While we were there in May the climate was perfect, warm days and cool nights. Every autumn the Mir goes up the valley to his country house at Gulmit for the shooting. Baltit lies at 8,000 feet. In front of our balcony stood a giant specimen, used by the Mir as a wireless mast. Twice a year these are climbed and pruned of all superfluous branches, every twig being carefully collected from the ground.
Wood is so scarce that fuel in winter is a serious problem.
There is a complete absence of needle woods, but the chenar grows to a considerable size, and willows and walnuts are interspersed between the fruit trees. There were few flowers to be seen, but purple irises flourished around the Mr's swimming pool. The fields yield two crops a year. Wheat and barley are grown, as well as two or three kinds of millet, buckwheat, peas, broad beans and potatoes, and lucerne for fodder, the rotation of crops being most carefully planned to get the utmost benefit from the soil. The only wheeled conveyance that had ever been seen in Hunza was a kind of wheelbarrow, used for levelling fields.