From cooking yak meat in Karakoram to vegetarian chef in Bilbao
10 years ago he became the blood brother of Alex Txikon in the middle of a tragedy in the mountains. She came with him to Bizkaia, speaks Basque and runs Garibolo, a vegan paradise
Ishaq Akhond was born 39 years ago in the Pakistani Karakoram valley and belongs to the Balti ethnic group. He worked as a cook for the Asian and European Himalayan expeditions cooking stews with pieces of frozen yak in kerosene stoves, at 5,000 meters. In this inhospitable region, five of the fourteen peaks of more than 8,000 meters that exist on Earth were raised. In the winter of 2011-2012, his life changed forever.
Alex Txikon tells it. “Of six expedition members who set out to summit Gasherbrum I, only three returned alive.” Ishaq, a high cook, could have gone down the mountain. But he accompanied Txikon, afflicted with frostbite, for ten terrible days, waiting for the uncertain return of his lost companions. They slept together, “like little birds”, sharing the same sack to get some heat from the 30º below zero outside the tent. “Ishaq is a real person, he stayed with me in good faith,” Txikon told me, who has just conquered, for the first time in history, Manaslu in winter and without the use of oxygen, a feat within the reach of very few. In those devastating hours an unbreakable friendship was forged. I meet Muhammad Ishaq in the dining room of the Garibolo, in the center of Bilbao.
Garibolo
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direction
Fernandez del Campo, 7 (Bilbao) -
phone
944223255. -
menus
Daily €16.50 (with bonus of 20: €14.25). Special Saturdays: €19.50. Especially Sundays: €24.50..
– Why did you stay with Txikon at base camp at 5,000 meters?
– It was the winter of 2012. There were a couple of expeditions to Gasherbrum I (8,080 m). In the winter, Alex went with Carlos Suárez and the Polish Tamara Stys. Things did not go well. Alex returned to base camp with frostbite. He wanted to wait for the return of the other rope. Of the climbers who were at the base camp, no one wanted to wait for Alex, he said that it was too dangerous to stay. When he got out, Txikon told me to leave. But I stayed with him. Alex cried for his lost companions. He got up at midnight to see if there was any light on the mountain. But not. The Austrian Gerfierd Göschi, the Swiss Cédric Larcher and my countryman, the Balti, Nisar Hussain, died those days in the Gasherbrum. Before leaving for the top, Nisar asked my forgiveness. He knew that he was going to die. The porters and cooks do not have insurance. He was clear that his seven children and his wife were going to have a very bad time.
Akhon, in the center, with Alberto Iñurrategui, Juan Vallejo from Alava and Mikel Zabalza together with porters and friends in their town, in 2017.
Ishaq speaks as if the scenes of those superhuman days passed in slow motion before his eyes. Listening to the details hurts. «I met Alex on K 2 and we were together on other expeditions. When a clearing opened up in the clouds, a helicopter came to rescue him. In the 5,000 meters there are always two, in case something happens. But the place that was there was for foreigners. He said that if they didn’t take me out, he would stay there with me until spring, when we could walk to the valley. He lowered another helicopter. When I got on he cried with happiness. We landed in a meadow and the military invited Alex for tea. He took me with him, he took my hand and told me that he was going to take me to his house, which was already his brother ».
“Here my children have a future”
And the Himalayan complied. Muhammad Ishaq Akhond came to Spain, was ‘adopted’ by the Txikon family and took over Igorre’s batzoki in 2016. He learned to speak Basque, got his driver’s license, did theater, ESO happened. In 2019, the family reunification procedures began. In September 2021 (always with the support of Txikon) he managed to get his wife, Salina Bano, and her three children to meet him in Lemoa, where they live. «Basque is good for them, they need support in Spanish. They are waiting for me at home when I come back from the restaurant so they can help them with their homework. The other night they gave me both with the eldest. For them playing in the yard and drawing is something new. There the books do not have pictures. They didn’t give them homework either and they didn’t do group work. It has been difficult for us to understand the ‘talde wool’”, smiles Akhon, for whom these obstacles are trifles.
Ishaq with his three children.
«Once I took them to see Gorbea, the highest mountain in Euskadi. ‘And do they call that a mountain?’, they asked me. They are used to seeing eight thousand in Escardú », he smiles. «On the 25th we all went up to Anboto, they suffered with the wind. For them everything is new, Christmas lights, buses, riding the subway. We went to Zubiarte, but they didn’t dare to go into the cinema, I almost had to force them. At first, they did not eat anything. They had also never tasted chocolate until Alex’s mother offered them. ‘Guztatzen zaizue?’. They have seen the sea for the first time last year, but they have not bathed yet. My wife, who is going to the EPA to learn Spanish, is amazed by the tomatoes, by the boxes and boxes of fresh fruit. An L egg here is four times one of ours. Here they have Health. They all lacked iron and they have all been vaccinated. In Pakistan you can’t afford a doctor. They only give you pills. There is no analysis to see if you improve », she sighs.
72 kinds of apricots in Escardú
“He sent money to my village. With €400 he paid for all the studies of my 17-year-old nephew Murtazar, such a responsible boy that, when my children arrived, he didn’t ask me for more and started working in the afternoons. I know that the money he sent is not in vain. And here, my children have a future; I would like to stay in the university. I educate them in respect for the law. They are smart and watch what their peers are doing. I spent years in school and came out illiterate. The letters that I sent from Lahore, where I went to wash dishes in a Chinese for €6 a month, never reached my parents’ house, “he hurts.
It was Alex Txikon who accompanied him on his first visit to Rafa Carretero’s Garibolo, naval machinist and creator of this vegetarian place in Fernández del Campo. «Alex is very aware of how my life is going. He lives watching me. Now that we are installed he is calmer », Ishaq is excited. Although Txikon lives in Azpeitia and has just been the father of Iker, an invisible umbilical thread woven between icy walls unites them.
Ishaq is now focused on his Garibolo, “a healthy and balanced cuisine. I work with local produce, vegetables that are always in season with suppliers that they already brought to Rafa. I want Garibolo to also be a gluten-free restaurant, for vegans and for people who want to try eating healthy one day, without animal protein. Everyone is satisfied », he says.
We then talked about new dishes, the best way to incorporate lasai lasai, a mild curry to the menu, the 72 kinds of apricot they plant in their valley, how they take advantage of the oil from the güito (how wonderful to hear that word), seed with which his countrymen make, like us, primitive whistles.