Background informations about the system of Porters, Guides and Liaison officers in the Nanga Parbat region

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We think it is useful to describe here the underlaying village- and family-systems, in which every local person is embedded, and to which rules he has to obey. As an abstract we describe hereafter the situation in the Buner-and Diamer-valley, which are most visited by foreigners when reaching to the westface of Nanga Parbat.

The people in the Buner- and Diamer-valley are organized in 4 groups which represent family- and village-groups. This 4 groups are selecting spokesmen who form a local commitee of about 18 persons, acting as a decision-making circle for all community-topics. Whenever topics of general interest needs a uniform solution, this commitee meets and state a decision, that must be followed by each person in the area.
Topics of such general decision are for example fixing the date and time, at which public harvest of the fruits of wild trees and bushes is allowed. Although, if the road- or path-system needs reconstruction or repair, the commitee decides, which work has to be done by which group of locals, and what is the duty of every family. They also state the rules for cutting trees, which are public possession of the villagers. Also, if wood is sold to companies, the commitee fixes the price, and the share of the money for each village and family.
Beside this, the commitee also decides about punishment-fee, when certain rules are not followed by villagers. The commitee-members also act as moderators and solution-finders in any case, when villagers have problems between each others. This systems keeps the very most of the problems out of the reach of official justice- or police-work, what is preferred and sought by the villagers.

Regarding the contact to foreigners, the commitee decides about the wages, that have to been paid to a porter when working with expeditions.
Out of tradition, the normal portage-routes are divided in "stages", which were in former years the daily distances, that a local shepherd could walk with his flock. If the weather becomes unpleasant, the distances shrinks. Because from year to year the trails are being improved by the villagers -without being payed for this from outside- it is becomming easier from year to year to reach to the desired locations.

For example, in the late 60s, expeditions could not make it through the Diamer Gorge, because there was no trail. So expeditions had to walk for 3days over the high-pass Airl Ghali, to reach finally to the upper Diamer-valley. Today this 3days are shortend to 5hours, because of the extraordinary trail, that the locals had build through the Diamer Gorge.

So the porters have to work - measured by timespan that they are busy - from year to year a shorter time. That makes foreigners thinking, that the wage, that a porter deserves, must decrease heavily. Not beeing aware, that the shortened time is only possible because of the difficult, large-scale and dangerous trail-building-work of the villagers, specially in the Diamer Gorge. For that work, noone from the outside pays something directly.

So when a foreigner meets with a local porter or guide, he meets a person who has to follow certain rules of his community. If the local person works with a visitor instead of doing his duty in public work for his community, he violates rules and will become punished, if his absence from community-work was not tolerated in advance by the commitee. At least, he has to pay to his village-group somehow for the community-work, that he did not do.

Beside this community-rules, the local person has to follow rules comming out of Islam. One of the five pillars of Islam is the obligation to pray five times a day: To certain times, in certain ways, on a clean place in a personal clean state. Is he hindered by an occupation, to do this, he has to drop and avoid this occupation. The money, that is earned by shifting or skipping prayer, is seen as "bad money", it is allowed to keep it, but it is not blessed- and the deed will find punishment by God.

This obligation to pray causes problems for a local person, if he is working and is on the move with a visitor who travels around, specially in the afternoon between about 2pm and 7pm.

Before offering prayer, a muslim must clean his body with water (or clean sand). That is the reason, why the traditional rest-stops are mostly places with running water and a locals timetable has to be coordinated with this demand. Once, that this minor-washing "Wudu" is done, there is no obligation to repeat it for the next prayer, as long as one stays clean, does not go for toilet-, fall asleep or touch a women.


All of this is normally not known to the casual visitor, he sees only a local person, who is interested to make much money out of the visitor, and does not like working in the afternoon.

When a expedition arrives, mainly all the people of the area are interested, to work for them, because this is nearly the only source of income from outside the villages, the only source to be payed for the trailwork. So all this people, but also people from other areas, meet at the startpoint of the expedition and try to become engaged by the expedtioneers.

Because the expeditions are using roads and paths, that were build and maintained by specific persons and villagers, that persons naturally try to become engaged. Specially, when the expedition sets camp in areas, like Diamer BC, that are private possessions of villagers and are normally used for grassing of the flocks. Which could not be done, when expeditioneers are occupying this area.
So out of this reasons, a heavy fighting by words and pushes starts, to get the engagement and to keep out people from other areas.

By selecting the porters out of this groups of land-owners, trail-builder, the expeditioneers can prevent the hardest fighting. Also this will make transparent to the locals, what were relevant for the selection of porters. And they will be asured, that at least some money for the occupation and pollution of land and their trailwork is earned.

Because specially in the Nanga Parbat area most of the porter-work could be done with donkeys, the age of a porter should not be the main selector, because the elder people normally uses donkeys for carrying the load.

Once that the porters are choosen, they will form groups and draw lots to make a decision, who of them acts as a "Sirdar", a spokesman to the expeditioneers. Specially needed in discussions, when bad-weather makes the work more difficult and dangerous, and an increase of the porter-wages is obligation - as stated by official Government Rules, that the expeditioneers have accepted when applying for the mountaineering-permission.

By drawing lots to make the decision, noone will become a permanent "Sirdar", as it is the case in many other areas of expeditioneers interest, for example in Baltoro-region. That makes it for the villagers better to accept a superior-role, but makes it for the expeditioneers harder, because the "Sirdars" don't have much experience in their role, and the door is opened for "self-declared chiefs of the area", who fill the gap and can cause trouble.

So the role of a respected guide with roots in the area, preferably a member of the area commitee, is important and should not be overseen. Although it can cost some extra money for his engagement.

When you have choosen the right agency and the right guide, both rooted in the Diamer region, then you can be sure that your organizer and guide know about the background and situations of each local person, and are able and respectful to make the right decisions and selections.

If you are arriving with an agency and guide from outside the region, then every decision that is made is subject to guess and coincidence, and bears high potential of problems.

It might work, but who asures you, that it will keep working in emergency cases, in foul weather, with washed-away bridges and paths, lost baggage etc.?

One might think, that it is the duty of the Liaison officer to solve problems with the locals and to work as a moderator or solution-finder. Indeed, that's one of his duties, and good and experienced Liaison officers will do that without being asked about that. Beside this, they take care that the government regulations are respected, and that the expedition leaves the area clean as it was.

But...who is your Liaison officer (LO), what qualifies him, who selects him, what is his background?

To become a LO, military- or agency- or alpineclub-persons, or persons with influence, assign as they like the name of the selected person to the Ministry of Tourism, where his name after some paper-work is kept in a magic-list. Out of this list the name of the LO is pulled and assigned to your expedition. Most of the LO are  military-persons with officer-ranks from Lieutenant to Major. From 53 expeditions in 2003 there were 34 accompanied by Liaison officers with military rank, that makes roughly 2/3. The 5 Nanga Parbat expeditions were all 5 accompanied by Liaison officers without military rank. Whether any of the LOs has experience in the mountains, high altitude, skills in mountaineering etc. is not formally checked and asured. One believes in the papers and recommendations. So it is allways uncertain, whether your LO is of help for you, or needs help from you. Officially, a LO once assigned to a expedition, can not be changed, because the majority is military personell and that is not freely available all the time. Usually the only way to try a change of the LO is the way that high-rank embassy-staff asks kindly the Ministry for Tourism for the special assignment of a certain person as LO. But this needs certain links and does not work very often and repeatetly.
To receive informations about the expedition and the Liaison officer, after returning from an expedition, both, the expedition-leader and the Liaison officer, have to fill out a checklist and write a report, and give it to the Ministry of Tourism. Both statements are kept for further purposes, like decisions about future projects. So both, the Liaison officer and the expedition-party, are captured in the dilemma, that their judgements about each other can harm the future projects of the opponent. That makes it complicated for the Ministry of Tourism, to get full informations, so it becomes hard, to block Misfits from further work. For example expeditions, who are violating government rules by smuggling through the customs big amounts of alcohol, using it in the broad public at basecamp-area, with provocative disrespect of the local feelings, customs - and government rules. Some very smart expeditions are in addition publishing this violations with impressive pictures in the internet, and are wondering, why they have problems.

And...who is a Guide, what qualifies him, what is his background?

Anyone who likes can call himself a Guide, as long as there are persons, who do not know how to find out whether this is true. We have met with poor trekkers at Mazeno Highcamp (5,000m), that were stranded there, because their guide was found to be a poor Punjabi farmer, never been in the mountains before, just telling the seeking low-budget trekkers in Rawalpindi, that he is a guide and can show them Nanga Parbat.

There is a special training course by the Alpine Club of Pakistan to educate persons, mostly "permanent guides" from agencies, in mountaineering skills, first aid, culture, dealing with foreigners etc. as you would expect from an education which leads to the proofed status and diplome "Guide". A skilled guide with this education earns as we know about 10US$ per day in the mountains and 15US$ when beeing with the group in a city (figures from 2002/2003).

But there is no duty, to absolve this qualifying education before working as a "Guide" for expeditions or visitors. So it is just good luck to find an agency, which sends their "Guides" to such a course. Mostly, agencies see long-time experience in tourism as adequate education, "learning on the job". That works sometimes with certain persons, who were engaged by famous mountaineers and got lessons from them, but this "Guides" are rare.

So, if someone tells you, he is a guide, let him show you his letters of recommendations and make sure, this documents belong to the person that shows them (Identity card). The best is, to select a experienced guide who is a member of the area-commitee, because he is respected by the locals and his decisions is followed.
Thats the way, that expeditions with experienced, world-famous leaders work. Quietly, smoothly - no complaints in the Internet, none blaming the locals. Beside, THEY understand to get a Liaison officer assigned, they have choosen before.

Bringing all this together...YOU are responsible in selecting the right persons that work for YOU.
There are many ways open, to make the right decisions and select from the hundreds -
You cannot get all this done for you, and you cannot stay beside all this without problems.

Just shouting "i give you money to arrange this, and i am only interested in the mountains" will increase your problems, because the problem is: YOU...