On June 21st 2006, In order to complete our study of the emerald market in Pakistan, we had a one day field trip to the Swat province to visit the famous Mingora emerald mine and the Mingora Gemstone market.

 

The Swat province is known to produce emeralds since the 1960's. At this time the mines were working under the rule of the Prince of Swat. In 1969 they passed under the gemstone corporation of Pakistan until its dissolution.

Since 1995 they are under the control of the Provincial Government of the NWFP and are operated by private operators under lease agreement that can be obtained from an auction system. We were told that there are several mining areas in the Swat valley with the main operation few hundreds meters over the Mingora city (34.46.43N 072.21.30E). This main operation operate using 2 mining methods: open pit and tunnel mining. We were able to visit both of them despite the fact that the mine was currently closed due to a legal case between the local government and the operator.

 

 

At the Mingora mine, the emeralds are found there as we could see in a "whitish silvery" or white talc schist matrix. We saw 3 mining tunnels located over the area where the open pit mining was formerly performed. We visited the lowest of these three tunnels. It was a 20 meters deep tunnel penetrating horizontally inside the mountain. This strait tunnel had one side gallery on the left around 7 meters after the entry. We did not visited the side gallery.

 

 

If the production at Mingora has officially stopped we were told that some mining is currently present in some other less important areas at Shamoozi on the north west of Mingora, Gudjurkali near Malanjaba in the east of Mingora and in the Shangla district further in the east of Mingora but we were not able to visit these areas.

 

We could see some small quantities of rough or cut Swat material both at the Mingora and Peshawar markets, local dealers were globally agree that the biggest fine quality Swat emerald they have seen was around 5 carats size after cut while most of the material under 1 carat size. The Mingora market was interesting as we could see there some interesting emeralds from the new Davdar mining area in China and a parcel of big crystals of an average low quality told to origin from the Gilgit area.

 

 

A field trip to the NANGIMALI ruby Mining area, Azad Kashmir, Pakistan:
We left Islamabad to Muzafarabad on August 5th 2006 after our return from China with a car and a Mr Sardar Saeed Akhtar, geologist and assistant director at the Geological Survey of Pakistan. We drove through beautiful mountains covered with forests which was a pleasure after these 2 months spend on arid areas. On August 6th, we tried to take the road to Kel following the Neelam river but the heavy monsoon rains during the previous days created many landslides.

 

 

These landslide were more numerous than usually as the land was damaged by a major earthquake in October 2005 killing more than 90.000 people. Finally we returned to Muzafarabad.
On August 7th as the roads were still blocked we decided to abandon our car, we took our bags and crossed the landslides walking. It was quite dangerous as the ground was not stabilized and rocks were regularly falling from the top of the mountain but nobody was wounded. We then continued walking until we found a vehicle willing to take us to the next landslide.

 

We took like that five different vehicles this day and arrived late at night in a remote village still 5 hours from Kel. Here is a short movie I took on the way to the Nangimali Ruby mines. This video shows the difficulties we encountered in the Neelam valley passing the numerous landslides. The landslide presented here was less than 10 km from Muzaffarabad and it is the place we had to abandon our vehicule. Few minutes after the people you can see on the video we also passed the landslide walking. Of course walking through landslides is not at all recommended. It is very dangerous and we advise people not to follow our bad example...

 

Here is a modified satelite map created from Google Earth on which you can follow our Summer 2006 fieldtrip to the Nangimali Ruby mining area (34°57'25"N 74°27'17"E) located on the top of a daring cliff over the Utili Domel village in a deep valley over Kel in Azad Kashmir few hundred meter from the Indian-Pakistani cease fire line of control.

 

On August 8th we left again early to continue our trip and arrived in Kel a little bit before lunch time to take directly a drive to Utili Domel (34° 57 67N, 74° 28 51E, 2900m altitude) the closest village to the mines. There we met Mr Mumtaz Hussain Rathore from AKMIDC (Azad Kashmir Mineral Industrial Development Corporation) which offices are in Muzafarabad. AKMIDC is the state owned company in charge of the mining.

 

After our arrival in Utili Domel we went on a walk to a marble cliff called Chitakata (34° 56 94N, 74° 28 39E, 2941m altitude) where one month ago they started to mine ruby. Mr Mumtaz Hussain Rathore told us that 19 kilos of ruby was mined during the last 25 working days. The miners are working in Chitakata with a pneumatic drill and around 10 people are working this new cliff. Currently the main mining operation is an horizontal tunnel wich is around 6 meters deep as it was started only around one month ago.

 

It was interesting to see that at the entrance of the tunnel several rubies were visible on the surface of the marble. Around 300 meters from this starting mine some older galleries are present which were mined as a test for more than 3 years and produced only very few low quality stones.
We saw the mine production composed of attractive pinkish red stones lacking of transparency to be top quality but could be possibly a suitable material for heat treatment. Rubies there are found in marble and associated with numerous pyrite and green mica (probably fushchite).

 

 

Mr Mumtaz Hussain Rathore from AKMIDC presenting to us a well crystallized ruby in its marble matrix mined at the Chitakata mine, Kashmir on August 8th 2006.

 

 

On august 9th we first went few hundred meters back in the direction of Kel to reach a mining camp named "Khora" where around 15 miners were working a placer located just under the Nangimali cliff (34° 57 14N, 74° 27 95E, 2990m altitude)
The mining techniques here is mainly to search for rubies still in matrix that had fallen from the Nangimali marble cliff where are located the main mines.
Besides specimens in matrix the miners told us to have found some loose eluvial rubies in the placer but the equipment used was not really suitable to wash the ground...

 

 

After this short visit to this eluvial mine, we took some horses for a 3 hours ride to the main mining camp on the Nangimali cliff.

 

 

The ride was wonderful as we were gifted with a fine weather and were able to fully appreciate the beauty of the Kashmir mountains.

 

 

We arrived at the mining camp around noon. The camps is located at (34° 57 23N, 74° 27 06E, at 3784m altitude)
The camp was very well organized with several tents and stone building and walls. Located at around 30 minutes walking distance from the first mining operation, it is a nice spot which is regularly supplied by mule convoys from Utili Domel in order with mining equipment, fuel and food. After our arrival at the camp, we met Mr. Raja M. Naseem Khan, the current mine director. He is also the geologist who was told us to have discovered the Chitakata ruby deposit few years ago.

 

Currently only one mining tunnel is currently producing at "Lower Khora" (34° 57 43N, 74° 27 29E, at 3851m altitude) a mining spot located on the marble cliff and dominating the Utili Domel valley from around 1000 meters. The view from the mine is really impressive as the area in which the miners work on the cliff is less than 4 meters wide and around 20 meters long between the cliff and the rock.

The mining area highest mining spot called "Nangimali Top" is located higher on the marble cliff at nearly 4500 meters altitude. This area was not in production while we visited the area. Few years ago up to 50 miners were nevertheless working at Nangimali Top but the best stones were told us to have been produced at "Lower Khora". This mine has the same name as the elluvial mine located several hundreds meters under.
After a stop at the camp to meet the miners, rest and drink some tea, we walked to the "Lower Khora" mines on the Nangimali cliff.

 

During our visit a group of new miners were getting trained. All the mining training was performed at "Lower Khora" which was more suitable for such task than "Nangimali Top".
At Lower Khora two galleries are visible, the older one is 150 meters long and took 15 years to dig, very few stones were found from this research tunnel as only 10 to 15 ruby crystals were told to have been found there.

 

The gallery was dig in order to evaluate the extend of the deposit. The gallery confirmed that the ruby bearing layer was extending at least 150 meters inside the cliff as it was expected. At lower Khora we were told that the work started as an open pit mine in 1994 and turned slowly to what it is now: A 60 meters long mine gallery with several lateral tunnels going up into the cliff with an inclination around 30%.

 

Inside the mine we could witness the mining work with a pneumatic drill. Then the miners blast the marble and the ore is take out manually outside the mine gallery on the cliff where other miners are breaking the marble taking out the rubies and rejecting the waste from the top of the cliff.

All the waste accumulate then few hundred meters lower. The mine was globally looking well organized and staffed. We had the possibility to see the day production which was small as the miners were mostly involved in training new staff.

 

Nevertheless we saw some small but very beautiful crystals. The mine director told us that, as an average, the mine was producing 3 to 5 clean top quality crystals over one carat per week. The mine is worked around 3 months and half per year as an average but in 2004 due to extremely good condition during the summer they were able to work up to 4 months and half which was exceptional.

After our visit to the mines we came back to the mining camp for the night and the day after went down to Utili Domel and then to Kel where we spent the night.

 

On August 11th 2006 we took the road back to Muzafarabad and then Islamabad as, while we visited the mines, the machines completed their work to clear the road from the numerous landslides. We were able to drive in one day from Kel to Islamabad and arrived safely after a great trip.