Hiking and quiet travel in Pakistan
Five eight-thousanders, the longest glaciers outside the polar regions, and a few hundred people on the way there instead of a few tens of thousands.
Arsalan Majid, CC BY-SA 4.0
Who writes this
I moved to Germany in 2016 and learned to hike here: waymarked paths, booking huts, reading forecasts, setting a turnaround time. Ten years of the Eastern Alps later, I know the questions a European hiker asks before committing to a trip.
What struck me along the way: in every hut, someone in the evening is talking about Nepal or Patagonia. About Pakistan, essentially never. Not out of rejection, it simply never came up. That gap is the reason this site exists.
Why there
€2–4
A simple guesthouse is 10 to 20 euros a night. Three weeks in Pakistan often costs less than one guided week in the Western Alps, flight included.
4,600 m
The Rupal face of Nanga Parbat rises 4,600 metres unbroken. The biggest wall in the Alps is around 2,000.
~300
In high season, across 62 kilometres of glacier. Everest Base Camp sees tens of thousands in the same window. You will never queue.
Multi-day routes
From five days to three weeks. Every route with an honest read on difficulty, altitude and what a day on the ground actually costs.
21 daysThree weeks up the Baltoro Glacier to the foot of the second-highest mountain on earth. The trek every other trek gets measured against.
18 daysUp the Baltoro, over a glaciated 5,585-metre pass and down into the Hushe valley. No walking back the way you came, but you will need crampons and fixed ropes.
5 daysFive days, a seven-thousander directly in front of you, and a meadow full of yaks at 3,500 metres. The best introduction to the Karakoram I know.
Culture and recovery
Not every journey to the Karakoram has to be a trek. Valleys, forts, high plateaus, and days with nothing planned.
10 daysTen days in a valley at 2,500 metres, with day walks, apricot orchards and two forts from the eighth century. Recovery, not achievement.
9 daysThe second-highest plateau on earth: a steppe at 4,000 metres, covered in flowers and brown bears in July. Plus Skardu, Shigar and the cold desert of Sarfaranga.
8 daysUpper Hunza: serrated peaks, two glaciers you can walk up to, and the highest paved border crossing in the world at 4,693 metres.
Notes
Real numbers instead of "cheap": rooms, food, guides and transport, and why the most expensive item is the flight, not the country.
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I moved to Germany in 2016 and learned to hike here. This is why I then had to start talking about the mountains I grew up near.
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