslides had wiped them off the face of the mountains. The army workers were constantly busy clearing the existing path and making a new one where the damage was great, but they could only cover a very short distance per day.

It was here in the Neelum valley that the full fury of the quake could be seen and felt. Whole mountains seemed to be cut in half with a gigantic knife, exposing their pale rocky flesh. The resulting debris was deposited at the botom in piles huge enough to engulf whole villages. The initial landslides were so large that the flow of the river was blocked for almost six hours. Countless trucks, jeeps and vehicles could be seen half buried in the landslides or twisted into an almost unrecognizable shape. The only bridge to the other side, a suspension bridge, was in the water, though by the time we returned, the army had completed fixing a rope bridge.

We saw it just about the place where the road vanished into crushed rock. People were walking over it as if it was part of the road. The stench of rotting flesh was all over Muzaffarabad, but here it had an image. It had been there for over a week so must be festering with all types of diseases, yet when we pointed it out to the passersby, instead of avoiding it, they started to touch it. The body was half buried into the road with only the legs exposed. I couldn't get a shot of it at the time and thought that I would do it on our return, but by that time it, and the others the army had recovered, had already been cleared.

From that point on, we had to find our own way through the unstable rocks, debris and water. The valley is actually quite beautiful with streams, just clear white lines from afar, bringing spring water down to the river. There were even palm trees here, something I didn't expect at such a cold place.

But despite the beauty, the river is a grave to thousands of people who perished in the earthquake when whole villages simply fell into it and disappeared. Those that survived the quake, have constantly been under threat from landslides that still have not entirely stopped.

Posted at 10:54am PKT