The Hunza valley

We made it to Karmabad in the Hunza valley late Saturday night. The road from Skardu to Gilgit was fine (although a bit scary), but once we were on the Karakoram Highway... well let's just say "Karakoram dust path with lots of craters in it" might have been a more accurate name!

Hunza is beautiful. As we hoped, the women here don't have their heads covered, which means I don't have to, which is MUCH more comfortable. The scenery is very spectacular, with snow covered peaks all around. We hiked up to Ultar Meadow today, which involved a lot of scrambling up scree, but was worth it.


The food in Hunza is different to anything we've ever tried before. Current favourite is Hunza Pizza - kind of a chapati sandwich with miced meat and veg inside. And apricot kernel soup was a surprise winner last night.

There are hardly any tourists around and lots of empty hotels. The place we're staying offered us a 60% discount without us even asking. It's sad that a lot of these places may well go out of business. (In Skardu we paid published price because the guesthouse owner was the Baltistan coordnator of CAI (of Three Cups of Tea fame), so we thought we were supporting a good cause).

The people are much less pushy than in India - walking through town they stop to say hello, but don't ask you to come in their shop or hotel or restaurant. Even when we walked outside the airport in Skardu there were a buch of guys standing there with hotel fliers, but noone aproached us until we went and asked them to see the leaflets.

In all, we are very pleasantly surprised by Northern Pakistan and would certainly come back. The weather is amazing (cool enough to hike, yet sunny enough to sit outside), the people are great and we're having a superb time. If only wine were as readily available as dodgy Chinese beer, we'd all be happy...

Gemma