| "It took us four days by jeep to travel the Karakorum Highway,
the long, rough road from Islamabad to the Kunjerab Pass on the
Chinese-Pakistani border high in the Western Himalayas. Again, equipped
only with a Hong Kong travel agency visa, I worried that I would arouse
suspicion at the border and be turned back. But everything went smoothly,
in part because Zhongmei diverted attention from me to herself. In the
end, we formed a happy caravan--a group of Pakistani students, Zhongmei and
myself and the Chinese army officer who accompanied us from the Kenjerab
Pass to the actual immigration post, all of us posing for this photograph
just after we had had every item in our possession searched in a very
thorough, no-nonsense check for drugs. " |
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