CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A one-way ride of 526 km, Chilas to the finish - roughly 6 h 35 in the saddle. The stops in between: Gilgit, Hunza Karimabad, Passu and Khunjerab Pass. The highest point is about 4,700 m. It crosses from Pakistan into China - carry ID and check the toll rules. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
For about 48 km this is Karakoram Highway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
This part of the ride is 122 km of Passu → Khunjerab Pass.
253 km that neither climbs nor drops much. The road settles into the ground rather than fighting it — this is where a day makes up time without anyone trying. Third and fourth, and very little else.
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.
Read the complete Chilas write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chilas is where the day begins. Next is Gilgit.
Gilgit sits in the place where three of the world's greatest mountain systems come together: the Karakoram, the Himalaya and the Hindu Kush. The town lies at roughly fifteen hundred metres in a broad, dry valley at the meeting of the Gilgit and Hunza rivers, with bare brown ridges close on every side, and on a clear day the snow of high peaks hangs over the roofs. Nanga Parbat, the ninth-highest mountain on earth, lies not far south, and from the Hunza side the huge ridge of Rakaposhi appears on the horizon.
Read the complete Gilgit write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gilgit comes up about 135 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hunza Karimabad.
Karimabad is the main village of the Hunza valley, a green ribbon of terraced fields in the middle of some of the highest mountains in the world. The village sits on a hillside at about 2,500 metres in northern Pakistan, and from its terraces you look across to the great snow peaks of Rakaposhi, Ultar Sar and Lady Finger, rising to more than seven thousand metres. Apricot trees grow everywhere, and in spring their blossom fills the valley with white and pink, while in autumn the whole slope turns gold and red. The valley has long been a quiet world of its own.
Read the complete Hunza Karimabad write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 232 km into the recorded legs you reach Hunza Karimabad. Next is Passu.
Passu is a village at the foot of an immense rock wall, and the wall has a face that people photograph more than their own families. The jagged spires of the Passu Cones, also called Tupopdan, a ridge of dark granite and ice reaching about 6,100 metres, rise straight above the fields and the road in the upper Hunza valley, in a district called Gojal. A short distance away, the Passu Glacier flows down toward the river, its dirty grey tongue easy to reach on foot, and the glacier is a good example of how quickly the ice here moves and changes. In front of it, the valley floor is a patchwork of barley, potatoes and apricots in tiny stone-walled fields.
Read the complete Passu write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Passu, about halfway. Next is Khunjerab Pass.
Khunjerab is the top of the road, and the road, in this case, is the Karakoram Highway. At 4,693 metres, the pass sits on the border between Pakistan and China and is the highest paved international crossing in the world. There is not much to see except a white arch, a barrier, a few border markers and an enormous sense of space. The surrounding hills are high, bare and rounded, covered in snow for most of the year, and the sky seems closer than anywhere else. The name itself comes from local words meaning something like the valley of blood, though the story behind it is disputed.
Read the complete Khunjerab Pass write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Khunjerab Pass sits at 599 km, late in the day. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Tashkurgan, mostly downhill.
Tashkurgan is a small town in the far west of China's Xinjiang region, high on a plateau among the Pamirs at roughly three thousand metres. After crossing the Khunjerab Pass, at about 4,700 metres one of the highest paved border crossings in the world, it is the first real place you reach on the Chinese side. For anyone coming up the Karakoram Highway from Pakistan, it feels like arriving at the end of the earth and the beginning of a new one.
Read the complete Tashkurgan write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 526 km.
Chilas → Gilgit is 135 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Gilgit → Hunza Karimabad is 97 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Hunza Karimabad → Passu is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Passu → Khunjerab Pass is 122 km. This is the part worth slowing down for - look through the bends and use the pull-offs.
Khunjerab Pass → Tashkurgan is 125 km. Brakes and eyes forward; the views are behind the corners, not in them.