Classic Pakistan Tour

At a glance

• 16 days, Islamabad to IslamabadFifteen nights, with two in the Kalash valleys and two in Hunza.
• Easy — no trekkingLong drives on mountain roads. Maximum altitude 3,800 m at Shandur, for a day.
• Chitral, Kalash, Hunza & SkarduThe Hindu Kush and the Karakoram in one journey, over the Shandur Pass.
• Three & four star hotelsTwin share with en-suite; simpler family-run rooms in the Kalash valleys.
• June to SeptemberShandur is only reliably open in summer. The polo festival is in early July.
• Private vehicleJeep or Land Cruiser with your own driver for the whole route.

Day by day

1. 1Day 1Arrival in Islamabad

   

   Your guide meets you at the airport and transfers you to the hotel. We brief the group over dinner — what the sixteen days look like, which two flights are weather-dependent, and what happens if either of them does not go. If you land early enough there is time for the Faisal Mosque or the view from Daman-e-Koh first.

2. 2Day 2Fly to Chitral, then Ayun

   

   An early flight over the Hindu Kush to Chitral, an hour, with Tirich Mir at 7,708 metres off the wing in clear air. If it is cancelled we drive, which is a long day under the Lowari Tunnel. In Chitral we look at the bazaar and the Shahi Masjid, and if there is a polo match on the ground by the river we watch some of it — this is where the game is played the old way, six a side and few rules. Then the short run down to Ayun and a guest house for the night.

3. 3Day 3A day at Ayun

   

   A day that most itineraries skip, and the reason this one works. Ayun sits at the mouth of the Kalash valleys, a mixed village of orchards and walnut trees where the road stops being a road. There is nothing scheduled: walking, meeting people, and a slower introduction to the region than arriving straight into a festival. Optional walks into the side valleys for anyone who wants the legs.

4. 4Day 4Into the Kalash valleys

   

   Fifteen kilometres and an hour up the gorge to Rumbur and Balanguru. There are about five thousand Kalasha living in three valleys — Bumburet, Rumbur and Birir — and they are the last people in Pakistan practising a polytheist religion older in the region than Islam. UNESCO listed their traditions as intangible cultural heritage in 2018. The afternoon is unstructured on purpose: walk the village, sit with people, let it register.

5. 5Day 5A full day in the Kalash valleys

   

   An optional walk up towards the Afghan frontier to the Nuristani settlement at Shakanande for anyone who wants a proper day out — it is a few hours each way and worth it. Otherwise the day is the valleys themselves: temples, graveyards, water mills, and the beadwork and weaving being made in the houses rather than sold in a shop. Afternoons here are for conversation and short walks.

6. 6Day 6Back to Chitral

   

   Out through Ayun and on to Chitral, about twenty-five kilometres and an hour. The afternoon has options: the fort on the riverbank, another polo match if the season is right, or Chitral Gol National Park up the valley, which is the best chance in Pakistan of seeing markhor — the screw-horned wild goat that is the national animal — on a hillside rather than in a photograph.

7. 7Day 7Chitral to Mastuj

   

   A hundred and twenty kilometres and about four hours on a narrow mountain road, and one of the drives people remember. The route runs beneath Tirich Mir, past Boni and Zong, and up the Yarkhun valley towards the Wakhan corridor — the finger of Afghanistan that separates Pakistan from Tajikistan. Mastuj is a small place at the top of it. A short walk in the afternoon and an early night, because tomorrow is the pass.

8. 8Day 8Over the Shandur Pass to Gilgit

   

   Shandur is 3,800 metres and the roof of this trip — a wide green saddle with a lake on it, and the highest polo ground in the world, where teams from Chitral and Gilgit play a festival every July in front of thousands of people camped on the grass. We stop for tea and a walk whether or not there is a match. Then the long descent to Gilgit, with a stop at the Kargah Buddha — a seventh-century figure carved into a cliff face above the town — if the light holds.

9. 9Day 9Gilgit to Hunza

   

   A hundred kilometres up the Karakoram Highway, two or three hours, and the drive that sells northern Pakistan to people. Rakaposhi at 7,788 metres stands directly over the road at Ghulmet and you look up at it from a roadside tea shop. Hunza has been on the Silk Route for as long as there has been one, which is why a valley this remote has forts worth the name. We stay at Karimabad.

10. 10Day 10Hunza — Baltit and Altit

    

    Altit Fort is the older of the two, about nine hundred years old, sitting on a rock directly above the river with the orchard restored below it. Baltit is the one on the postcards — around seven hundred years old, Tibetan in shape, abandoned in the 1940s and brought back by the Aga Khan Trust in the 1990s. Both are properly worth the entry. In the evening we go up to Duikar or Eagle's Nest for sunset on Rakaposhi and Ultar, which is the view that does not photograph as well as it looks.

11. 11Day 11Hunza, and down to Gilgit

    

    Up early for sunrise on Rakaposhi if you want it, then a slow morning — the shops in Karimabad sell gemstones, dried apricots and hand-knitted things, and the town is small enough to talk to people in. The afternoon drive back down to Gilgit is short. This is the softest day of the trip and it is placed here deliberately, between two long ones.

12. 12Day 12Gilgit to Skardu along the Indus

    

    Two hundred kilometres and about five hours: a stretch of the Karakoram Highway, then the left turn at Alam Bridge to follow the Indus east into Baltistan. The gorge is bare and enormous and the villages in it are green with apricot, cherry and apple — we stop to buy fruit from the growers. Skardu is at 2,230 metres on a wide bend of the river, where the Karakoram parts from the Himalaya.

13. 13Day 13Skardu and the Shigar valley

    

    The bazaar, the Kharpocho fort on its rock above the river, and the Manthal Buddha Rock — an eighth-century relief carved into a granite boulder on the edge of town, and the plainest evidence that this was a Buddhist kingdom before it was a Muslim one. Then out to Shigar, the valley the K2 and Gasherbrum expeditions drive up, with its restored seventeenth-century fort. Skardu is called Little Tibet, and after a day here the name stops sounding like marketing.

14. 14Day 14Fly back to Islamabad

    

    Forty-five minutes over the Karakoram, with Nanga Parbat off the wing and K2 on the horizon in clear air. If the flight is cancelled we drive instead — Land Cruisers over the Deosai plateau at 4,111 metres and down through Astore, which is a spectacular consolation prize but takes two days rather than one, which is what day fifteen is for. Arriving by air, the afternoon is free.

15. 15Day 15Islamabad

    

    A full day in the capital: the Faisal Mosque, the Pakistan Monument with its four petals for the provinces, Lok Virsa for the crafts of the regions you have just driven through, and the food — the point of the day, if you ask our guides. If the Skardu flight did not go, this is instead the second day of the road, coming down past Nanga Parbat and over Babusar into Kaghan, Abbottabad, Hasan Abdal and Taxila.

16. 16Day 16Departure

    

    Breakfast, and a transfer to Islamabad International Airport for your flight home. After sixteen days a good many people decide they are not finished — extra nights, a day room or an extension south to Lahore are all easy to arrange.

Good to know

Two flights on this trip are weather-dependent — into Chitral and out of Skardu — and both have an included road alternative. The Skardu one matters more, because the road out is two days rather than one. Day fifteen absorbs it, which is why we ask you not to book an international flight home before the evening of day sixteen.

Shandur is only reliably open from about June to September; outside those months the pass carries snow and the crossing is not possible, which is what fixes the season for this trip. The polo festival at the top is in early July and it is worth timing a departure around — tell us if you want that and we will put you on a departure that reaches Shandur in the right week.

The maximum altitude is 3,800 metres at Shandur, crossed in a vehicle in a day, so altitude illness is uncommon. Drink more than you think you need.

The drives are the trip. Chitral to Mastuj is four hours on a narrow mountain road and Shandur is a full day on rough ground. Both are the reason the itinerary has three days in it that do not move at all.

Questions about this trip

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