Altitude: 4800 m. Max.
Season: June – Oct.
Duration: 18 Days.

Itinerary:

Islamabad – Besham – Gilgit – Hunza – Rest Day – Hoper/Duikar – Sost – Tashgurghan – Kashghar – Sunday Bazaar – Tashgurghan – Sost – Gilgit – Besham – Swat Valley – Peshawar – Khyber Pass – Islamabad.

The Karakoram Highway (KKH) follows one of the principal Silk Road routes and is the backbone of this stunning mountain bike holiday. The KKH is a remarkable engineering achievement. Pakistanis proudly refer to the road as the Eighth Wonder of the World. Built in conjunction with the Chinese, the KKH was carved into the Indus Valley above the furious torrent of the Indus River, right up through the Hunza Valley and over the mighty Karakoram Mountains via Khunjerab Pass into China.

The Hunza Valley offers a wide variety of mountain scenery, peaks above seven thousand meters including such giants as Ultar, Spantik, Diran and 7,788 meter Rakaposhi. The Valley embraces enormous glaciers that tumble down to the roadsides, and tiny villages with their carefully terraced and irrigated fields clinging precariously to the valley slopes. The barren upland plateau of the Pamirs that is straddled by the Khunjerab Pass eventually gives way to the fertile fields and apricot orchards that made the Valley world famous. This incredible diversity of landscape is this mountain bike tour’s great appeal, and the reason why the upper KKH offers perhaps the most rewarding biking anywhere in the Great Himalayan Range.