Everybody calls the Deosai Plateau the ‘land of giants.’ Even the Dawn correspondent in Gilgit wrote that it ‘is sometimes called the land of giants.’ But is it? And if it is, where does the title come from?

But before that, a bit of geography: the rolling, well-watered grassland sits at an average height of 4,000 metres above the sea, just south of Skardu in Baltistan division. Covering an area of roughly 4,500 square kilometres, it is hemmed in by peaks rising another 1,000 metres higher. It is home to a wide variety of mammals, the Tibetan brown bear being its signature species.

SPLICING IN HISTORY

The earliest reference we get to it, only by association, is from the Shah Jahan Nama, when we hear that, in 1637, the Lahori Arain Zafar Khan, then governor of Kashmir, led an army comprising 2,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry to capture ‘Little Tibet’, as Baltistan was known. This was after an earlier attempt during Jahangir’s rule had ended in a disastrous retreat, with a huge loss of life.

The Shah Jahan Nama tells us that Zafar Khan took the ‘Gurach route’, which I have not been able to identify. However, we read of the Mughal army reaching Sadpara in a narrow gorge (such indeed is its situation), where locals had set up stout defences and where the earlier rout had taken place.

Everyone now calls it the ‘land of giants’, but the Deosai Plateau’s true name honours just one: a simple-minded giant who tried to farm at 4,000 metres above sea level and fled when winter came early. Travel writer Salman Rashid explains the etymology from........

© Dawn (Magazines)