Complete Pakistan Tour 2026-27 — Karakoram to the Arabian Sea

At a glance

• 20 days, Islamabad to KarachiThe full length of the country, mountains to the Arabian Sea.
• Easy — touring, with long travel daysNo trekking. A great deal of driving, and one internal flight at the end.
• Private tourAges 15 and up. Your own group, your own pace.
• Five provincesGilgit-Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sindh — and the Khyber Pass.
• Hotels throughoutNineteen nights, from mountain lodges to city hotels.
• September to MarchThe south is unbearable in summer; this route follows the cool season.

Day by day

1. 1Day 1Islamabad — arrival and the capital

   

   Met at Islamabad International Airport and straight into the city, because there is a lot of country ahead. We take in Shakarparian's terraces, the granite petals of the Pakistan Monument, the vast white Faisal Mosque beneath the Margalla Hills, and the view over everything from Daman-e-Koh. Lunch at Monal on the ridge. If the day allows we drop into Rawalpindi — the older, louder twin, all narrow bazaars and colonial-era brick — which is a useful corrective to Islamabad's planned calm. Dinner at the hotel.

2. 2Day 2Islamabad to Skardu and the Shigar valley

   

   North into the mountains, through the cold desert and on to Shigar. The Sarfaranga dunes at 2,200 metres with the Karakoram behind them are one of the odder landscapes in Asia. At Shigar we visit the seventeenth-century raja's fort, built of stone and poplar and restored into a working hotel, and stop at Bara Pani. For anyone with energy left there is an hour's walk up to Jarba Xho above the valley. Overnight in the Skardu area.

3. 3Day 3Skardu — Manthoka Waterfall

   

   A gentler day. We drive into the Kharmang district to Manthoka Waterfall, where a hundred feet of very cold water drops into a green side valley, and spend a slow few hours there. The drive itself follows the Indus through country that is bare, enormous and almost entirely empty, and it is worth as much as the destination. Back to Skardu for the evening and the bazaar.

4. 4Day 4Khaplu, the Chaqchan Mosque and Sailing Meadows

   

   East up the Shyok toward Baltistan's far corner. The Chaqchan Mosque at Khaplu dates from 1370, built when the valley converted from Buddhism, and its carved wooden interior shows the Tibetan hand still at work. We drive on to the Sailing Meadows, eat trout straight out of the local farms, and explore Khaplu itself, which has a restored palace and the feel of a place that has not changed pace in some time.

5. 5Day 5Skardu to Hunza on the Karakoram Highway

   

   A long and magnificent driving day. The road drops out of Baltistan along the Indus, joins the Karakoram Highway and turns north into the Hunza gorge, passing the junction where the Karakoram, Himalaya and Hindu Kush ranges meet within sight of one another. We stop beneath Rakaposhi, whose 7,788-metre face rises almost straight from the roadside. Into Karimabad by evening, with time to walk the bazaar before dinner.

6. 6Day 6Hunza — Altit, Baltit and sunset at Duikar

   

   A day on foot in one valley. Altit Fort is around 1,100 years old and the oldest surviving monument in Gilgit-Baltistan; the Mirs of Hunza lived there for three centuries before moving up to Baltit, the 700-year-old fort on the spur above Karimabad. Walking between the two follows the dynasty's own chronology. We finish at Duikar above Eagle's Nest, where the sunset takes Rakaposhi, Ultar Sar, Diran and Golden Peak in turn, and the evening is free on the tourist street.

7. 7Day 7Upper Hunza — Attabad, Hussaini and the Passu Cones

   

   North up the gorge for the day. Attabad Lake is the startling turquoise created in 2010, when a landslide dammed the Hunza River and drowned four villages beneath what is now the most photographed water in Pakistan; boats and jet skis are there if you want them. The Hussaini suspension bridge is the slatted rope crossing from every photograph of the country, and is entirely optional. We finish under the Passu Cones, a row of serrated spires that look invented.

8. 8Day 8Borith Lake and the Batura glacier viewpoint

   

   A quieter day up-valley. Borith is a high salt lake that draws migrating birds in spring and autumn, sitting below the Ghulkin Glacier in a bowl of scree and pasture. There is an hour's walk up to the Batura glacier viewpoint for those who want it — Batura is one of the longest glaciers outside the poles — and rafting and paddle boats down on the water for those who do not. The pace today is deliberately loose.

9. 9Day 9Hoper Valley and on to Gilgit

   

   Across the valley into Nagar and up to Hoper, where a short walk brings you to the snout of a glacier that is grey, filthy, groaning and much more alive than the postcard version. We spend the morning in the village, walking the irrigation channels that make farming possible here at all, then drive down to Gilgit in the afternoon — the old crossroads of these mountains, and the last mountain town on this trip.

10. 10Day 10Gilgit to Peshawar

    

    The big transition. A full day on the road south and west, out of the Karakoram and down into the frontier, following the Indus for much of it and watching the landscape turn from rock to green to dust. Peshawar is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in South Asia and feels it: older, denser and considerably more charged than anywhere you have been so far. We arrive in the evening and go no further than dinner.

11. 11Day 11Peshawar and the Khyber Pass

    

    With permit and escort arranged, we drive up to Landi Kotal and the Khyber Pass itself, past Jamrud Fort at its mouth, where the regimental crests of every army that has come through are cut into the rock. Back in the city we take Bala Hisar fort, the Peshawar Museum and its Gandharan Buddhas, the painted merchant's mansion at Sethi House, and the Mahabat Khan Mosque in the middle of the bazaar. Dinner is at Namak Mandi, which is a street of grills and the best meat in Pakistan.

12. 12Day 12Peshawar to Lahore

    

    A morning in Qissa Khwani, the Storytellers' Bazaar, where caravan traders once traded news along with everything else, and an hour at the zoo if you have children along. Then the motorway east to Lahore — fast, flat and a genuine relief after the mountain roads. Lahore announces itself long before you arrive. The evening is free for a first walk, and for the food, which is the point of Lahore for a great many visitors.

13. 13Day 13Lahore — the Fort, the Badshahi Mosque and Fort Road

    

    The set piece. Lahore Fort and the Badshahi Mosque face each other across the Hazuri Bagh, and between them they hold most of what Mughal architecture achieved: red sandstone, white marble, and a scale that is difficult to convey until you are standing in the courtyard with room for a hundred thousand people around you. We eat on Fort Road Food Street with the mosque lit up above the rooftops, which is the single most photographed dinner in Pakistan and deserves to be.

14. 14Day 14Lahore — the walled city and Wazir Khan

    

    Into the old city on foot, through the Delhi Gate and along the Shahi Guzargah, the royal route the emperors took. The Wazir Khan Mosque at the middle of it is the finest tiled building in South Asia, every surface in glazed kashi work, and the restoration of the surrounding lanes has been careful and slow. Dinner at Anarkali. The afternoon is loose for shopping: block-printed cotton, khussa shoes, and a great deal of brass.

15. 15Day 15Lahore — a guided day inside the Fort

    

    A proper guided tour of what the two previous days only introduced. Inside the Fort: the Sheesh Mahal with its ceiling of mirror mosaic, the Royal Hammam, the Diwan-e-Aam where the emperor heard petitions and the Diwan-e-Khas where he heard the ones that mattered. Then the Badshahi Mosque in daylight, Minar-e-Pakistan where the resolution for a separate state was passed in 1940, and the Gurdwara Dera Sahib next door, which is one of Sikhism's holiest sites.

16. 16Day 16Wagah border, then south to Multan

    

    Out to the Wagah border in the afternoon for the flag ceremony — an hour of synchronised stamping, moustaches and competitive shouting between the Pakistani Rangers and the Indian Border Security Force, watched by a stadium on each side. It is high theatre and entirely serious. Afterwards we drive south to Multan, arriving in the evening.

17. 17Day 17Multan — the city of saints

    

    Multan is five thousand years old and built almost entirely of brick, and its Sufi shrines are the reason to come. The mausoleum of Shah Rukn-e-Alam is the great one: an octagonal tomb of brick and blue tile under a vast dome, finished in 1324 and visible from most of the city. We also take Bahauddin Zakariya's shrine and Shah Shams Tabrez's, and if the day falls right there will be qawwali being sung in a courtyard, which is not a performance and is worth staying for.

18. 18Day 18Bahawalpur, Noor Mahal, and back to Lahore

    

    East to Bahawalpur, the seat of a princely state that stayed independent until 1955 and spent its money conspicuously. The Noor Mahal is the evidence: an Italianate palace built in 1872 by a nawab for a wife who is said to have refused to live in it. We visit the palace and the zoo, then make the long drive back north to Lahore for the night.

19. 19Day 19Fly to Karachi, and the sea

    

    The morning flight south to Karachi, which is a city of twenty million and unlike anywhere else on this trip. We go down to Boat Basin and the seafront — the Arabian Sea, at the end of a journey that began under the Karakoram, is a genuinely satisfying full stop. The afternoon is optional and there is a great deal of it: old Karachi and its colonial-era stone, the souvenir markets, and churches, temples and mosques within a few streets of one another.

20. 20Day 20Karachi — Mohatta Palace and departure

    

    A last morning at the Mohatta Palace, a pink Rajasthani stone mansion built in 1927 by a Hindu businessman and later home to Fatima Jinnah, now a museum and the most elegant building in the city. Then Frere Hall and its Sadequain ceiling, and a transfer to the airport for your flight home — twenty days and two thousand kilometres from where you started.

Good to know

Season matters more on this trip than on any other we run. Between May and September the Punjab and Sindh are genuinely punishing — well over 40 degrees — while the north is at its best. Between November and March the plains are perfect and the high passes are shut. This route runs September to March and accepts the trade: no Khunjerab, but Lahore and Multan in weather you can walk in.

The Khyber Pass requires a permit and a security escort arranged in advance. This is routine and we handle it, but it means the Peshawar days are less flexible than the rest.

Expect long drives. Gilgit to Peshawar and Peshawar to Lahore are both full days, and the country is large in a way maps understate.

Dress is worth a thought, particularly at the Sufi shrines in Multan and the mosques in Lahore and Peshawar. Covered shoulders and knees for everyone, a scarf for women to cover their head at shrines. Nobody will be rude about it; you will simply be more welcome.

Questions about this trip

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