Recreating my grandparents’ epic journey into remotest Pakistan

“Hunza is situated among a congress of great mountains, a concentration of lofty peaks, many of them unnamed, where the greatest folding of the Earth’s surface is to be found.”

With these words my grandfather Shahid Hamid wrote of a journey he made in 1954 to the northern reaches of Pakistan, a country then only seven years old. A 43-year old officer in the Pakistan Army, Shahid was keen to see as much as possible of his new nation, much of it sparsely populated and far off the beaten track.

Flanked by Afghanistan and China, the region now known as Gilgit-Baltistan was one of forbidding geography and multiple mountain ranges: the Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalaya. One of its valleys, Hunza, was a princely state within Pakistan and had a near-mythical reputation, rumoured to be where people lived to be 100 years old and with echoes of the “Shangri-La” depicted in James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon.

In 1954 Hunza had neither roads nor hotels: travelling there was either for the very intrepid or those with connections. It was only when Shahid happened to meet the Mir of Hunza — the valley’s ruler — at a horse show in Lahore, that the possibility of such travel began to open up. “You must come, as my guest,” the Mir said, but even then, my grandfather held back. “It was pleasant to dream about something new,” he thought, but he was unable to imagine how his young family would manage a trek on foot and horseback.

Slowly, however, a plan took shape: my grandmother Tahirah started packing boxes with warm clothing and food, and the party grew larger. The British officer then commanding the young Pakistan Air Force asked to come along with his wife, while the four Hamid children — including my mother, who was nine — insisted on inviting their teacher, Miss Pierce.

Exactly 70 summers on, I set out to follow in their footsteps with my own family, using the travelogue Shahid subsequently published, “Karakoram Hunza: The Land of Just Enough”, as a template and reference point. In our case we would journey to both Hunza and neighbouring Baltistan, and I hoped the trip would connect my three teenage sons to their Pakistani heritage in a new way, as they saw what the country had to offer beyond the cities and relatives they knew from previous trips. I’d been taken on numerous fishing expeditions in northern Pakistan myself as a child, but never this far into the mountains. And, just as for the group in 1954, our numbers grew: six friends would fly out from the UK to join us.

Gilgit-Baltistan has opened up in the intervening years: the Karakoram Highway now runs through Hunza and north into China and last year Skardu, the larger of its two airports, started receiving international flights (once per week from Dubai). As of this month, Pakistan visas are free and available online for citizens of more than 120 countries.

But challenges remain. The summer months in which these valleys are most accessible is also monsoon time, when roads can be affected by landslips and flights susceptible to delays and cancellations. In the end, our plans were disrupted due to a factor I had not taken into account: the calling of the UK election meant I had to stay in London as the others departed for Hunza, then set out to catch up with them once I was off air the morning after the vote. I found myself in transit in Islamabad airport, where flights to Gilgit — the closest airport to Hunza — had been cancelled and my hopes were pinned on one to Skardu.

The boarding announcement was made and my spirits lifted: it meant the forecast for the crucial patch of sky above the airport in Baltistan was clear. Then, we were told to retake our seats in the lounge, as the weather up north had changed again. Everyone understood why it had to be this way: these are flights for which pilots have specialist training, and everything depends on visibility as they manoeuvre the aircraft down through the mountains.

Even after taking off, there is no guarantee that the plane will not have to turn back, but your reward for keeping the faith is what you see from the windows. We were following the exact line of the Kaghan Valley, I realised, the place where I had learnt to fish during those long-ago summers, and then came the sight of Nanga Parbat, the world’s ninth highest peak. The second highest, K2, is also in this region, but even catching a glimpse of it involves greater commitment: a long drive on from Skardu, followed by several days on foot.

I stepped on to the tarmac at Skardu with five hours of road travel to Hunza still ahead, but for several minutes I stood still and simply absorbed my new environment. “The scenery will make you forget the hardships of the journey,” our tour operator Iqbal Walji had told me, and as I took in the majesty of the grey-brown mountains towering above me, I decided he had been right.

A driver was waiting for me at the airport, and even when we had to stop and wait for an hour as a landslip ahead was repaired, there was something calming about being able to watch and listen to the river, or look up at where the rocks finally met the sky.

I reached Hunza after dark, and walked through a small bazaar to our hotel, the Serena Altit Fort Residence — the first of three heritage properties we’d visit. All have been restored through projects led by the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, and being able to stay in such places allows the visitor to appreciate the history of the region’s people and their craftsmanship alongside its natural beauty.

Altit Fort is a former palace of the Mir of Hunza’s ancestors, parts of it dating back to the 11th century, and exploring it the following morning took me through numerous low wooden doors set into the stone. The design was for many reasons, I learned. The diminutive size prevented heat loss from the interior, while also forcing those entering to bow their heads in respect, and slowing down anyone trying to storm their way in. On the side facing the river was a wooden balcony, where I imagined the mirs of old must have sat, looking one way up the valley towards China, and the other where the water flowed downstream, to the south.

Our rooms were modern and comfortable, small cabins built in the grounds of the fort, but this was no hermetically sealed retreat. During the day, visitors heading up to see the fort would pass by, and just below us were the flat rooftops of local homes, soon to turn orange as people laid out apricots to dry in the sun.

This was as it had ever been, I knew, for Shahid’s book had recorded his observations of many aspects of life in Hunza. Of all the fruit that grew in the valley, he said, the apricot was the most important: eaten fresh in summer and dried in winter, with the kernel used to produce oil for cooking.

Chickens were not kept, he said, as they were regarded as spoilers of the land, and meat was only consumed in small quantities. Each family kept a single animal, usually a goat, and slaughtered it in December so that they had food for the months when nothing grew. There was no waste: they had a method that preserved butter, even for years, and I was told that rural families in Hunza still hunker down in the age-old way for winter, moving down to the lower floors of their homes, which are easier to keep warm, and reducing activity to conserve energy until the coming of spring.

We saw the same abundance of fruit as my mother’s family had enjoyed: apricots could be plucked straight from the trees — always with the owner’s permission — and there were fresh mulberries, cherries and peaches. The markets were full of dried fruit and nuts, as well as kilao, a delicious local sweetmeat made by dipping walnuts into a syrup of concentrated grape juice and allowing them to dry, fused together into a block. Shahid had also mentioned grapes, which he said were not eaten but used for making wine, but this practice seems to have died out, probably when Pakistan banned the sale of alcohol to Muslims in the 1970s. Nor is there any longer much of what was once famed as “Hunza paani”, or “Hunza water” — a grappa-style home brew.

In 1954, the group had stayed not at Altit, but a couple of kilometres away in a guesthouse of the mir’s close to Baltit Fort, another former royal residence. They had arrived quite exhausted, for while they had managed to fly into Gilgit, the onward journey towards Hunza had indeed been gruelling. The first part was along a track that could take a Jeep, but once it petered out the party — even my five-year-old uncle Ali — transferred to horses sent by the mir to meet them. The only non-rider was the eldest child, my uncle Hassan, who was 13 and had an aversion to horses. “I’d rather walk,” he had told his parents, and so he did, for the two days it took to reach Hunza.

Their little caravan was a curiosity, it seems, or perhaps the mir had sent word that they should be welcomed, for Shahid writes of people emerging from every village along the route and offering fruit, so that “the whole journey was spent in eating”. The lifestyle of the Hunzakuts — the people of the valley — seemed to continue as it had for generations: “Women go around unveiled,” he wrote. “They do not feel conscious when speaking to men and are treated as true partners in life, both in the home and in the fields.”

Our 2024 party was a mix not only of ages but of interests. The keenest walkers peeled off for the longer hikes, up into the high-altitude meadows, while for others there were local crafts to see and more heritage to soak up, including Ganish village — one of the oldest settlements on the Silk Route, part of which runs right through Hunza.

From there, we drove south and then east towards Baltistan, in the 20-seater bus which was our equivalent of the mir’s caravan. We were in the capable hands of an experienced driver, Ejaz Ali Awan, and a knowledgeable guide, Salah Uddin, with the itinerary painstakingly worked out by Travel Walji’s, who have been booking such trips for decades. While I generally favour independent travel, in this country, I would not have had it any other way: Pakistan is an immensely rewarding place for any visitor but expert help is invaluable as you weigh up factors from weather to security, as well as finding the best stops for photos and chai breaks.

Compared with the relatively narrow Hunza valley, Baltistan’s scenery was more expansive, and in some ways more dramatic. We drove along the Indus, marvelling at the river’s width and power even in these areas relatively close to its source. We saw how the topography and terrain kept changing, from stretches of land where the availability of water had allowed cultivation and which were therefore green with trees, to a striking expanse of so-called cold desert, an extraordinary dry plain where in winter the dunes are covered in snow.  

Our destination was another heritage hotel belonging to the Serena chain, this time overlooking the Shigar river about 45km east of Skardu. A distance that would seem trifling elsewhere is long on these roads, and sometimes hair-raising, with vertical cliffs on one side of the vehicle and sharp drops down to the river on the other.

But Shigar Fort was even more of a treat than Altit. Our rooms were in the oldest part of the stone and wood structure, next to those which had been the Raja of Shigar’s private dining room, kitchen and mosque — and have been preserved as such. In the open courtyards are wooden daybeds where you can sit and look up at the mountains or, at night, the stars; meals are taken on a terrace to the sound of the rushing river.

We walked up above Shigar Fort for stunning views of the valley, and also out through the village to the 14th-century Amburiq mosque, reputed to be Baltistan’s oldest. It is a tiny, one-room wooden structure with intricate carving by Kashmiri craftsmen, very similar to another we would see close to our final stop, the fort-palace at Khaplu that is also a Serena hotel.

Here, we were really off the beaten track, with only small villages in the vicinity of the sensitively restored fort. A captivating spot was a summer lounge high up in the main building, open on two sides, where I could sink into floor cushions and read, distracted only by the patterns of the decorated ceiling and the movement of the clouds beyond.

Our return to Islamabad was by air from Skardu, a last chance to bid farewell to the mountains. They would be the defining memory of the trip, I knew, just as it was for my family in 1954, when Shahid found the first sight of Rakaposhi, the peak that dominates Hunza, almost overwhelming. “We admired Rakaposhi till it got dark,” he wrote, “and then she appeared differently clad in the moonlight. It was impossible to say at which time of day the mountain was prettier.”

“Look up at the old road” Salah Uddin had said to me one afternoon in Hunza. Peering up, I saw a faint outline above us, realising that this was the track that my family had been on in 1954, on their slow walk and ride into a then largely closed-off valley. Seven decades on, I had travelled, and stayed, in far greater comfort than my grandparents could have imagined. But the fruit trees, the high meadows, the sound of the river pounding the rocks, are all as they would have experienced, as is — of course — the splendour of the mountains.

Mishal Husain is a journalist for the BBC and presenter of the ‘Today’ programme. Her new memoir ‘Broken Threads: My Family From Empire to Independence’ is published by Fourth Estate

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