Way up at 2600m and set beneath the 27th highest mountain in the world is a perfect oval of greenery home to the highest natural stadium. We based ourselves in the tiny village of Pisan in a little homestay surrounded by fruit trees. It was a lovely location with large windows offering views of the mountains and it would have been a great place to stay if the hosts just cleaned the bedding. We’d booked to stay 3 nights and I couldn’t bare the thought of sleeping in the dirty bed with dribble stains all over the pillow so I ended up hand washing it all. To make matters worse Craig’s diarrhoea came back with a vengeance…it’s time for him to take some antibiotics which luckily can be bought over the counter for about a quid. At least he has a clean bed to rest in now.

The main thing people come to this area for is the hike to Rakoposhi base camp and I’d intended on doing it as a long day hike but after seeing how tough the hiking was under the hot sun in Pakistan we’ve decided to give it a miss and do a much shorter hike. In fact we’ve come up with a phrase for Pakistan which is ‘sip chai and enjoy the view’ so instead of pushing ourselves on long hikes we’re taking it easy. The shorter hike we wanted to do was to the cricket pitch which ended up taking us two hours to reach. The sun was beating down on us and the walk was relentlessly uphill along a dusty road. A couple of motorbikes went past us and we noticed they had huge slabs of ice tied to their bikes which they’d cut off the glacier.

Finally the track levelled off and we soon stood on the green grass that marked the stadium. A dusty rectangle in the centre marked the official play-zone with three wobbly sticks acting as a wicket. There was a campground along the edge of the pitch so we headed there to see if they had a cricket bat. For 300 rupees (about 80p) we got to use the bat and ball and the guy even offered to be our wicket keeper. It was great fun actually, I haven’t played since I was a kid and it was so satisfying hitting the ball. Luckily it was a softer ball to a normal cricket one and we were actually trying to not hit it too hard so that no one had to run in the heat. We lasted about 30 minutes and Craig managed to hit the wicket and his “HOW’S THAT!!!” echoed off the mountain walls.

When we finished playing we headed back to the campground to return the bat and the man offered us a free mountain green tea. I’ve grown to love this drink, maybe it’s all the sugar we add to it though. He ran off to an area of bushes and came back with the slightly minty smelling herbs, ready to be added to the pot. We had a long chat with him about living up in this crazy place. He had a few cows and goats and told us he once killed a snow leopard because it attacked his animals. I found it hard to sympathise, snow leopards are so rare but sadly the government does nothing to compensate locals when they lose their animals due to attacks so they take matters into their own hands.

After a nice sit down in the shade we climbed up the hill above the campground so we had the cricket pitch to our right, the grey glacier to our left and the mountain ahead of us. It was a pretty epic location!