Chilas is a hot, dry town on the upper Indus, where the Karakoram Highway runs through one of the most dramatic gorges on earth. Here three of the world's great mountain ranges, the Himalaya, the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush, meet within a few dozen kilometres, and the Indus carves a trench between them that is deeper than the Grand Canyon in places. The stony hillsides above the town are bare and brown, which makes the snowy bulk of Nanga Parbat, at 8,126 metres the ninth highest mountain in the world, seem even more unlikely when it appears over the ridge.
The town is also a trading and crossing point, and the hills around it are covered with petroglyphs. Thousands of carvings and inscriptions, in Sogdian, Kharoshthi, Brahmi and Chinese as well as other scripts, were left by travellers on the old Silk Road branch that ran through here, and many of them are Buddhist stupas, ibex and hunters pecked into dark rock faces by the river. The sites at Chilas and nearby Thalpan are the best known; many are being drowned or moved as dams rise upstream on the Indus.
For riders, Chilas is the gate to the Babusar Pass road, which climbs from the Indus up to the pass at about 4,170 metres and then drops into the green Kaghan valley toward Naran. The road is steep and in places rough, with hairpins, loose gravel, unfenced drops and sudden weather, and it is usually open only from early summer to autumn; snow can close it, and landslides can too. Check locally before you set out. The Karakoram Highway itself is a feat of engineering but is regularly cut by rockfalls and floods, and heavy trucks make the narrow sections slow.
Fuel is available in Chilas, which is the last reliable stop before the pass, and basic hotels and roadside restaurants serve lentils, chapati, grilled meat and strong sweet tea. Summer days are fierce, with temperatures over forty degrees in the gorge, while the pass above is cold even in July.
Start early, because afternoon wind and weather build, and give yourself time to drive the descent in daylight.