Gilgit-Baltistan · 2,230 m
Cold desert on the Indus, and the road to every 8,000-metre peak.
The place
Skardu sits at 2,230 metres in a wide sandy bowl where the Shigar River joins the Indus. Four of the world's fourteen 8,000-metre peaks are within a hundred kilometres of it, and every expedition to any of them starts here.
The town itself is dust, poplars, jeep workshops and the fort on the rock above it. What makes it is what surrounds it: the Katpana cold desert with its dunes, the Kachura lakes, Shigar and Khaplu an hour or two out, and Deosai over the pass to the south.
Baltistan is culturally Tibetan — Balti is a Tibetan language, the old architecture is Tibetan, and the food owes more to Ladakh than to Punjab. People here have been guiding on the Baltoro since the 1890s.
What people do here
01
Two lakes, twenty minutes apart. Upper Kachura is the quieter of the two and better for swimming, if you can stand it.
02
Sand dunes at 2,200 metres with snow peaks behind them. Best in the hour before sunset.
03
A short steep climb above the bazaar for the whole Indus bend in one frame.
04
An 8th-century Maitreya carved into granite on the edge of town.
Journeys
Editor’s pick
Deosai · Gilgit-Baltistan
Three days crossing the second-highest plateau on earth — Skardu to Sheosar, camping at Bara Pani, and out to Astore.
$340 per person
Next 24 Aug · 3 places left
Editor’s pick
Skardu · Gilgit-Baltistan
Seven days in Baltistan — Kachura, the cold desert, Shigar, and the full Deosai crossing with two nights on the plateau.
$940 per person
Next 22 Aug · 4 places left
Editor’s pick
Skardu · Gilgit-Baltistan
Eighteen days up the Baltoro to Concordia and K2 Base Camp — the single greatest concentration of high mountains anywhere on earth.
$2,980 per person
Next 26 Jun · 8 places left
Khaplu · Gilgit-Baltistan
Six days through the old Baltistan — two restored palaces, a 14th-century wooden mosque, and the Shyok valley up to Hushe.
$1,240 per person
Next 14 Sep · 4 places left
Before you go
