# Eminent Scholar Professor Li Xiguang
I flew over Chogri Peak at least 20 times, and I took a lot of pictures of Chogri Peak from the air. But this photo of a Pakistani friend climbing the cliffs of Mount Jogri this morning still shocked me.
If, as originally planned, by this time next week, I will take some students out of the barracks and into the Karakoram Corridor to look at the world’s second highest peak, Chogri (K2). Mount Chogori, 8611 meters above sea level, is located on the border between China and Pakistan in the Karakoram Mountains.
Although Mount Qomolangma is highest above sea level, Mount Chogori is the most dangerous. By February 2021, only 377 people had reached the top, 91 others died during the climb, and an average of one in four people who reached the top of the mountain died on the mountain.
Four years ago, I came to the last ancient town of Hegar, south of Mount Chogri, and went on to the village of Ascoll. The local people said, “the road from Hegar to Asker is dangerous, and few local people dare to cross the glacier to see K2.” Even if you venture to the end of the famous Bartolo Glacier, you can only catch a glimpse of K2. You might as well see it more clearly from China, “said the local Balti guide who accompanied me.”
Chogri, also known as K2, originated from Thomas Montgomery, a British Indian surveyor, on his first expedition to the Tibetan (Balti) hinterland of Karakoram. At that time, he drew two of the most famous peaks, marked K1 and K2, where K stands for the Karakoram Mountains, and K1, which has a name among the local Tibetans, known as Mount Mashbrum, has been used all the time. Since the British did not know the Tibetan name of the mountain at the time, the Royal Geographic Society adopted the British surveyor’s mark K2 as the name of Mount Chogri.
The name Qiao Glifeng is made up of two ancient Tibetan words (Balti). “Jogg” means “big” and “Li” means “mountain”. In addition to using the name Qiao Glifeng in several countries, such as China, Tibetans in the mountains of northern Pakistan have forgotten the name of the mountain used by their own people, but have recorded it as two new words, “cough out” or “Ketu”, similar to the English pronunciation of K2, after the British name K2.
Balti is Tibetan and is the mother tongue of the Balti people living in the Baltistan region of Pakistan, the cities of Ladak occupied by India, the Nubra Valley and the Cargill region. This language is different from modern Tibetan. Many of the sounds of ancient Tibetan lost in modern Tibetan are preserved in Balti. This language is spoken in the towns of Skadu, Higel, Gurtari, Gansh, Landu and Kerman in Baltistan, Pakistan, and in the two areas of Indo Ladak (Cargill and Leicheng) and their surrounding villages. In Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Quida and other Pakistani cities, Balti immigrants also speak the ancient Tibetan language.
Before India and Pakistan split, Balti immigrants from Pakistan, such as Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Quida, also spoke Tibetan. Immigrants from cities such as Simla in northern India, Cargill and Nubra also use the ancient Tibetan language. The ancient Tibetan language was used in the mountains of northern Pakistan for 800 years-from the 8th century to the 16th century.
After Tubo defeated the Tang army in Baltistan in 727 AD, northern Pakistan went up to Tubo to conquer, and the Tibetans ruled the area until the end of the 14th century. After the Balti converted to Islam, Persian replaced Tibetan, but the Persian alphabet did not represent seven Balti letters. Later, Balti added the new letters of these seven sounds, and now Balti’s writing is basically complete.
So far, with the exception of the collection of proverbs, no literary works have been written in Balti. However, some Tibetan epics and legends in the mountains of northern Pakistan have been handed down through oral literature, such as the Epic of King Gesar and the stories of rgya lu cho lo bzang and rgya lu sras bu.
With the exception of Balti, which belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family, almost all languages and dialects in the mountains of northern Pakistan, such as Pashto, are Indian-Yarian or Iranian. The problem with the development of Balti literature is that due to religious differences, especially after Britain and India occupied the Ladak Corridor, an important passage with Xinjiang and Tibet, Balti literature has not only been isolated from Tibet for centuries, but also isolated from its immediate neighbor Radak Tibetans in the mountains of northern Pakistan. As a result of their separation from their language relatives, the Balti and Ladak people are facing strong pressure from Indian, Urdu and English. Due to the abandonment of the original Tibetan language and the lack of appropriate Tibetan writing tools, the Balti people today are not aware of the ancient Tibetan language, and no organization is willing to help the Balti people resume the use of Tibetan language in order to protect the Tibetan culture and Tibetan national identity of the Balti and Ladak indigenous peoples.
Although Balti also retains many Tibetan dialects and unique honorific languages, modern Balti languages do not have local names or words for many new inventions and foreign things, but use Urdu and English words directly.
Re-produced from his wechat post.
