Baltistan

There are places that ask you to come a long way to reach them. Baltistan is one of them - and the journey is not incidental to the experience. It is the beginning of it.

The flight from Islamabad takes less than an hour, but the arrival feels earned. Skardu sits in a wide valley of the Indus at two and a half thousand metres, ringed by mountains so large they rearrange your sense of scale. The city is the base from which everything else radiates - and on the first evening, Kachura Lakes and the Soq Valley at sunset offer a quiet, almost disbelieving introduction to where you have arrived.

Kharmang comes next - a full day's drive into a district that rewards the distance. The road runs long and the landscape grows more austere, but Manthokha Waterfall arrives as a reward that needs no further justification. Children tend to make straight for the water - and may need some convincing to leave. Khamush, just beyond, offers those with the appetite a little more of the valley before the return to Skardu.

Then comes the plateau. Deosai - at over four thousand metres, one of the highest plains on earth - is not a landscape that yields to description. Brown bears move through it in early summer. The drive through Bara Pani, Kala Pani, and Sheosar Lake takes the better part of a day, and the return to Skardu in the evening carries the particular silence of having been somewhere genuinely remote. For families who prefer a valley to a plateau, Basho offers pine forests, meadows, and a jeep ride into green that feels like a different country entirely - easier on younger legs, no less memorable.

Shigar closes the Skardu days. The restored fort, the old town, the quiet of a place that has been here since before the roads arrived. Kharpocho looks down over the city from its rock above the Indus. And the Cold Desert at Katpana - sand dunes at high altitude with snow peaks behind them - offers one of the stranger and more beautiful juxtapositions in all of Pakistan, and one that tends to surprise children most of all.

The flight back to Islamabad takes less than an hour. The mountains take considerably longer to leave.

Day by day

5 days, each one open below — tap a day to see the plan.

Where you'll stay

A selection of the hotels on this route — the full stay list is confirmed as part of planning.

Mindok Guest House

Skardu, Gilgit-Baltistan

Zhule by Roomy Skardu

Skardu, Gilgit-Baltistan · Deluxe package

Food along the way

Skardu

Balti cooking is built for altitude: slow-cooked, warming, and heavy on wheat, dairy and dried apricots. Look out for mamtu (steamed dumplings), chapshoro (spiced meat baked inside flatbread), and marzan, a thick wheat porridge eaten with apricot oil. Skardu's bazaar is the best place for local dried fruit - apricots, mulberries and almonds - and most hotels serve dependable Pakistani staples like karahi and daal for anyone who would rather keep things familiar.

Mamtu

Chapshoro

Chicken Karahi and Naan

Shigar

Shigar is quieter and greener than Skardu, and the restored fort is the natural place to stop for a meal during the day. The valley's orchards supply much of Baltistan's apricots and cherries in early summer, so July is a good month to try them fresh. Food here is simple and local - freshly made bread, yoghurt, and seasonal fruit - and well suited to a slower afternoon before the drive back.

Khubani

What this trip costs