Samander Khan, wellknown Liaison officer for
expeditions to the Nanga Parbat, and his family members had a dream since many years: To
establish a cottage with surrounding campsite in the middle of the Diamir valley. With a
superb view to Nanga Parbat Diamer face, close, but in a certain distance to villagelife.
To accomodate visitors and provide facilities for expeditions to store and rent equipment,
food etc. With this kick-start they hoped to mix up wellbalanced growing visitors interest
with remote villagelife. Villagelife that is massive disturbed by visitors, when they
arrive in big numbers. Not finding a separate place for overnight-stay, visitors pick up
their tents at fields which are close to local houses. Many times this resulted in
problems, because the normal daily life of remote villagers was brought to a halt, fields
were massive polluted or partial destroyed.
In discussions with Albrecht Kraft, "family
member from Germany", the plan was fixed, to support the villagers in the upper
Diamer valley, by building and maintaining a cottage and campsite in Ser (2,808m; N 35 18 03,8
E 74 24 08,0).
The name of the project was selected with respect to german girl "Luise" (born 1993), who shows deep interest to
village- and family life in the Nanga Parbat region. In the Gashot area, southwest of
Nanga Parbat, a beautiful small lake
was already named after her. She hopes and wishes, that one certain day the cottage could
be used as a classroom to educate girls.
Insha allah.
After calculations and projecting by Albrecht Kraft, Samander Khan and Liver Khan, the
construction started in the year 2004, beginning with an 3month long levelling of the
groundarea, cutting and transporting trees, collecting and transporting stones from Diamir
river. The construction of the 16m by 5m building was supervised by Samander Khan and done
by a permanent-team of 4 local peoples, leaded by Mr. Abdul Wakeel.
Talented carpenter, Mr. Abdul
Wakeel
The place for the building was
carefully choosen, in distance to the fields and located on a former steep slope-area
(field of Samander Khans family), which was levelled.
The building is orientated in
east-west-direction, with windows on the south- and north-side. Beside the big hall with
doublefloor beds (capacity 12persons), tables and chairs, there is a separate kitchen
department attached and also a separate bathroom included. The entrance is located on the
south-side, the big hall has two big windows to the south. The roof is also made from a
double layer of wooden-planks. The toilets are located separate outside the house, running
fresh water from the channel passes along the house.
Because the south, sunny side of the building should be build with nice looking gray-white
stones, huge boulder-stones in this colors had to be found and blasted, to create the
raw-material for the handicrafts, which made out of this by hand sharp-edged, nice-looking
rectangle-stones.
The interior and the roof of the building should be made from wood, therefor many trees in
nearby Nagarton-forrest had to be felled and were transported on many shoulders to the
construction ground. Out of this trees by hand were made the pillars, beams, boards and
planks for the wooden-constructions.
In September 2005, about 1 year after
the work-start, the raw-construction of the building was on the way as this pictures show:
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