Meet 78-year-old man from Hunza who is walking 100km to honor Chinese doctors

A 78-year-old man, Rehber Ali, has started on Wednesday his 100 kilometer walk on Karakoram Highway (KKH) from upper Hunza to Aliabad, in order to pay tribute to the doctors of Red Army of China who saved his life in 1968.

Ali, who is from Kyber village in Hunza, started his walk carrying Pakistani and Chinese flags on his back, which will end on Pakistan Day, local media reported. Speaking about how the Chinese doctors saved his life, Ali said it all began when he became paralyzed due to an unidentified severe pain in his legs when he was only 38 years old.

At that time, he added, the people used traditional methods to treat diseases because they had no medical facility and the locals had no easy access to other parts of the country. However, in his unusual condition no traditional method seemed to work.

Ali was lucky that doctors of Red Army of China had set up medical camps for the laborers as well as the locals during the construction KKH. They also set up a medical field hospital in Passu village of upper Hunza.

The elderly man further said that he was admitted promptly in the facility and was healthy within two months under the treatment of the Chinese doctors. “Today [March 21] on the occasion of Nauroz, I have decided to start 100km walk on KKH from my home town to Aliabad as a gesture of thanking the Chinese doctors and celebrating Pak-China friendship," he said.