Seven days in the valley during the two weeks the apricot trees are in flower — Karimabad, Nagar, Gulmit and the terraces above them.
Blossom in Hunza lasts about a fortnight and moves up the valley with the altitude. It starts around the last week of March at Aliabad and reaches Gulmit and Passu a week to ten days later. Timing a trip to catch it is partly experience and partly luck, which is why departures are held to fixed dates and adjusted every February.
This itinerary works both sides of the valley. Karimabad and Altit for the forts and the water channels, Minapin and Hopper on the Nagar side, and two nights in Gulmit for the upper valley. The walking is short — an hour or two most days — because the point is the orchards, not the distance.
Nights are in family guesthouses and one restored heritage house. Meals are Hunza food: apricot-kernel soup, buckwheat chapati, walnut oil, whatever is in the garden.
01
Departures are fixed against thirty years of local flowering records and reviewed each February.
02
Hunza for the forts, Nagar for the glaciers, Gojal for the upper orchards.
03
Rakaposhi, Diran, Golden Peak and Ultar catch light within eight minutes of each other.
04
Lunch is taken where the family that farms the trees eats it.
05
One night in a 900-year-old settlement below the fort.
Meet at Gilgit airport or the KKH junction. Drive up the valley, stopping at the Rakaposhi viewpoint. Afternoon in Karimabad and dinner on the terrace.
Baltit Fort in the morning before the tour groups, then down through the orchards to Altit on the old channel path. Afternoon free in the Altit gardens.
Pre-dawn drive to Duikar for the valley at first light. After breakfast, cross to the Nagar side for Minapin and the terraces below Rakaposhi.
Up the Nagar valley to Hopper, where the black glacier sits directly below the village. Short walk onto the moraine, then back through the orchards.
Through the Attabad tunnels into Gojal. Boat on Attabad Lake if the wind allows, then on to Gulmit for two nights.
Morning at Passu with the cones behind the village, then the Hussaini suspension bridge and the walk toward Borith Lake. Blossom in Gojal runs a week behind the middle valley.
Drive down the valley to Gilgit for afternoon flights or the onward road.
Included in the price
Not included
Prices vary by date: high season costs more, and the shoulder weeks are the quietest on the route.
4.9
from 2 reviews
Anna Kowalski
Poland · Travelled April 2025
We arrived on 4 April and the middle valley was at peak while Gulmit was still a week off — which is exactly what they said would happen when I booked in December. Two weeks either side of that and you would see nothing.
Yusuf Demir
Türkiye · Travelled March 2025
This is not a trekking trip and it does not pretend to be. Two hours of walking a day, and the rest of it spent in orchards eating things. Duikar at sunrise is worth the 4am.
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