Besham is a loud, low-slung bazaar town where the highway meets the Indus, and for many riders it is the place where the Karakoram Highway stops being a road and becomes an adventure. The river here has just come out of a deep gorge, brown with silt and fast enough to hear above the engine. Mountains close in on both sides, the town is jammed into a narrow bench of land beside the water, and trucks park at every angle outside tea stalls.
The road from Mansehra, via Thakot and the bridge over the Indus, climbs and drops along steep slopes of loose rock. This is landslide country. In wet weather or after a cloudburst, sections can be blocked for hours or days, so check the news and ask a truck driver, because they know. The tarmac is generally good, but the edge is narrow, bends are blind, and the drop to the river is steep. Ride in daylight, keep right, and honk lightly before blind corners the way the locals do.
Besham is the junction for the road to Swat, which climbs west toward Mingora and the green valleys of the north. It is also a staging point for the Kohistan stretch that runs north. There is fuel here, and in the town you will find simple hotels, bakeries and rows of grills sending up smoke at dusk. Fill the tank, because fuel in the long Kohistan section can be unreliable and sometimes of questionable quality. Dal, flatbread and fried river fish are the usual fare, and tea is sweet and strong.
Behind the cheerful chaos, there is a landscape of real size. The Indus here cuts through the western end of the Himalaya, where geologists say the plates collided and the river has held its course while the mountains rose around it. The walls above are steep forests of pine and oak, and high summer brings terraced fields of maize. In winter, snow can reach the upper slopes, and the nights are cold.
Riders sometimes arrive late and stay overnight in Besham to break the long day from Islamabad. It is a sensible plan, since the road that follows is slow, the light fails early between the walls of the gorge, and the best part of the highway lies ahead.