Pakistan Discovery Guide

Pakistan holds the densest collection of great mountains on earth: five of the fourteen eight-thousanders in one region, K2 among them, and a paved road to 4,714 metres through the middle of it. A long day's drive south is the Mughal capital of Lahore, with the mosque that was the largest in the world for three centuries.

The main travel issue

Almost nobody goes. Terrorism took more than 65,000 lives between 2001 and 2018 and the advisories still close whole provinces, so the Hunza valley and the Skardu road carry a fraction of the visitors the Alps or the Himalaya of Nepal do.

The solution

Let the advisories set the route: a visa applied for in advance, permits for restricted areas, a high degree of caution in the cities, and no road travel through the closed districts. The reward is Hunza in October, Deosai in July, Lahore's walled city at dusk, and mountains that make every other range look small.

If you travel slowly

Fly to Skardu -- the airport sits at 2,230 metres, and Canada's advice is not to reach Gilgit-Baltistan by road -- and stay in the north: the Hunza valley around Karimabad, whose people are mostly Ismaili and whose valley floor is at 2,438 metres, the Attabad lake, 22 kilometres long since the landslide of 2010, and the Deosai plateau at an average 4,114 metres, where the park established in 1993 protects the Himalayan brown bear. Altitude sickness is a real risk here and the advisories say so.

If you want to see the essentials

Lahore: the walled city, the Badshahi and Wazir Khan mosques, and the fort inscribed by UNESCO in 1981, where the Mughal Empire built at its zenith and Ranjit Singh later lived. Then Islamabad's Faisal Mosque and Taxila, 25 kilometres away and a World Heritage Site since 1980; and, in the north, the Karakoram Highway from Gilgit to the Khunjerab pass and the view of K2 that is the site's reason for the page.

If you seek local character

Lahore is the centre of Qawwali music and of the country's film industry; Urdu is the national language and lingua franca, with Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi and the mountain languages of the north beneath it. Ramadan reorders the day, and the advisories' rules -- no eating, drinking or smoking in public in daylight -- are the visitor's part in it.

If you want to go beyond the obvious

Fairy Meadows, reached by a fifteen-kilometre jeep track from Raikot Bridge that only local drivers may take, faces Nanga Parbat; the Khewra salt mine, with 250,000 visitors a year and a railway into it, and the Rohtas fort of Sher Shah Suri, World Heritage since 1997, are the Punjab beyond Lahore; Makli, half a million to a million tombs over four centuries, is Sindh's. Mohenjo-daro is threatened by erosion and improper restoration and will not look like this for ever.

Pakistan was made in a single day, 14 August 1947, out of an argument about faith: the partition of British India displaced between 12 and 20 million people along religious lines, and the country that resulted is the Islamic Republic by name and by law -- blasphemy is illegal and can carry the death penalty, alcohol is illegal for Muslims and licensed for others, dress is modest by requirement. Since independence it has alternated between civilian and military rule, lost its eastern wing as Bangladesh in 1971 after a nine-month civil war, and become a declared nuclear power in a permanent quarrel with India over Kashmir, of which it controls roughly 38 per cent as Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.

Underneath the state are older nations. Punjabi Lahore was Akbar's Mughal capital and is the country's cultural heart, home to Qawwali and the film industry; Sindh has Mohenjo-daro and the tomb-city of Makli; the Pashtun north-west and Balochistan are where the advisories close the map; and the mountain north -- Hunza's Ismailis, Baltistan's Tibetan-speaking valleys, the Kalash -- is a different world again, reached by one road.

The visitor's Pakistan is the hospitality that every traveller reports and the caution that every government advises, and both are true. Terrorism killed more than 65,000 people between 2001 and 2018; the Canadian advisory's phrase is an unpredictable security situation with threats of terrorism, regional violence, civil unrest, sectarian violence and kidnapping. The warmth is real; so is the list.

The first responsibility is to the advice. Both governments publish district-by-district maps of where they advise against travel, and a visitor who enters Balochistan, most of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or the border zones is a burden on the people who will have to come and get them; the British advisory adds that permission from local or federal authorities is required to travel in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and several districts of Azad Kashmir, and that there are prohibited areas around military installations. Canada tells its citizens to buy insurance that includes helicopter rescue from remote areas, and to know the symptoms of altitude illness, which can be fatal.

The second is to the law and the culture. Do not photograph military establishments, airports, bridges or dams, or from aircraft -- foreigners have been arrested for spying. Carry photo ID always. Dress modestly, shoulders and legs covered, heads covered for women in mosques and rural areas. Say nothing that could be read as disrespect for religion; blasphemy has a broad definition in Pakistani law and the penalty is severe. During Ramadan, eat, drink and smoke out of sight in daylight.

The third is to the places. Mohenjo-daro is threatened by erosion and improper restoration; the mountain valleys of the north are fragile and poor; the Deosai plateau exists to keep the brown bear alive. Hire local guides and drivers -- at Fairy Meadows the law already requires it -- and leave the high country as you found it.

January–February -- the season for Lahore, Karachi and Sindh: cool, dry and clear on the plains, and the time to see Mohenjo-daro and Makli without the heat. The north is under snow and the Khunjerab pass closed.

March–April -- spring on the plains and blossom in the Hunza valley; Ramadan fell in mid-February to mid-March in 2026 and moves earlier each year, which reorders opening hours and public eating.

May–June -- the plains reach a June mean of 38 degrees and can exceed 53, with the hot Loo wind; the north opens, and the Karakoram Highway and Skardu are at their best before the monsoon.

July–August -- the monsoon, late June to late September, over most of the country but not Gilgit-Baltistan or Chitral; the trekking and climbing season at K2 and Concordia, and the Deosai plateau in flower.

September–October -- the best window of all: the monsoon ends on the plains, Hunza turns gold and red, the passes are still open and the air is clear from Skardu to the Khunjerab.

November–December -- the north closes down with the first snow; the plains and the Mughal cities are at their most comfortable, and Karachi's brief winter is its best season.

No prices are given for Pakistan. No Pakistani operator or authority published a fare, admission or visa fee that a scripted request could read on the day this page was written -- the visa portal refuses, Pakistan Railways publishes a menu, the tourism ministry a press feed -- and the advisories that supply this page's practical facts do not price anything. Pakistan is, by every traveller's account, one of the cheapest countries in Asia to travel in, and the unavoidable costs are the visa, the flights into the north that the Canadian advisory makes necessary, licensed guides and drivers where the law requires them, and the helicopter-rescue insurance Canada tells its citizens to carry. Figures will be added when an operator page answers.