Hindu Kush Tour 2026-27 — Swat, Chitral, Kalash & Shandur

At a glance

• 15 days, Islamabad to IslamabadA west-to-east traverse: Swat, Chitral, Kalash, Shandur, Gilgit, Hunza.
• Moderate — long days on rough roadsLittle walking, but a great deal of driving on unpaved mountain track.
• Private departuresAges 18 to 60. Travel with your own group rather than strangers.
• Hindu Kush and KarakoramLowari Pass, the Kalash valleys, Tirich Mir, Shandur Pass and the Hunza gorge.
• Good hotels to simple guesthousesComfort varies with remoteness; the Kalash valleys are basic and worth it.
• Spring and autumn, or July for the poloThe Shandur tournament runs in early July; Kalash festivals in May and August.

Day by day

1. 1Day 1Arrival in Islamabad

   

   Met at Islamabad International Airport and transferred to the hotel. The rest of the day is free — a stroll through the sectors, or up into the Margalla Hills for the view back over the city, is the usual way to shake off a long flight. We meet in the evening to go through the route, which is long and unusual enough to be worth explaining properly before it starts.

2. 2Day 2Islamabad to the Swat Valley

   

   West and north into what was the North-West Frontier. Swat is green, wide and terraced with rice, and it was the heart of Gandhara — a Buddhist civilisation whose sculptors worked in a Greek idiom fifteen hundred years before anyone in Europe thought to call it classical. We visit the Swat Museum for its collection of Gandharan carving, then the stupas and rock reliefs scattered through the valley. Overnight in Swat.

3. 3Day 3Swat to Chitral over the Lowari Pass

   

   A long day west. The road runs past the fort at Chakdarra, climbs steadily through Dir, and crosses into Chitral by the Lowari — historically a 3,100-metre pass that closed with the first snow and left the valley cut off for months, now bypassed by a tunnel that has changed life here considerably. On the far side the country is drier, higher and looks toward Afghanistan. Chitral town sits under Tirich Mir, at 7,708 metres the highest mountain in the Hindu Kush and visible from almost everywhere.

4. 4Day 4Chitral and into the Kalash Valleys

   

   A slow morning in Chitral — the Shahi Qila and the Prince's garden, and a walk through the bazaar — before the drive up a rough side road into the Kalash valleys. The Kalash are a few thousand people with their own language, calendar, dress and pre-Islamic religion, living in three valleys of walnut and mulberry beneath the Afghan border. We arrive in the afternoon and simply walk, which is the right way to begin. Lunch is included today; the guesthouse is simple.

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

   

   The heart of the trip, and deliberately unstructured. We walk between the villages of Bumburet, Rumbur or Birir with a Kalash guide, spend time at the carved wooden shrines and the dancing ground where the festivals happen, and sit with families who will feed you whether or not you are hungry. The women's dress — black robes, cowrie headdresses, layers of beads — is worn daily and not for visitors. Ask before photographing anyone; the answer is usually yes and the asking matters.

6. 6Day 6Kalash to Chitral, and mountain polo

   

   A last morning in the valleys, then back down to Chitral in the afternoon. If there is a match on — and in summer there often is — we go to the polo ground. Chitrali polo is the free-school version the British never civilised: six a side, no umpire worth the name, a band playing the whole time, and a crowd that treats it as the most serious thing happening in the region that week. Dinner in Chitral.

7. 7Day 7Chitral to Mastuj

   

   East now, and up the Yarkhun. The road follows the river through Booni and Buni Zom country, with Tirich Mir standing over the whole valley and, on clear days, the peaks of the Wakhan Corridor visible north where Afghanistan reaches out toward China. Mastuj is a small, walled, poplar-shaded village at 2,400 metres with a fort and a great deal of quiet. We arrive with light to spare and walk it before dinner.

8. 8Day 8Over the Shandur Pass to Yasin Valley

   

   The crossing. Shandur is a 3,700-metre grass plateau between two ranges, flat as a table and holding a lake at its centre, and every July it hosts the highest polo tournament in the world between Chitral and Gilgit — a genuinely wild event held on a ground marked out on the roof of the country. We stop for tea, walk out onto the Langer plain if the weather is kind, then descend east along the Ghizer river to Yasin. Long day, rough road, extraordinary landscape.

9. 9Day 9Yasin Valley to Gilgit and on to Hunza

   

   A morning exploring Yasin — Muduri Fort, the Hundur side valley, and villages where Burushaski and Khowar meet. Then down the Ghizer to Gilgit, the old crossroads of these mountains and the point where the Hindu Kush hands you over to the Karakoram. There is time for the town: the bazaar, and the Christian graveyard with its headstones for climbers and surveyors who did not make it home. In the late afternoon we drive north into Hunza with Rakaposhi ahead of us the whole way.

10. 10Day 10Hunza — Baltit Fort and Karimabad

    

    A gentler day after four hard ones. Baltit Fort is the 700-year-old seat of the Mirs of Hunza, restored and standing on its spur above Karimabad with the whole valley below it. We take lunch in town, browse shops that sell genuinely good gemstones and dried fruit among the tourist tat, and in the afternoon there is the option of walking one of the irrigation channels that contour around the hillside — flat, shaded, and the best way to see how this valley actually works.

11. 11Day 11Upper Hunza — Attabad, Borith and the Passu Cones

    

    North up the gorge. Attabad Lake is the improbable turquoise formed in 2010 when a landslide dammed the Hunza River; the Hussaini suspension bridge over the river below it is optional and photographs better than it walks. We carry on to Borith, a high salt lake with the Ghulkin Glacier behind it, and finish beneath the Passu Cones, a row of serrated spires that look like something a child would draw if you asked for a mountain.

12. 12Day 12Hunza to Gilgit, under Rakaposhi

    

    A short, easy day back down the Karakoram Highway, taken slowly on purpose. We stop for lunch at the Rakaposhi viewpoint, where the mountain's 7,788-metre south face stands almost directly above the terrace and you can watch avalanches come off it while you eat. Into Gilgit in the afternoon with time to do the shopping everyone leaves until too late — dried apricots, mulberries, walnuts, shawls and gemstones.

13. 13Day 13Gilgit to Naran over the Babusar Pass

    

    South out of Gilgit-Baltistan by the back door. The Babusar Pass at 4,173 metres carries you out of the Karakoram and into the Kaghan valley, and the change is abrupt — bare rock and glacier one side, alpine meadow and pine the other. Naran is a summer town, busy, cheerful and full of rooftop cafés, and after twelve days of remote valleys the noise is almost pleasant. Overnight there.

14. 14Day 14Naran to Islamabad, by way of Taxila

    

    Down the Kaghan valley and back into the plains. We break the drive at Taxila, the Gandharan university city where Buddhist monks studied for a thousand years and where the museum holds some of the finest sculpture in South Asia — a fitting bookend to the Swat museum on Day 2, with the whole Hindu Kush in between. Into Islamabad in the evening for a last dinner together.

15. 15Day 15Departure from Islamabad

    

    Breakfast at the hotel, time for any last shopping — Lok Virsa's craft shop is the reliable place for it — and a transfer to Islamabad International Airport for your flight home.

Good to know

This is a driving trip, not a trekking trip, but the driving is the hard part. Several days are six to nine hours on unpaved mountain road, and the Shandur crossing in particular is slow, high and exposed. If long days in a vehicle wear you down, the ten-day Hunza and Skardu tour covers gentler ground.

The Lowari Pass is the gateway to Chitral and is snowbound in winter; the tunnel beneath it now keeps the route open year-round, but heavy weather can still close it. Shandur is generally passable from late May to October only.

The Kalash valleys deserve care rather than caution. This is a living community of a few thousand people, not an exhibit — we use local guides, ask before photographing anyone, and stay in guesthouses run by Kalash families. Modest dress and a slow pace go a long way.

Altitude is modest throughout: Shandur at 3,700 metres is the high point and you cross it in a day.

Questions about this trip

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