Helicopter Safari Pakistan

Trip highlights

• Concordia, and four 8,000ers

  Roughly 4,600 metres, where the Baltoro and Godwin-Austen glaciers meet — ringed by K2 at 8,611 m, Broad Peak at 8,051 m and Gasherbrum I and II. Trekkers reach it after about seven days on moraine. You reach it after breakfast.

• Fifty kilometres of the Baltoro

  The full length of the glacier from the air, with the Trango Towers, Uli Biaho and the Cathedral spires standing off it — a wall of granite that is one of the great rock-climbing landscapes on earth, and invisible from any road.

• Masherbrum's other side

  7,821 metres, seen from the side no photograph on the internet shows, because the road side is the other one.

• Shigar and Khaplu between flights

  The restored Shigar Fort, the Khaplu palace, apricot orchards and a polo ground that has been in use for centuries — the ground days that make a grounded morning worth having.

• The scale problem, solved

  Pictures of the Karakoram never work because there is nothing in them for scale. From 4,750 metres, with the glacier below and the summits still two vertical miles above you, it finally lands.

At a glance

• Up to 4,750 mConcordia and the Baltoro, reached in under an hour from Skardu.
• Karakoram RangeBaltoro, Concordia, Masherbrum and the Khaplu valley.
• Four 8,000 m peaks in one flightK2, Broad Peak and both Gasherbrums stand around Concordia.
• No trekking, no acclimatisation daysYou gain and lose the altitude inside a single flight.
• May to early OctoberJune and September give the most settled flying mornings.
• Weather days built inThe itinerary holds spare days because the mountain decides, not the schedule.

Day by day

1. 1Day 1Arrive Islamabad

   

   Met at the airport and driven to the hotel. Dinner, and a first look at the shape of the next twelve days — which, on this trip more than any other we run, means talking about weather. You will hear that word a great deal and it is better heard on day one than on day four.

2. 2Day 2Islamabad to Skardu by air

   

   The hour-long flight north is the best-value scheduled flight in Pakistan: the aircraft threads the mountains with Nanga Parbat off the left wing, and passengers routinely spend the whole of it at the windows. It is also weather-dependent and cancels often, so we hold the two-day road journey up the Karakoram Highway as the alternative and the itinerary carries the slack to absorb it. Afternoon at leisure in Skardu at 2,230 metres.

3. 3Day 3Skardu — Kharpocho Fort, Shangrila, and the flight briefing

   

   A deliberately gentle day while the crews watch the forecast. Kharpocho Fort stands above the town where the Shigar meets the Indus, and Shangrila's lake sits in the old riverbed at Kachura. In the afternoon you meet the crew, the aircraft and the safety briefing, and we take the weights the pilot needs. Bring what you plan to fly with so it can be weighed rather than guessed at.

4. 4Day 4Flying day — the Baltoro glacier, Concordia and K2

   

   The reason you came. An early lift from Skardu, up the Shigar and into the Braldu gorge, over Askole — the last village, and the roadhead where every K2 trek begins on foot — and then out onto the Baltoro. Fifty kilometres of glacier unwind beneath you with the Trango Towers and the Cathedral spires standing off the ice. Concordia opens at the end of it: K2 at 8,611 m straight up the Godwin-Austen, Broad Peak at 8,051 m, and Gasherbrum I and II to the east. Four of the world's fourteen highest mountains, in the windows at once, about forty minutes after breakfast.

5. 5Day 5Shigar valley and Shigar Fort — and the reserve for yesterday

   

   A ground day by design, and the spare day for flying day one if the morning went against us. The Shigar valley is apricot orchards, poplars and irrigation channels running between them, and the fort at the top of it is a seventeenth-century raja's palace restored over a decade and now the best building you can sleep in north of Islamabad. Lunch there, and the cold-desert dunes on the way back if there is light for it.

6. 6Day 6Flying day — Trango, Masherbrum and the Hushe valley

   

   The second flight works the country south and east of the Baltoro, which almost nobody photographs because no road reaches it. Masherbrum at 7,821 m shows the face the Khaplu road never sees. The Trango group — Great Trango, Uli Biaho, Nameless Tower — is a kilometre of vertical granite standing straight out of the ice, and from the air you finally get the one thing photographs of it always lack, which is something to measure it against.

7. 7Day 7Khaplu by road — and the reserve for yesterday

   

   Two and a half hours up the Shyok to Khaplu at 2,600 metres, and the spare day for flying day two. The palace here is the other great restoration in Baltistan, a nineteenth-century royal house on a terrace above the valley. If there is polo on, we go: the Baltistan game is the old one, played hard, with no umpire worth the name and a band on the sideline.

8. 8Day 8Skardu to Gilgit along the Indus

   

   Six to seven hours west, following the Indus out of Baltistan through a gorge that runs for most of the day between rock walls with the river the only green thing in it. The road has been rebuilt in recent years and is far better than its reputation. Gilgit in the late afternoon.

9. 9Day 9Gilgit to Karimabad, and Baltit Fort

   

   A short morning up the Karakoram Highway into Hunza — under three hours, with Rakaposhi at 7,788 m standing over the road for much of it. Karimabad sits on the terrace above the river with Baltit Fort at the top of the village, a 700-year-old building on a spur that was the seat of the Mirs of Hunza until the 1940s. Afternoon in the fort and the old lanes below it.

10. 10Day 10Upper Hunza — Attabad, Passu and the Khunjerab road

    

    North to the lake at Attabad, which did not exist before a landslide dammed the river in 2010 and is now a startling turquoise sheet with the highway running along it on new bridges. Beyond it the Passu cones, the most photographed skyline in Pakistan and a rare case of a thing that looks exactly as advertised. If the day and the permits allow, we continue to the Khunjerab Pass at 4,693 m and the Chinese border gate.

11. 11Day 11Karimabad to Besham, down the Karakoram Highway

    

    The long day, and an honest one: eight to nine hours on the road. It is also the day the scale of the country lands, because you drive the whole length of the Indus gorge with Nanga Parbat's 8,126 m bulk on one side and the Karakoram ending on the other, past the point where three of the world's great ranges meet. Night at Besham on the river.

12. 12Day 12Besham to Islamabad via Taxila, and departure

    

    Six to seven hours south, out of the mountains and into Punjab, stopping at Taxila — the Gandharan city where Buddhist monasteries stood for a thousand years and the museum holds what was dug out of them. Into Islamabad in the afternoon, with a day room held for you, and onward flights from the evening. Most international departures leave late, which is why the drive works on the last day rather than needing a thirteenth.

Good to know

**The weather decides, and it decides late**

This is the single most important thing to understand before booking a helicopter safari, and the thing every brochure underplays. Karakoram flying weather is a morning phenomenon: valley winds get up through the day and cloud builds on the peaks, so flights go early or they do not go. A clear evening in Skardu tells you nothing about tomorrow.

We build spare days into every itinerary for this reason and we will not sell you a version without them. A safari with no margin is a safari that returns your money instead of showing you Concordia, and those are not the same outcome.

**What happens if it does not fly**

Unflown hours are refunded or rescheduled — your quotation will say which, and you should read that clause before you pay anything. What is not refundable is the hotel you slept in while waiting, and no operator anywhere can make it so. Budget for the possibility of two extra nights and treat them as the cost of the attempt.

**Skardu is a weather airport too**

The scheduled flight from Islamabad to Skardu is famously cancellable — it runs visually through mountain terrain and goes when the corridor is clear. We hold the two-day road journey up the Karakoram Highway as the alternative, which is why the itinerary starts with slack in it rather than a tight connection.

**Altitude, without the acclimatisation**

You will go from roughly 2,200 metres to about 4,750 metres and back inside a single flight. That is a fast profile, though a short exposure, and most people feel nothing worse than slight breathlessness. Anyone with a heart or lung condition, anyone pregnant, and anyone who has had altitude sickness badly before should speak to a doctor first and tell us what they said. We would rather rearrange a flight than carry someone who should not be on it.

**Weight is not a formality**

Helicopters lose lifting performance as they climb, and 4,750 metres is high for any airframe. Passenger numbers, baggage and fuel are traded against each other on the day, and the pilot's figure is final. We will ask for real body weights before you travel — not because anyone wants to know, but because the alternative is finding out at the pad that somebody is not flying. Bring a small bag for the flight and leave the rest at the hotel.

**Cameras**

Wide lenses are more useful than long ones; the subject is nearly always bigger than you expect. Doors stay closed, so a polariser will fight the window glass — take it off. Shoot at a high shutter speed for the vibration, and keep the lens hood off so it is not reflected back at you in the glass.

**Permits and where you may fly**

Parts of the Karakoram are restricted, and flying in them needs permissions that are applied for in advance and are not always granted. We handle the applications, and we will tell you plainly if something you have asked for is not going to be approved rather than let you find out on the morning.

Questions about this trip

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