Today, we woke up at 6:00am, packed up our equipment and headed to the jeeps to begin the long 7-hour off-road drive to Skardu. Just as we reached the outskirts of Skardu, we were forced to stop the jeep as a crowd of people were in the street along with a few armed police officers. Babar (our Liaison officer) rolled down his window to speak with the police-man to find out what was going on. Just after this, one of the men in the street lunged for another and a commotion broke out. Suddenly, we heard the crackle of repeated gunfire as more than a dozen shots were fired. We quickly ducked down in the vehicle as our driver sped away. Apparently, we were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. A land dispute over a very valuable piece of land had taken a violent turn and just as we arrived, escalated to gunfire. According to Babar, three bystanders were wounded in the gunfire. Thankfully, our group escaped shaken, but unhurt. We arrived to our hotel around 3:00pm and after waiting a bit to be sure that the violence wouldn’t spread as it often can in small towns, Babar, Akbar and I ventured out to the hospital to get checked out. The doctor here prescribed me a number of medications for my cough and charged me an alarmingly small fee of US$1.00 (yes, one dollar… it isn’t a typo). After this, I finally had the opportunity to shower in an actual shower and washed the last of the Baltoro off of me. We reconvened for dinner and then Manzoor, Akbar, and Ibrahim surprised us with a summit cake and another for Carlos’s birthday. We celebrated, then went to sleep, exhausted from the day’s events.