The Hunza Valley and the Karakoram Highway

Next up during our time in Pakistan, we travelled to the Hunza Valley, which borders China. The Hunza Valley is part of the state of Gilgit-Baltistan and is most notably known for the Karakoram Highway, one of the worlds engineering marvels which runs right through the valley and is a part of the ancient Silk Road.
Some people call it the eighth wonder of the world, and is carved right out of steep cliffs and is overall still in remarkably good shape. Only occasionally can you see the remains of some rock slides which at times block traffic. It is not unusual for truck drivers to carry sticks of dynamite with them in case they need to clear a path.

The building of the Karakoram Highway was a joint venture between the Pakistanis and the Chinese. It is one of the highest paved roads in the world, has the highest formal border crossing in the world, and some reports say that one man died for every kilometer of road built.

While there are not really buses or other forms of public transport easily available, we quickly discovered that the easiest way to travel up and down to Karakoram Highway is to simply hitchhike. People are super kind and unless the car is already at capacity, everybody will stop for you and take you with them. You meet some interesting locals this way and have some good chats, everybody is keen to learn what we think of Pakistan and why we have chosen to come here.

First stop along the Karakoram Highway was the beautiful town of Karimabad. It feels like an oasis in an otherwise pretty dry, dusty area. The bottom of the Valley and the area around the village is surprisingly green and lush due to some extensive irrigation systems. A prominent feature here in all the guesthouses and many restaurants are their beautiful gardens, where you can linger under the shade of their fruit orchard trees. No wonder paradise is a garden.

The Hunza Valley is especially known for their apricots and they use it for everything. You get delicious apricot juice, apricot cakes, apricot sauces and also apricot oil made from the kernels.

Towering high above the village of Karimabad is the Baltit Fort, a gorgeous building with sweeping views over the entire valley. As you look 360° around, you can see the snow covered peaks of 7x 7000m Mountains providing an astonishing backdrop.

A couple of hours further up the Valley is the gorgeous area of Passu. The Passu cones are some of the most impressive and beautiful mountains we have ever seen. We chose to stay at a lovely guesthouse in Gulmit (small village just before Passu) for 6 nights, where we spend many evenings having dinner with the host family, discussing politics and the world, eating their delicious food (for example chicken karahi, or Yak Biryani which they taught Hadleigh how to make) and drinking copious amounts of mixed chai (black milk tea). And, most importantly, playing with the 7 one-month-old puppies that belonged to the house.

From Gulmit we did a couple of great daytrips, one was to drive all the way up to the Kunjerab Pass, the highest country border crossing in the world. We didn’t actually cross, because we did not have a Visa for China, but it was interesting to see the place nonetheless. Running around the pastures were many fluffy yaks and we were surprised to learn that Yak Meat is actually quite yummy. We had an amazingly tasty yak burger in Passu, which we went back to the following day to have a second time.

On the next day we did a hike which involved crossing 2 suspension bridges, the Hussaini and the Passu suspension bridge. Hussaini bridge was recently renovated which makes it much safer but also more boring to cross, they even make you wear floating safety vests just in case. But the Passu bridge definitely was much more thrilling and quite scary. The “planks” are actually more like wood sticks, strung precariously together with sometimes huge gaps in between them. But somehow we made it across in one piece. 😊

Unfortunately, while we were in Hunza Valley, there were some quite intense protests and fights between the Shias (the majority of the people in the north are Shia) and the Sunnis in the general area, which caused some road blockages a bit further south. We were not too affected by this but the consequence that we felt most was the internet.
The government completely cut off the wifi and the mobile data for several days and at regular intervals for an entire week in order to make it difficult for people to organize themselves into protests etc. This made it quite challenging for Hadleigh to work online, but at no point did we ever feel unsafe.

What was interesting was, that we found that the further north we travelled into the valley, the more relaxed the people and the more emancipated the women. While further down in Gilgit and in the Skardu Valley we saw no woman without their hijab and most of them always averting their gaze and hiding their face when we passed. In the upper Hunza Valley the women do not wear a Hijab, they run their own businesses and tea shops, they are curious and come up to you to talk. Also the people have a distinctly different look, many having red coloured hair and very fair skin.

Another observation was that we have met the most interesting travellers (and also locals) in Pakistan. Everyone who comes here seems to have quite a unique back story. For example, we met a theoretical mathematician from Czech hitchhiking through Afghanistan and Pakistan, an Australian couple planning to settle down in the Hunza Valley and starting a sustainable tourism venture, and an impressive local woman, who is a chemist/cricket & baseball player for the Pakistani national team.

Overall, we loved our time in the Hunza Valley and are already making plans to come back here in the future.