Travel to Hunza Valley

In northern Pakistan, where the borders of China and Afghanistan converge, three of Earth’s greatest mountain ranges meet in a collision of geological titans. The Karakoram, Himalayas, and Hindu Kush create an amphitheater of peaks surrounding the Hunza Valley—a 7,900 square kilometer realm of terraced orchards, glacial rivers, and villages perched at 2,438 meters elevation. More than a dozen summits exceeding 7,000 meters ring the valley: Rakaposhi at 7,788 meters dominates the southern horizon, while Ultar Sar’s 7,388-meter ice walls loom directly above the ancient capital of Karimabad. To the north, the 56-kilometer Batura Glacier—the world’s seventh-longest outside polar regions—feeds the Hunza River’s turquoise waters.

This landscape was forged by the same tectonic forces that created the Himalayas, and it continues to reshape itself dramatically. On January 4, 2010, a massive landslide thundered down the valley walls, damming the Hunza River and creating Attabad Lake—a 21-kilometer turquoise jewel now reaching depths of over 100 meters. The catastrophe submerged villages and severed the Karakoram Highway, yet the lake has become one of Pakistan’s most striking natural attractions. Engineers responded by boring five tunnels totaling 7 kilometers through the mountains—the Pakistan-China Friendship Tunnels—restoring the legendary highway that traces ancient Silk Road caravan routes.

For over two millennia, Hunza controlled vital Silk Road routes connecting Central Asia to the Indian subcontinent. Caravans carrying silk, spices, and gemstones passed through mountain corridors guarded by the Mirs—hereditary rulers who built fortress palaces on strategic ridges. Baltit Fort, founded in the 8th century and expanded over 700 years, stands below the Ulter Glacier with commanding views of all approaches. Its Tibetan-influenced architecture arrived with Princess Shah Khatoon of Baltistan in the 16th century, whose craftsmen transformed the fortress in the style of Lhasa’s Potala Palace. The older Altit Fort, its Shikari watchtower dating back 1,100 years, represents the oldest standing monument in Gilgit-Baltistan.

The Sacred Rocks of Haldeikish preserve an extraordinary record of those who traveled these routes. On boulders stretching 180 meters along the ancient trail, petroglyphs spanning the first millennium AD appear in Sogdian, Bactrian, Kharosthi, Brahmi, Tibetan, and Chinese scripts—a visual encyclopedia of Silk Road diversity. Names of Kushan emperors Kanishka and Huvishka are carved here, along with an inscription declaring ‘Chandra Sri Vikramaditya conquers’ dated to 419 AD, suggesting the Gupta Empire’s reach extended into these mountain passes. Buddhist pilgrims left images of stupas; merchants recorded their passage; ibex carvings gave the site its name—Haldeikish means ‘place of many male ibex’ in Burushaski.

The Burusho people, numbering approximately 120,000, have inhabited these valleys for millennia, yet their origins remain one of anthropology’s enduring mysteries. They speak Burushaski—a language isolate with no demonstrated relationship to any other language on Earth. Like Basque in Europe, Burushaski stands alone, its complex grammar featuring four genders and intricate verb conjugations that linguists have attempted unsuccessfully to connect to Tibetan, Indo-European, Dravidian, and dozens of other language families. This linguistic isolation suggests the Burusho may descend from pre-Indo-Aryan inhabitants pushed into these mountain refuges around 1800 BCE.

Today’s Burusho are predominantly Ismaili Muslims, followers of the Aga Khan, whose development initiatives have transformed the region. Hunza boasts Pakistan’s highest literacy rates—exceeding 90%—with particular emphasis on women’s education rare in this part of the world. The community maintains distinctive traditions: chapshuro meat pies, gyaling pancakes dipped in apricot oil, and dishes sweetened with organic walnuts grown on terraced slopes. The apricot orchards alone number over 50 varieties, their kernels pressed for oil used in cooking and cosmetics, their fruit dried for winter sustenance as they have been for centuries. In spring, the valley transforms into a sea of pink and white blossoms beneath snow-capped peaks—a scene that inspired James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon and its mythical Shangri-La.