MOTORCYCLE TRAVEL IN Pakistan

Riding the Karakoram Highway by motorcycle —known worldwide simply as the KKH— means covering what BBC Travel called the eighth wonder of the world: 1,300 km of pavement linking Pakistan and China across the only point on the planet where three mountain ranges converge, the Karakoram, the Himalaya and the Hindu Kush.

It was built between 1966 and 1979 (though it did not open to civilian traffic until 1986) tracing one of the ancient branches of the Silk Road, and its human cost was enormous: roughly 810 Pakistani and 200 Chinese workers died during construction, most in landslides and falls, more than one worker for every kilometer of road.

The final stretch, between Hunza and Khunjerab Pass, climbs to 4,693 meters above sea level, the highest paved international border crossing on Earth. At the Chinese customs post, traffic switches from left-hand to right-hand driving within a few meters.

Crossing Hunza Valley by motorcycle to Attabad Lake means riding on a road that, for five and a half years, simply did not exist.

On January 4, 2010, a landslide buried the village of Attabad and completely blocked the Hunza River: within months the trapped water formed a 21km-long lake that swallowed the road and several entire villages. Traffic only resumed in September 2015, through five new tunnels, the Pakistan-China Friendship Tunnels, that bypass the turquoise water through 7 km carved under the mountain.

Past the lake, the road continues to Passu, dominated by Tupopdan, the Passu Cathedral, a 6,106-meter spire considered the most photographed peak in the region, with the Batura Glacier, one of the longest outside the polar regions at 56 km, visible at the head of the valley.

Riding the Fairy Meadows track by motorcycle up toward the base of Nanga Parbat means tackling 16 km of dirt and loose rock along an unguarded cliffside track, considered one of the most dangerous, and most rewarding, approaches anywhere in Pakistan.

Waiting at the top is the ninth-highest mountain on Earth: Nanga Parbat, at 8,126 meters, nicknamed the Killer Mountain for its history of tragedy. In 1934 an avalanche killed 16 members of a German expedition, and in 1937 an entire expedition vanished under the snow.

Fairy Meadows, at roughly 3,300 meters, is the natural viewpoint where that north face is seen head-on, with nothing in between, which is why the track, despite its difficulty, remains one of the most sought-after rides for trail motorcyclists reaching Pakistan.

Crossing Babusar Pass by motorcycle is the classic way to close a loop without backtracking: the road climbs from Naran, in Kaghan Valley, to the pass's 4,173 meters, then drops on the other side straight down to Chilas, on the Karakoram Highway.

From the summit, on clear days, Nanga Parbat's massif appears to the west, the same 8,126-meter giant that crowns the Fairy Meadows track, seen here from a completely different angle.

It's the pass used by local and foreign motorcycle travelers alike to build the Islamabad–Naran–Babusar–KKH–Islamabad loop without retracing their steps, which in a country with so few east-west mountain roads is no small thing.

Riding the Deosai Plains by motorcycle means crossing the second-highest plateau in the world after the Tibetan Changtang: 843 km² of golden grassland at an average elevation of 4,114 meters, without a single tree on the horizon in any direction.

The Balti call it Ghbiarsa, the summer place, because the rest of the year it lies buried under snow, which is why access is only possible between June and September.

It's also home to the Himalayan brown bear: the park's conservation program, launched in 1993, counted just 19 bears that year; by 2022 the population had risen to 78, one of the few real recovery stories for this threatened species in the region.

Crossing Shandur Pass by motorcycle, between Chitral and Gilgit, means reaching what many call the roof of the world: nearly 3,800 meters up on a plateau that holds the highest polo ground on the planet.

Every summer, teams from Chitral and Gilgit play a traditional polo match there with no supplementary oxygen and none of the modern safety rules, the Shandur Polo Festival, in front of nomad tents and peaks over 6,000 meters.

The rest of the year the plateau sits empty, and the road, mostly dirt and loose rock, becomes one of the most solitary stretches anywhere in northern Pakistan.

Riding from Skardu to Khaplu by motorcycle through the Shigar and Baltistan valleys means entering a region local records once called Little Tibet, after centuries of Buddhist cultural exchange before Islam arrived in the area.

Shigar is the overland gateway to K2, the world's second-highest mountain: porter caravans still set out from here toward Askole and base camp. The restored Shigar Fort still stands beside the river.

In Khaplu waits the old palace of the Yabgo dynasty, now a heritage hotel restored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, one of the most photographed architectural sights in all of Baltistan, surrounded by poplar trees in the middle of a high-altitude desert.

Riding up Kaghan Valley by motorcycle from Balakot to Lake Saiful Malook means following, almost step for step, the legend that Sufi poet Mian Muhammad Bakhsh made famous in 1857: that of Prince Saiful Malook, in love with the fairy Badar Jamal, who still gives the lake its name.

The turquoise water, fed by meltwater from Malika Parbat, sits at roughly 3,224 meters, the single most photographed and shared postcard of Pakistan's domestic tourism, with Balakot and Naran as the two access points.

The final 9 km down to the shore are no longer pavement but a narrow track of loose rock, reserved for jeeps and trail bikes; the rest of the valley, by contrast, is a comfortable paved climb through pine forest and mountain villages.

Entering the Kalash valleys by motorcycle is far simpler today than it was barely a decade ago: the 8.5km Lowari Tunnel opened in 2017 and replaced the old Lowari Pass, at 3,118 meters, which used to cut Chitral off from the rest of Pakistan most of the year.

On the other side wait Bumburet, Rumbur and Birir, the three valleys where the Kalash people live, a small and shrinking community according to recent census figures, practicing a pre-Islamic religion found nowhere else in the region: polytheistic, with gods like Mahandeo or Imra that echo an ancient Indo-Iranian pantheon unlike any other community in Pakistan.

Local legend holds they descend from soldiers Alexander the Great left behind on his campaign, a story genetic studies have thoroughly debunked, but one that remains part of the folklore drawing motorcycle travelers to these remote valleys.

Crossing Khyber Pass by motorcycle means riding the most famous mountain corridor in all of Asia: for centuries it formed part of the Silk Road, and Persian armies under Darius I and Shapur I marched through it long before Pakistan existed as a country.

The British left their own mark after the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1880: they built roads and the Khyber Pass Railway, opened in 1925, which still winds alongside the modern road through tunnels and viaducts cut into the rock.

Today the pass remains under the control of local Pashtun tribes, the Afridi and Shinwari, who historically collected tolls from caravans, and during the war in Afghanistan (2001-2021) it carried a large share of NATO's supply shipments. Access for foreign motorcycle travelers requires an official permit and is generally not guaranteed day to day: it's Pakistan's most historic route, but also its most conditional on the current security situation.