Tour de Pakistan Day 9

Finally my 6th semester exams are over and I can get back to writing and relax during the holidays. Well let’s get back into the epic journey of traveling across Pakistan. So we did travel for 8 days and up till now visited Lahore, entered the Northern areas seeing the beautiful Nanga Parbat Mountain in all its glory. We were heading back to the Karakoram Highway to make way towards Khunjerab pass this is the place where one of the highest altitude public borders exist which is between Pakistan and China, but before that there were lots of beautiful places during the way and we saw them being mesmerized by each one of them.

First came the Attabad Lake I mean what a spectacle, the water on the surface seemed as if someone had painted it with colour, such vibrant sky blue colour simply surreal. Before the Karakoram highway was made there were no roads for the travelers to cross through so they had to get their jeeps and bikes on a big boat to cross the river. These boats were still present but most of them were used to as an added attraction for travelers to ride along the lake. My cousin’s road the Jet Ski there but I wasn’t interested I just got the camera out and started taking these beautiful pictures of the lake.

Then came the Rakaposhi point this is a junction where 3 mountain ranges meat the Karakoram, Himalaya and Hindu Kush the point isn’t really easy to locate and we almost missed it, but thankfully for a sign board we saw these three mountain ranges alongside one another although the camera didn’t do justice at that point of time. This place was also really beautiful.

After that there were two ways, one going towards Skardu and one towards Khunjerab pass, we were short of time to visit both and so decided to go towards Khunjerab pass. On the ways came Passu cones another mountain which has its peak looking like cones that is why the name came up. Although its real beauty is showcased on the way towards Skardu we did stop and took a few pictures. Almost after every 20-30 minutes there was a new mind blowing place.

We had traveled for 10 hours nonstop and decided to stop near the Pak-China border a place known as Sost. A weird thing about this place was that in the hotel there were no mobile signals but their Wi-Fi was working just fine. This is the place where Snow leopards and Markhors have been spotted on numerous occasions. There was a local who had a video in which a snow leopard had come into their village the creature was really beautiful. The dreaded trophy hunters also come here to hunt for Markhors, it is the national animal of Pakistan and going extinct still the government allows such horrific acts. This was our place to rest for the night and on towards Pak-China border in the morning.