Pakistan
Eight-thousanders in the north, Mughal cities in the middle, the Indus civilisation and a thousand kilometres of coast in the south. We have driven it, waited out the weather in it, and got the timing wrong in it. Here is what we would tell a friend.
Why come
Not a sales pitch. These are the things that keep coming up when someone gets back and won't stop talking about it.
Pakistan holds five of the world’s fourteen peaks above 8,000 metres, including K2. Three ranges collide here and you can stand where they meet.
Mohenjo-daro, Taxila, Takht-i-Bahi, Makli at Thatta, Rohtas Fort, and the Lahore Fort and Shalimar Gardens together. Bronze Age to Mughal, and none of them queued.
Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar each eat differently enough to argue about it. People who came for the mountains go home talking about a plate of nihari.
The Karakoram Highway is not the way to the trip. It is the trip. The Makran coastal road in the south does the same thing with cliffs and empty sand instead.
Nepal takes over a million trekkers a year. Come outside July and August and you can walk a whole valley here, or a whole necropolis, without queueing for anything.
A good room in Karimabad costs less than a bad one almost anywhere else in the mountains. The expensive part is getting to Pakistan, not being in it.
Where to go
A mountain valley, a Mughal capital, a cold desert, a port city, a forested river valley and a city of shrines. Every one of them is a different trip.
When to go
The two halves of the country run on opposite clocks. When the northern passes are open the plains are unbearable, and when Lahore is at its best the Skardu flight is a gamble.
March – May
The only time both halves work
Hunza’s apricot and cherry blossom lands in early April and is the most photographed fortnight of the Pakistani year. Down south the heat has not arrived yet, so Lahore and Multan are still walkable. The high passes are shut, so the north is reachable but not crossable.
June – August
North only, and not alone
The one window when every road and pass is reliably open, which is exactly why domestic tourism arrives at once. Karimabad in late July is not a quiet mountain village, and Naran is worse. The plains and the coast are out: this is monsoon and forty-plus degrees.
September – October
The one we would pick
Clear air, thin crowds, poplars going gold along the valley floors, and passes still open through the first half of it. The south has cooled enough to be worth adding on the way home. If you only get one trip, take this one.
November – February
Go south, and mean it if you go north
This is the season for Lahore, Multan, Karachi and the Makran coast, and the honest caveat is Punjab’s winter smog. Hunza stays reachable under snow with almost nobody in it. Skardu is harder, because the flight is the reliable way in and the flight is not reliable.
Work it out
The unglamorous half. Visas, flights, routes, costs, road conditions and the questions everyone asks before booking.
Visa rule changes, pass openings, road closures, price revisions. Nothing else, and never more than a few times a year.
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