Where to stay in Hunza

Four villages, four different trips. Which one suits you comes down mostly to whether you have your own transport.

One question settles this, and it isn't your budget. Do you have your own transport?

There's no town here to book a room in, so what you're choosing is a village. Karimabad, Attabad, Gulmit and Passu are the four realistic answers, and they produce trips that barely resemble each other. Without a vehicle, every one of them except Karimabad commits you to eating each meal where you sleep and being pleasant about the menu.

Karimabad — the default, and usually correct

The main settlement, laid out on the slope above the valley with Baltit Fort over your shoulder and Rakaposhi filling the view opposite. Most of the beds in Hunza are here. So are most of the kitchens, and the only stretch of road that resembles a row of shops.

It's the one base where you can turn up with no vehicle and still have choices about your day. First trip, or any trip shorter than a week: stay here, and don't agonise over it.

What you pay for that is company. Everyone else reached the same conclusion, and in July and August you'll feel it at breakfast.

Attabad — the view, at the cost of everything else

The lake formed in 2010, when a landslide dammed the Hunza River and drowned the road. The water came out a colour you'll assume someone has edited, and the places built above it are selling you that colour and not a great deal besides.

Stay here if you've got transport and you want the lake to be the trip. Don't stay here if you like walking out of the door after dinner, because there's nowhere to walk to and the highway is not a footpath.

Gulmit — the quiet middle

Past Attabad, up in Gojal, and a working village rather than a tourist one. People are farming, going to school and getting on with things that have nothing to do with you. It's calmer than Karimabad and better placed for the upper valley, which makes it a fine second visit and a slightly wasted first one.

Passu — for the glacier and the bridge

The last cluster of any size before Sost and the Khunjerab Pass. Stay here if the glacier walk, the Hussaini suspension bridge, or the road on towards China is the reason you came at all. Beds are few and seasonal, and a lot of them can't be booked online under any circumstances, which in practice means phoning ahead or arriving and asking.

Which properties specifically

We keep a short list by hand, with one honest drawback written down against every property on it: Hunza hotels. If your question is the bigger one about what can be booked online anywhere in the north, start with bookable hotels.

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