The Hunza Valley
Hunza is a valley the mountains forgot to close: a green ribbon of apricot terraces and poplars along a grey river, two and a half thousand metres up in the Karakoram, with seven-thousand-metre peaks standing around it so close and so white that Rakaposhi, seven thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, is the view from the breakfast table. A fort of seven hundred years, Baltit, sits above the town of Karimabad on the slope; an older one, Altit, sits on a rock over the river; the Karakoram Highway runs up the valley to the Chinese border at Khunjerab, the highest paved crossing on Earth, past a lake the colour of a swimming pool that a landslide made in 2010 and the cathedral cones of Passu. The people are Ismaili, gentle, schooled and long-lived, and their apricots dry on every roof in August.
The traveller sleeps in Karimabad and climbs to Baltit fort in the morning for the whole valley; walks the water channels between the terraces to Altit and its rock; drives to Duikar, the Eagle's Nest, before dawn, for the light on eight peaks at once; goes up the KKH to Attabad and takes a boat on the blue, then on to Passu for the cones, the glacier snout and the suspension bridge that tests the nerves; and, if the season and the papers allow, on to Khunjerab, where the road ends at four thousand six hundred and ninety-three metres among marmots and yaks and a Chinese gate. The evenings are apricot cake, walnut, and a sky with more stars than the valley has people.
The Guide's honesty: Hunza is safe, welcoming and easy for Pakistan, and the country's visa is now online for most — the road from Islamabad is fifteen hours by bus or a short flight to Gilgit that the weather cancels freely; the altitude is real above Karimabad — Duikar, Passu and Khunjerab ask for a slow day first; the KKH is a marvel of engineering that landslides close without notice, and the Attabad tunnels are the reason it exists at all; the apricot season is short and the blossom shorter; and the Hunza people's kindness is not a service — return it, dress modestly, ask before photographing, and let the valley's own pace set yours.