Abbottabad sits in a cool green bowl of pine-covered hills at about 1,250 metres, and for a rider coming up from the plains the first thing you notice is the air. After the heat of Islamabad and the Punjab plains, it feels like stepping into a different country. The town was founded in the 1850s by James Abbott, a British officer who was struck by the climate and the beauty of the area, and it kept its colonial bones: a cantonment of broad avenues, old schools, and a military academy at nearby Kakul. Today it is a city of around a hundred thousand people in the Hazara region, with a bustling bazaar and a university.
Abbottabad gained a very different sort of fame in 2011, when the world's most wanted man was found in a compound on the edge of town. That story is not what most visitors come for, and locals can be weary of it. What they will tell you about instead is the climate, the schools and the surrounding hills, where summer visitors flock to Nathia Gali and Ayubia, a national park of forests and walking paths on the slopes above. The Thandiani ridge, on the north side, has views over to the Kashmir mountains on a clear day.
For the Karakoram Highway, Abbottabad is the real beginning. The road from Islamabad joins the old Silk Road route here, and climbs through the foothills toward Havelian, where the highway proper starts. From here you head north into increasingly dramatic country, with the Indus gorge to come. The road surface is generally good on this section, with gentle curves and heavy traffic of trucks, buses and rickshaws, so overtaking requires patience and good judgement.
Fuel and services are plentiful: there are petrol stations, mechanics, ATMs and decent restaurants, and the bazaar sells everything from dried fruit to spare parts. This is the place to fill up, eat and stock up on water before the mountain stages, because services get thinner farther north. The Hindko-speaking locals are friendly, and a rider on a foreign bike will draw a curious crowd.
Spring and autumn are the best seasons. Summers bring monsoon rain and landslides on the hill roads, while winter nights can be cold, and snow occasionally dusts the heights around town.