I had been nagging our guide for two weeks. When are we crossing the crazy bridge?

It wasn't on the itinerary. All I had was a photo I'd seen online, of an insane footbridge in Northern Pakistan. Stretched across a vast, glacier-fed river, "bridge" seemed too strong a word for the spindly metal cables that seemed to have twigs jammed between them. Not planks... no one could claim with a straight face that there were any planks involved, or any standard bridge-construction materials at all. The gnarled, misshapen pieces of wood might be called branches or hunks of driftwood if you were feeling charitable. They seemed to be just resting on top of the cables, maybe tucked underneath here or there. Certainly not attached in any confidence-inspiring way, or perhaps any way at all. I'd seen a photo of this bridge and said "Holy shit." People cross this?

And... can my life now be complete without crossing it myself?

Only it wasn't part of the tour itinerary, because few tour itineraries involve the deaths of the entire tour group. Yet still, I asked about it every day.

"Yes, there is a bridge near the Hunza valley that the locals cross. Perhaps we can go there."

He didn't really mean it. Still, I could tell he was holding back. I think there are two bridges.

I showed him a photo of a second bridge in Northern Pakistan I had found online. This one was made of actual planks and looked like it had been built by someone who had actually seen a bridge before.

"Yes, that's it."

"That's not the one I want to cross."

His face sank.

"I want to cross the crazy bridge."

He knew exactly what i was talking about. And so every day, I'd ask again.

Finally, the day we reached the Hunza valley on our epic drives north through the breathtaking mountains of Northern Pakistan, he pulled me aside.

"OK. The group is going to do a walking tour of a nearby village. If you want, I can take you to the bridge. But we'll have to run. We won't have much time."

I'm in! I mean, I have food poisoning and feel like my head is floating above my body like a birthday party balloon on a string, but I'll be fucked if I'm not going to cross the crazy bridge now that we're finally here. I'm sure it'll be fine. I'm in!

A visit to Pakistan is not complete without a pants-exploding bout of food poisoning. My friend Jess had spent the first week of the trip, his face as white as the undershirt he was wearing, rushing off the bus every time we stopped so that he could shit, or barf, or both simultaneously behind a boulder by the side of the road. Most of the group soon followed. I had held off most of the trip until I had stupidly trusted our hotel was boiling the water they offered us for tea and used it to rehydrate some oatmeal one morning. Almost instantly, I knew Pakistan had got me.

No matter. I'm crossing this bridge. We dropped the rest of the group off at the village. My German friend Fabian had overheard me imploring our guide to take me to the bridge all week and he decided he wanted to give it a shot too. The three of us stepped off the side of the road onto a steep embankment with a thin rock slide that I guess counted as a trail. OK, I think I can handle thi-

Our guide took off running, straight down the steep mountainside, at full tilt. Holy shit! I guess it's on!

Fabian and I gave chase, to the best of our bewildered ability. Almost instantly Fabian fell and slid down the rocky mountainside and I tried hard not to step on him. This is crazy. We continued to run, stumbling and sliding, at first trying to keep on our guide's heels but very quickly just trying to keep him in sight so we didn't lose the way to the bridge. I tried to strike a balance of keeping the guide in sight ahead of me and Fabian in sight behind, which gave me a convenient excuse to run slowly enough to not barf myself, my entire insides churning. After maybe 20 minutes of running, sliding and heaving, we reached the bridge.

It was magnificent.

As promised, thin metal cables spanned the abyss, with pathetic, twisted chunks of wood threaded loosely between them in mockery of steps. The thing that hadn't been apparent from the photos was that these would-be "planks" were all a good five feet apart. Wow. This is going to be interesting. I gingerly stepped out onto the first plank.

The entire bridge bounced up and down, swaying with my steps and the wind over the river. I clutched the waist-high metal cable and lept to the next plank, willing it to not snap under my feet. Soon the river was glistening far below me. The spaces between the planks were truly bewildering, too far to step across, making each step forward a leap of faith. The decrepit wooden hunks I was landing on creaked and squealed as they strained against the metal cable.

OK. The driftwood at least seems to be holding up. If one of these snapped I would fall straight through, far, far down into the water below. How deep is the water? Impossible to tell. It doesn't look like it would even matter, if I fall that far, hitting the water will be like hitting concrete. My senses were all heightened to a fine point as my life seemed to depend on landing just right with every little jump to the next plank. Where's the thickest part of the next gnarled branch? Where does it look the most securely tucked under the cable? The bridge swayed and bobbed as I judged the next leap.

About a third of the way across I landed on one of the shitty clumps of wood and it gave way, but instead of falling through it rotated all the way around with me standing on it, like a record player, until I was facing the opposite direction. The wood was still wedged between two of the cables, but had come loose on both ends. I stood balanced on the center, watching helplessly as I continued to slowly rotate all the way around. Jesus!

OK. Whatever. Continue! A few more planks ahead, the bridge began to bounce and bob violently. Oh Christ, what now? I looked up ahead and Fabian was kneeling on the bridge like he'd fallen half-way through. Oh my god!! Can I help him? How do I help him?

Suddenly he stood up and yelled back "I was just fucking with you!"

Ohhhhhh you bastard.

As I neared the center of the bridge, it swayed and twisted more extremely as the wind blew and our footsteps bounced the bridge more intensely. I looked down between the slats at the water far down below and my hands sweat as I clutched the braided metal cables. I suddenly realized my legs were shaking. I haven't felt involuntary fear in my body like this since I climbed the Macao Tower. The muscles in my legs twitched unpredictably and my whole body shook. Oh man. Maybe this wasn't a great idea. My head swam as the food poisoning loudly reminded me hey, it was still there. I feel like I could collapse entirely. I looked back and saw that I was half-way across the bridge. Well. No point in going back now. I just need to get to the other end of this bridge.

I continued on, little leap by little leap, breathing deeply and psyching myself up again and again for the next jump. I heard a sound behind me and turned in time to see a local coming up fast behind me on the bridge. He was walking at a purposeful pace, earbuds in his ears. He clearly crossed this bridge every day and it was nothing at all to him. Oh God... do I have to move? I don't need this right now! I clutched the cable and awkwardly moved my body to one side, trying not to fall into the abyss as the young dude nodded at me casually and traipsed on by, like he wasn't walking across a hilarious death trap spanning over an absolute abyss of doom.

I clutched the cable and jumped to the next scrap of kindling.

Three quarters of the way across, I startlingly heard a voice right behind me. I turned and it was our guide.

"Sean, you are doing great but we really don't have much time."

That is the most polite way anyone has ever told me to stop being such a pussy and get my ass across this death bridge.

I picked up the pace. Jump, clutch, sway. Jump, clutch, sway. Before I knew it I was nearly to the other side. Our guide yelled for me to stop, took my phone, and climbed up the rocks on the far side of the bridge to get some photos of me finishing the crossing.

The wood near the end of the bridge wasn't nearly as hilarious as the mangled scrap wood in the middle. I finished the crossing and sighed as I improbably put my feet on solid ground again.

"Excellent job!" my guide enthused. "Now rest for a second before we go back."

Go... back? Oh God. I hadn't even realized we'd have to cross the bridge again, going back the other way. I mean, it stands to reason, the bridge wouldn't even be here if you could just drive from one village to the other. These people aren't crazy. Not like us tourists.

Before I knew it, I was back on the bridge.

"Try walking on the cables," my guide suggested.

I began putting one foot in front of the other, tightrope-walking on the cable, basically ignoring the shitty wooden slats entirely. It took some balance but was actually far less terrifying than jumping from branch to branch. And much faster.

"You're getting the hang of it!"

For the first third of the bridge I walked along the cable, holding the waist-high cables on either side of me in case I lost my balance. But this was awkward with the bridge shifting and swaying and the height of the side cables constantly changing.

"It's easier if you only hold on to one side!"

I let one hand go and a wave of panic washed through my entire body.

"It's much scarier only holding on one side!"

"It's OK you don't have to!"

"No I want to!"

I touched one hand against the side cable for balance and began to tightrope-walk across the central cable beneath me, gradually accelerating to a brisk walking pace. Holy shit! I'm crossing this thing like a local. I balanced on the swaying central cable, lightly running my fingers across the top of the side cable as I briskly walked along like I was in the park on a Sunday afternoon.

"Now you've got it!"

Before I knew it I was back across the bridge on dry land, having crossed back about a thousand times faster on the return journey. Wow. I guess you really can adapt to anything! My head was in the clouds as we hiked briskly back along the river bank to the bus and our waiting group.

"How was it??" my friends were excited I'd finally got to do the one make-or-break thing I'd come to Pakistan to do.

"Wonderful!" I smiled, sinking into my seat and the wash of adrenaline sweeping through my exhausted body.

Soon after the rest of the group got to try their hand at the less-crazy bridge our guide had tried to fob off on me back when he wanted to prevent me from dying in Pakistan. This was fun, but of course nothing compared to the inadvisable death bridge.

This was all our prelude to the Hunza valley, the most beautiful part of Pakistan. Words are fairly inadequate to describe the experience of being surrounded by several of the tallest mountain peaks in the world every time you pulled over to piss or buy some Oreos. Pakistan really needs to work on its tourism promotion because this is simply breathtaking.

I don't really have the words to describe what it's like when every time you turn around, one of the tallest mountain peaks in the world is right up in your face. They just keep coming. Northern Pakistan is as beautiful as the band Aerosmith is terrible. Let that sink in for a minute.

On our endless rolling journey through the north we passed countless improbably-decorated semi trucks, awash in colors, patterns and religious imagery, and jingling and jangling their way up the road ostentatiously with all kinds of noise-makers attached to them for maximum effect. These were all wonderful to see. But only one of them had crashed absolutely spectacularly and dumped probably a metric ton of goats on the road.

One of my favorite tidbits from Hunza was as we rolled into town, we passed a very small and very shitty looking computer-repair shop, dusty, stacked with a few ancient personal computers and nestled into a nondescript storefront. The lettering on the window announced that this was the BILL GATES I.T. CENTER. Marvelous.

Another highlight, driving through the breathtaking Hunza valley, was seeing the ways the locals crossed the gorges when they weren't in the mood for an insanely treacherous footbridge. They would string a single cable cross the span like a zipline, and hang a big metal bucket beneath it, which they would ride in across the abyss, pulling themselves along the cable hand over hand. We happened upon one local who had just crossed the valley this way, and reaching the end of the cable, he promptly flung a goat out of the bucket, and the goat landed on its feet on the rocky cliff's edge like it wasn't no thing. I hadn't known I needed to see any magnificent goat-flinging on this trip, but in retrospect I definitely did.

My new friend Mike set his heart on riding one of these goat buckets across the gorge but sadly we never managed to encounter one that was unguarded before we had to leave the country.

On one of our drives we happened upon a roadside amusement park, which I think our guide intended for us to just stop and photograph from a distance, but before anyone knew what was going on, Mike, Jess and I had climbed aboard the hilariously treacherous-looking Viking Ship ride they were operating between the road and a lake, tantalized as we were by the sight of locals just standing on the goddamned thing and not being strapped into seats or anything like you normally see in these set-ups. Quickly the Viking Ship was off swaying and rocking, higher nad higher, as Mike, Jess and I stood in the back of it, quickly and increasingly holding on for our worthless lives as this Pakistani amusement contraption attempted to fling us up out of the boat and over the highway into Valhalla.

The major safety-related problem with standing on this lurching Viking Ship was that there was nowhere stable to put your feet. I was holding onto the railing behind me, and had managed to wedge one of my feet against the back of one of the seats in front of us that we weren't sitting in. My other foot was crammed into a seam between the metal plates that made up the ship. Mike, having no such luxury, was bracing himself by standing on my foot.

We survived, but it was definitely a pure test of how firmly you can hold on to a shitty metal railing when your life absolutely depends on it.

Next I was off to ride the high-speed carousel with Francine, which was in no way sized or intended for adults.

Wandering through the dirty alleyways of Lahore, I passed an old man who was chanting something beneath the din of street noise.

"God money god money god money..."

And so, I had Nine Inch Nails' "Head Like a Hole" officially stuck in my head the entire time I was in Lahore.

In the cold, sad light of retrospect he was probably just begging, saying "Got money?" like he'd just seen a milk commercial from the 90s but I still prefer to think he was a huge, huge Trent Reznor fan.

Lahore is Pakistan's second-most populous city (after Karachi) at 13 million people. Pakistan has a lot of people. Enough so that they've got cities you've never heard of that are still huge. Sure, maybe you're a big Carmen Sandiego master and you've heard of Lahore. How about Faisalabad? Heard of that one? No you haven't. Boom. 3.2 million people. You're in the fifth most populous country in the world, get over it.

One of the highlights of Lahore for me were the... sheep? Goats? Aliens? There were strange long-eared shaggy animals in the streets and I'd be lying if I said I had any confident idea about their providence, but they were fascinating.

Lahore featured seemingly endless impossibly narrow alleys and passageways between the buildings...

And an absolutely endless supply of kids. Pakistan either has a pretty intense birth rate or a serious problem with Frosted Mini-Wheats.

In a close second place came the countless lovely mosques and churches...

Lahore also threw in bunch of random animals just for good luck.

And a healthy supply of things that I couldn't tell what in the hell they were.

Over at the Lahore Museum, the Buddha was unmoved by any of this.

Pakistan seemed inordinately proud of all the old shit they had left over from the British empire, including the train station and a water plant we weren't allowed to take photos inside because it might let the cat out of the bag on how water plants worked back in 1802. It was neat to see these old things still in action, but all of this clinging to the distant past made us slightly concerned about Pakistan's ability to make new things that actually worked.

So many more images from Lahore swirl around my mind in no particular order, much like we experienced them when we were there, just drinking it all in.

Bumper sticker idea: Horrific Ghost Clown Dog is My Co-Pilot.

But please, sir, for the last time, don't spit here.

At some point we found ourselves dancing with a little kid as local musicians played.

And most importantly of all, Mike got married to himself!

Our three weeks in Pakistan involved an almost inhuman amount of driving, bumping along rough roads on a bus, half the group at some stage of raging food poisoning. I talked to a friend who did the same tour a year later and he told a story about somebody who got food poisoning on his trip actually throwing up ON THE BUFFET at the hotel, which I'm kind of sad I missed. Our drives were punctuated by random stops at gas stations for lunch, the options being a bag of potato chips for the vegan and fried chicken zingers for everyone else. From all evidence Pakistanis love fried chicken sandwiches more than all of the Earth's other peoples combined.

The highlight of the numerous drives for me however was the highway dance party. At some point we were winding through empty mountain roads when suddenly we came upon a few cars that had pulled over, and the locals had got out and were dancing on the narrow highway, music blasting from the open doors of their cars. We got out and I ran over and joined their dance circle, miming their dance moves as a few of the more adventurous members of our group joined in. Somehow I ended up in the center of the circle, locals dancing around me in a clockwise loop, and- JESUS that car almost hit Fabian! Highway traffic was not impressed by our impromptu party and was zipping by us mere feet away. Why are we dancing ON the highway? Because it's Pakistan! This is great fun. Once the dance circle wrapped up I ran back to the bus and our guide called out "You've done this before!"

At one point late in the trip our bus pulled over somewhere random and there were a bunch of monkeys that had climbed down from the trees to eat some garbage out of a few dumpsters at the edge of the parking lot. Nasim and I walked over to get some juicy monkey photos. Once we got not really all that close, one of the monkeys, guarding his territory, did a little half-assed aggressive one-inch fake move toward us to shoo us away. Nasim, seeing this probably zoomed in on his phone, reacted like the monkeys were suddenly all over us and flailed backwards to get away from their face-eating frenzy.

What followed was arguably the most protracted fall in the history of man's many misadventures on this wide blue Earth. Nasim somehow managed to stumble over the parking lot itself, and then, in a completely separate event, up a curb, and then, a good ten seconds into The Ongoing Adventures of The Fall, finally went completely ass over teakettle over the top of some bushes. This was possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. At any point in the rest of the three-week trip, all anyone had to say was some combination of the words "monkey fall" and Carlos and I would lose our shit for ten solid minutes. Sorry Nasim, but that shit was amazing. I hope to one day be a part of something that brings people as much joy as your spectacular eat-shitting in the face of non-danger.

Also we were never closer than twenty feet away from these monkeys.

At another point in the trip we were visiting the bazaar in the town of Gilgit, in the northern part of the larger Kashmir region.

A river ran along one side of the village and I was escaping the hot and packed streets by venturing across a footbridge over the river. Half-way across, I noticed a few unsupervised goats coming toward me, crossing the opposite way. I knelt down low to the ground to get an action shot of these goats going by. When I looked up from the phone, there were more goats. Oh neat! I zoomed out. Gotta get all of these goats in the... then there were more goats. And more. And more. Before I knew it I was consumed by a tsunami of goats that had taken over the entire bridge.

Later, my friends Carlos and Francine described watching this from afar.

"We saw you taking a photo of the goats and then heard you say 'Too many goats! Too many goats!!' and then you disappeared."

After recovering from my near-goat experience, and as always, I enjoyed the weird and crappy kids' clothing at the bazaar.

My other favorite animal encounter from this trip was that it included my first time riding a camel.

I had the best camel and if you don't think so she has a big smelly belch waiting for you. Not everyone got along with their camel, I think Simone's was trying to kill her the entire time. But I was thrilled to be cameling across the desert and my camel and I were the best of friends. This was a good thing because getting on and off a camel is actually fairly terrifying. Especially getting off, as once the camel comes to a stop, he or she kneels down onto their front knees first, at which point you are basically perpendicular to the ground hanging on for dear life, and this process kind of takes forever.

One one of our endless drives through the mountains of Northern Pakistan we kept passing and being passed by this truck hauling these two really cool cows, but I was never able to get a photo through the dusty windows on the bumpy road. We had stopped somewhere for Jess to shitbarf when the truck rambled by again and I promptly jumped off the bus and sprinted behind the truck up the dirt road like a mad man to finally get my photo. Hey guys!

The Pakistanis are a friendly people who are really keen to have a selfie with you.

We did endless other things on this trip. I hate to sound like a lazy blogger but three weeks worth of days stacked up like Yertle's turtles ends up producing just sort of a random disjointed rain of occasional turtles you completely forgot about. Wait, we drove to the border of China? Oh yeah! We did!

The border guard on duty was the strong silent type.

We also saw some very greasy men mud-wrestle. You would think this is the kind of thing you have to pay extra for, but in Pakistan my friend this comes free. Even at that it's not that good of a deal as I would have happily paid money to not watch very greasy men mud-wrestle. Regardless, after much careful preparation of the mud and the thorough oiling of their bits and bobs, these men competitively caressed and rubbed each other for what felt like approximately 47 years as we watched and rooted passionately for nobody's diaper to come loose.

You can go wash your eyes now. I'll wait.

I laughed out loud as we pulled into Islamabad. I had seen this city on the big screen several times, in shows like Homeland, and they always made it look like Iraq, a brown empty desert interrupted only by some military outpost where they craft new and exciting ways to destroy America.

In reality, Islamabad is lush and heavily wooded, the leafy neighborhood surrounding the various embassies hilariously out of step with any of the imaginary ways I'd seen the city depicted in American entertainment.

Outside of Islamabad I nagged our guide until he broke down and had our bus driver pull the bus over on the side of the freeway next to the offramp for Abbottabad, the town where Osama Bin Laden had been hiding after 9/11 and where he was eventually tracked down and killed by the US military.

"There's nothing to see there now," our guide explained, pointing out in the distance where the house had been.

"The entire compound was destroyed, and it's not safe for us to drive by their now since it's right next door to a Pakistani military facility. I guess they didn't want to leave a place for Bin Laden to be celebrated as a martyr."

We had an interesting discussion about whether the Pakistani military knew Bin Laden was there and if they were harboring him. It seemed unlikely they wouldn't have known the most wanted fugitive in the entire world was shacked up down the block from their most elite training facility. It made sense that the US hadn't let the Pakistani army know when the flew in under the cover of night and crashed a helicopter in Bin Laden's compound.

The relationship between Pakistan and the US is a fascinating one, seemingly allies one minute and enemies the next, trust being in short supply.

Islamabad has a pretty mosque that some security guard snuck us into even though it was definitely closed because I think he thought we were important.

But the more interesting thing is that on our way walking to the mosque that night, we found pot. I don't mean a dude was selling it, I mean it was growing next to the sidewalk. Later we found more growing in front of some official governmental building. As a famously strict and conservative place, this was not what we were expecting. But in neither case did anyone appear to be growing pot, it was just randomly there like any other weed. We wondered if the local people even knew what it was.

At one point I was tricked into attending a bazaar in Islamabad by my a-hole friends while they slept in the hotel, but the joke was on them as I got to meet a guy who was selling knives off the back of a bike! What safer or sturdier way to both transport and market knives than the trusty bicycle, I say!

At another point I was wandering down the street from our hotel to buy a set of Pakistani UNO cards when I met the president of AIG insurance in Pakistan randomly on the street, a friendly man who sat me down for tea and drew a map of Pakistan and spent 25 minutes showing me all the best places to visit on his napkin map.

I invited him to a Mustache Party but sadly he was unable to attend due to a previous engagement with a chin biscuit.

Not far outside of Islamabad there is a town called Rawalpindi. You may remember it from the movie Zero Dark Thirty (which I of course rewatched on my phone during the drive to Abbottabad), when they're hot on the heels of Bin Laden's courier and Jessica Chastain utters the immortal line "I need four techs in a safe house in Rawalpindi!" Driving around the Raw trying to track the courier's cell signal, they get into deep shit with the CIA-unfriendly locals, but are eventually able to follow the courier back to Bin Laden's joint in Abbotabad. Even more exciting than all this however, is Rawalpindi's magnificent truck decoration facility!

Driving around Pakistan, you'll quickly be amazed by all of the semi trucks hauling goods that are absolutely covered in tinkling bells, rattling chains and colorful decorations, from bright patterns to full dramatic scenes painted all over the trucks. This seems to be a local point of pride for each driver and is completely wonderful, something that we could learn from in the US with our own sad truck decorations rarely rising above the level of boob silhouette mudflaps.

But how do these trucks get so amazing-looking? At the truck decoration depot, of course! Here you drop off your fried chicken hauling ride for the dedicated artisans to jazz up with multi-colored tape and freehand painted illustrations of gods or birds or whatever the hell else you want.

This being 2021 and Pakistan being Pakistan, we were required to take a covid test to leave the country. After going inside a semi-plausible lab like building and filling out some forms, we were sent back outside to stand in front of some half-assed toll booth, where we lined up so the spazz inside could stab us straight in the fucking brain with a long q-tip. I don't think he even swabbed the inside of my nose at all, clearly a sample from the center of my brain was enough for this guy.

In my blog about my trip to Iraq I wrote about the shitstorm that followed my trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan, when I was flagged as a terrorist by the US government and got the full "OK, where's the bomb, buddy?" treatment every time I flew for several months afterwards. But crazy as this was, this wasn't the full story.

I mean, all of that was fun and all, but the real craziness was saved for when I got home to Minneapolis. I got to my apartment and attempted to get online... but no dice. What's up with... my modem was fried. And my router. That's odd, what are the chances of...? Maybe there was a power surge or a ligtning strike or something while I was gone? Only both of them were on a surge protector. And everything else that was plugged into that surge protector was fine. My computer was fine. Printer was fine. Just the two devices that allowed me to get online. Strange.

So I ran out to Best Buy and bought a new modem and router. Got them hooked up and whammo, I was back online. OK, that was weird but at least I'm back in business.

But why had it happened? Am I being paranoid to think that it was because I went to Afghanistan and Pakistan? It seems a bit far-fetched but why else would those two devices mysteriously die like that?

The next morning I got up and attempted to log in for a Zoom meeting for work. Only I had no internet. What?

New modem and router were working, but now I had no service. No outage in my area. Everything was hooked up. I contacted my internet service provider.

"This is weird. You say you have an account with us? I see no record that you've ever had service."

I'd had service with them for 15 years. But now I had been somehow deleted from the system entirely. I had to sign up for internet service all over again as a new customer.

OK this is just bizarre. I don't know why or how this works, but I can't believe this is all just a coincidence.

Was it Pakistan? Was it Afghanistan? Was it both? Is my internet usage being monitored now? Do they know how many movies I watch about chimps secretly being super spies? The mind boggles.

Anyway: Pakistan Zindabaaaaad!