Day 2 – Naran to Gilgit

The second day of the expedition was an early one. Everyone was at the breakfast lounge of the hotel at 8:00 pm. Waking up early was something Haris and I had forgotten during our summer holidays, so we were still a little groggy. But the group was excited as today was going to be the first day of filming. We left the hotel to explore Naran, and stumbled across a local dhaba making naan channay. André Hörmann decided to hold an interview with the head cook. We photographed him in action, and Fayeem Bhai asked him a few questions about his work and personal life in general.

After exploring the valley city, we left for Gilgit, which was a long eight-hour jouney. We finally reached our destination at eight in the evening, and after freshening up at the PTDC hotel we went out in search of food. We found dumplings at a little store which was owned by Syed Ghazi (and not as we thought by some Chinese who might have settled here), who we interviewd along with his young cooks Jalal and Salim. We talked to them and learned more about their story. We could not film them unfortunately as filming cameras were not considered safe in these areas, but had a nice conversation with our new dumpling friends and left with about 50 delicious steaming dumplings. We had a late dinner of dumplings and tea and went to sleep early because of the tiring day we had had.