Hunza & Skardu

Every week someone messages us with the same question: Hunza or Skardu? And every week we give the same slightly unhelpful answer, which is that they are completely different trips that happen to share a mountain range. Hunza is orchards, forts and that impossible turquoise water. Skardu is wider, wilder, more lunar. If you have eight days, you do not have to choose. This circuit, the one people search as a Hunza Skardu tour or just a GB tour, does both in a single loop.

The shape of the trip is what makes it work. You go up one way, along the Karakoram Highway through Besham and Chilas, and come back another, down the Skardu road along the Indus gorge. No retraced ground, no 'same road, opposite direction' fatigue. Somewhere in the middle you stand at the viewpoint where the Karakoram, Himalaya and Hindu Kush ranges all meet, which is the geography lesson nobody forgets.

The Hunza days hit the valley's essentials. Boats on Attabad Lake, that landslide-born stretch of blue that still does not look real. The Passu Cones lined up along the highway like a stone crown. Karimabad's two forts, Altit and Baltit, which have watched over the valley for the better part of a thousand years. And if the group has the nerve, a walk across the Hussaini Suspension Bridge, which is far safer than it looks and exactly as fun.

Then the road bends south and east, and the landscape changes character completely. Baltistan announces itself with the Sarfaranga Cold Desert, white dunes parked at 2,300 metres with snow peaks behind them. Jeep races across the sand are included, and yes, they are as good as they sound.

Skardu's share of the itinerary brings the Shangrila 'Heart of Lakes' resort, Upper Kachura Lake, the carved wooden halls of the 400-year-old Shigar Fort and the mirror-still water of Blind Lake. If your dates line up with blossom season, we detour into Chunda Valley, where entire hillsides turn pink for a couple of weeks a year.

Because this is a Karawaan trip, the evenings are planned as carefully as the days. Bonfires most nights, a live music session in Hunza with rubab and local voices, BBQ dinners, and at least one night where the only agenda item is lying on your back counting satellites. The Milky Way at these altitudes is not a metaphor. It is just there, every clear night.

A word on pacing, because eight days covering two valleys sounds ambitious. The route is built so that long driving days alternate with slow ones, hotels are booked where we actually like sleeping, and altitude comes gradually. Families do this trip. So do groups of friends in their sixties. You do not need to be an athlete; you need a window seat and a phone with storage.

This is the itinerary we recommend first to overseas Pakistanis and international visitors, because it answers the widest version of the question 'what is northern Pakistan actually like?' Turquoise lakes, cold deserts, thousand-year forts, glacier rivers, orchard villages: one loop, all of it. The brochure has the full day-by-day breakdown, and our WhatsApp is open for date planning.