Death Rides a Slow Bus in Hunza

ow would you like to live in a land where cancer has not yet been invented? A land where an optometrist discovers to his amazement that everyone has perfect 20-20 vision? A land where cardiologists cannot find a single trace of coronary heart disease? How would you like to live in a land where no one ever gets ulcers, appendicitis or gout? A land where men of 80 and 90 father children, and there's nothing unusual about men and women enjoying vigorous life at the age of 100 or 120?

We see a lot of hands going up. Fine. But first, you have to answer a few more questions before setting out for a place called Hunza, a tiny country hidden in the mountain passes of northwest Pakistan.

Are you willing to live 20,000 feet up in the mountains, almost completely out of touch with the rest of the world? Are you ready to go outside in every kind of weather to tend your small mountainside garden, while keeping you ears open for an impending avalanche? Are you prepared to give up not only every luxury of civilization, but even reading and writing?

We see a lot of hands going down. But if you want the benefits of the pure air that whips by the icy cathedrals of the Himalayan Mountains, the pure water that trickles down from glaciers formed at 25,000 feet, and the mental and spiritual peace that comes from living in a land where there is no crime, taxes, social striving or generation gaps, no banks or stores-in fact,-no money- where are you going to find it outside of Hunza?

But don't give up! Not yet, because there is still one more question to be answered. That is: are you prepared to eat the kind of food the Hunzas eat? If you are, then you can rightfully expect to give yourself at least some measure of the super health and resistance to degenerative disease which the Hunzakuts have enjoyed for 2,000 years.

What kind of exotic, ill-tasting grub do these Hunza people eat, you are wondering. Strange as it may sound, virtually everything the Hunzakuts eat is delectable to the western palate, and is readily available in the United States-at least if you shopping horizons do not begin and end at the supermarket.

Not only is the Hunza diet not exotic, but there's really nothing terribly mysterious about its health-promoting qualities, Everything we know about food and health, gathered both from clinical studies and the observation of scientists who have traveled throughout the world observing dietary practices and their relationship to health, tells us that it is to be expected that the Hunza diet will go a long way towards improving the total health of anyone, anywhere. The Hunza story is only on of the more dramatic examples of the miraculous health produced by a diet of fresh, natural unprocessed and unadulterated food.

ATTA ABAD HUNZA

HUNZA: Affectees of Attabad lake after successful negotiations with Hunza Administration concluded their protest sit and went back in the relief camps. DCO Hunza talking to media said that district administration held successful negotiations with the agitated affectees of Attabad lake and took seven days time to compensate all the affectees of Attabad accidental lake and land sliding victims in Hunza valley

AKCSP

Islamabad, September 30: The Gulabpur Khanqah in Shigar valley, Skardu, Baltistan was recently awarded the 2010 Asia-Pacific Award of Distinction in Cultural Heritage by Unesco. For nine consecutive times, the Aga Khan Cultural Service Pakistan.

The Original Hunza Summer Diet.

The Original Hunza Summer Diet.

The British General and soldiers arrived in the summer during the 1870s as did everyone who traveling to Hunza. This was the harvest season for the grains, fruits, and vegetables from the gardens, and much of the food was consumed raw. Because fuel for cooking was saved to be used in winter for boiling meat and providing some heat for the stone dwellings, very little meat was consumed in summer, and vegetables were eaten raw.

Curious visitors who followed the British soldiers to Hunza Valley years later naturally arrived in summer also, and the summer diet of the people led visitors to assume they were mainly vegetarian and ate very little meat. This was typical of the summer harvest season. Many primitive cultures including cavemen lived in a similar manner, gorging themselves on available fruit during the short season and eating mostly meat for the rest of the year. The people of Hunza differed in that they never had an abundance of anything except rocks. They did not have enough animals to provide abundant meat during the winter because of the lack of fodder. They did not want to kill female animals that were milk producers unless the animal was old or lame.

The Hunzakuts are said to have cultivated plants included barley, millet, wheat, buckwheat, turnips, carrots, dried beans, peas, pumpkins, melons, onions, garlic, cabbage, cauliflower, apricots, mulberries, walnuts, almonds, apples, plums, peaches, cherries, pears, and pomegranates. John Clark did not find green beans, wax beans, beets, endive, lettuce, radishes, turnips, spinach, yellow pear tomatoes, Brussel sprouts, or parsley. Cherry tomatoes and potatoes are thought to have been brought in by the British. The long list of currently grown plant varieties should not be a consideration when discussing the longevity of the Hunzakuts and their past diet.

Apricot trees were very popular, and the fruit was eaten raw in season and sun dried for winter. The pits were cracked to obtain the kernel that was crushed to obtain the oil for cooking and lamps. The hard shell was kept for a fire fuel. The kernel and oil could be eaten from the variety of apricots with a sweet kernel, but the bitter kernel variety had an oil containing poisonous prussic acid. Click the picture to see an enlargement.

The apricot trees were allowed to grow very large in order to obtain the maximum yield. Picking the maximum amount of fruit was more important than the difficulty in picking. The children would scamper to the higher branches to pick or shake off the fruit. Planting new trees required several years of growth before any fruit was produced. The special garden silt or glacial milk did not contribute to the age or size of the trees as is commonly claimed. Our modern orchards are not managed that way because we have abundant space and picking is expensive. Our trees are cut when the size makes them difficult to harvest, not because they fail to live as long as those in Hunza.

Polo in Northern Areas

The game Polo
(chaugan) described as “the game hockey played on horse back, polo being properly in the language of that region” the ball used in the game (yale and burnell on p.719). in the article on chicane and chicanery which as words are traceable to the game chaugan or horse- golf, polo is a game looked upon as hockey-on horse back while just above it is conceived as golf on horse back. However hockey is much faster game than golf. While deriving the word chicane from chaugan the problem has been created as to how chicanery can be associated with polo. This requires dealing with the evolution of the game which will be discussed after the etymology of chugan has been explained.
With regard to its etymology, a probable origin of chaugan would be an Indian, prakrit, word meaning four corners. Plats (in Urdu English dictionary) give this word as chugana, four-fold the name of the polo ground. This means that the game was invented in India where it was named after the playground. There is however another theory, which takes polo to Persia. The concise Oxford English dictionary while explaining the word chicane, states that in Greek polo is called tzoukanaiza which has been derived from the Persian word chaugan, meaning polo stick. Thus chaugan is a persain game and as word means polo. C .diem (p.126) has written a whole book on polo. He refers to and attempts showing that in Pehlavi polo chauvigan or chopgan. The latter word would be a variant of chobgan in which chob-stick but nevertheless would remain unknown.
However according to Diem, and to the Oxford English dictionary, (chaugan) has been the name in Balti, is for polo which makes it the ball game. The discrepancy is obvious. Coming to chicane it is a degenerated form of the word from which chaugan itself is derived. Diem transltes the Greek word for chaugan as tzykanion meaning polo and derives chicane from it. He writes that the Byzantine emperor, Theodosius 2 played polo at Constantinople about 401 A.D. Much earlier it was played in ancient Iran during the time of Darius, 522-486 B.C.
During the reign of king Khusrou Parvez 2 even his queen and her ladies played the game. Summarizing what has been discussed so far polo is an Indian game and the word chaugana four cornered has been modified as chaugan. Polo then was named after the polo ground. Another theory makes polo a Persian game with chaugan derived from chobagan, chob being the polo-stick, but Gan is left unexplained. At any rate as Persian word chaugan would be polo stick.
Diam gives following terms in Chinese. Ball (chiu), chhiu himself translated with an aspirated, polo-stick chhiu-chang.
The evolution of the game polo indicating the country of its birth, Polo has been rightly described by Yule and burn ell as hockey on horse back hence horse comes first to be considered. If we can conceive “Aspasthan” in Persian or horse land it would be magnolia. The Mongols have been nomads and being always on the move most of their time was spent on horseback. In Mongolia the horse was the unit of wealth. So, Mongol pick up lambs to provide more tasty (as booty) meet while the horse was still in full speed, because it is a small horse called pony. It was a dexterous performance which only the Mongols could claim to their credit.

Apricots Are Hunza Gold

Apricots Are Hunza Gold

Of all their organically-grown food, perhaps their favorite, and one of their dietary mainstays, is the apricot. Apricot orchards are seen everywhere in Hunza, and a family's economic stability is measured by the number of trees they have under cultivation.

They eat their apricots fresh in season, and dry a great deal more in the sun for eating throughout the long cold winter. They puree the dried apricots and mix them with snow to make ice cream. Like their apricot jam, this ice cream needs no sugar because the apricots are so sweet naturally.

But that is only the beginning. The Hunzas cut the pits from the fruits, crack them, and remove the almond-like nuts. The women hand grind these kernels with stone mortars, then squeeze the meal between a hand stone and a flat rock to express the oil. The oil is used in cooking, for fuel, as a salad dressing on fresh garden greens, and even as a facial lotion ( Renee Taylor says Hunza women have beautiful complexions).

The Style For Longer and Better Life

Besides apricots, the Hunzas also grow and enjoy apples, pears, peaches, mulberries, black and red cherries, and grapes. From these fruits, the Hunzas get all the vitamin C they need, as well as the other nutritional richness of fresh fruit, including energy from the fruit sugars. From the grapes, they also make a light red wine that helps make their simple fare into more of a real "meal". Observe the apricots drying in the sun in the photo to the left.