This is how the conversation went:

“Sir, you can’t go inside the enclosure with the camera.”

“What?”

“Sir, I am sorry but these orders came from our superiors.”

“I have travelled a thousand kilometres to reach here and you expect me to leave my camera outside?”

“I am afraid that is the only option you have”.

It was quite an anticlimax to my two-day-long journey … travelling by car, plane and finally a ramshackle 4x4 jeep to reach this place. It had cost me a fortune (and a backache) and the guard at the Shandur polo arena was denying me entry because I insisted on taking my camera with me. Fortunately, as they say, ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way’. The arena was surrounded by enclosures on two sides and tents from the third, but one of its ends was still open and I decided to sit there, in protest. I did encounter the possibility of getting hit by a marauding horse or a polo stick, but the risk was worth it.

Located 3,700 metres above sea level, the Shandur Polo Ground is considered to be the highest polo ground in the world. The first week of July every year sees polo teams from Gilgit and Chitral battle it out here. Multiple polo matches are held at the ground with the final match being held between the top teams of Chitral and Gilgit. The tradition has continued since 1936 but the polo matches are only one part of the local festival. Every year, there is a whole village camped out in the scenic Shandur valley against the backdrop of the Shandur Lake.

I had landed in Chitral in a Fokker airplane which took off from Islamabad airport. A road trip along the same route would have taken more than six hours while the flight took about 45 minutes. In addition, the view from above was wonderful. The road leading to Chitral city from the airport was not essentially a road but a hiking track and it merely provided a template for the rest of my trip. The first thing that I noticed after landing in Chitral was the Tirich Mir, the highest mountain in the Hindu Kush range, and the highest mountain in the world outside of the Himalaya-Karakoram range.

After a brief hiatus at a motel in Chitral city, I got into a 4x4 jeep along with my companions to drive to a place called Booni. We travelled on a single-lane road where the majority of traffic consisted of jeeps and cargo trucks. There was a diversion along the way where landslides had blocked the road and we had to bypass that obstruction by driving alongside the fierce river, which then accompanied us throughout our journey.

Booni was a small outpost where we got tea at a picturesque motel before venturing ahead. After Booni, the single road became a hiking track. It was one of the most dangerous paths that I have ever travelled on with high rocky mountains on one side and the fierce river on the other. Yes, we literally were “between a rock and a hard place”. The uneven path made our vehicle bounce around, causing significant body aches. It took us almost two hours to travel 78km from Chitral to Booni while the distance of 35km from Booni to Mastuj took us almost four hours.

Mastuj is a small, green town which acts as a transit point for people travelling to Shandur valley. Our motel in Shandur had apple trees and we munched on the juicy green fruit before resuming our quest towards Shandur the next morning. Our driver (who remained ‘high’ throughout the journey) had informed us that the trip to Shandur (41km from Mastuj) would only take one-and-a-half hours but it took us double the amount of time to reach Shandur. Due to the arrival of local dignitaries and political bigwigs there were multiple security check posts along the way. Our jeep’s engine, as it turned out, was heating up pretty fast and we had to stop after every 15 minutes to get cold water from the abundant streams of fresh water that crisscrossed our path.

The euphoria that hit us upon reaching Shandur is beyond describing. We had finally made it! But then the guards spoiled our day as the Rolling Stones song goes, “You can’t always get what you want.” We stayed at Shandur for a few hours, did some photography (from a distance), explored the festival, saw the match and with heavy hearts, left the valley to return to Chitral. The journey was perilous, the ride was bumpy but maybe, just maybe, the prize at the end of it all was worth all that. Shandur Lake and the surrounding mountains alone are worth the risk involved in getting there.