Karakoram Highway: Islamabad to Besham

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Islamabad

   Islamabad is the start of one of the great roads of the world, the Karakoram Highway, which climbs from the plains of the Punjab through Hazara and the Indus gorge to the Khunjerab Pass on the Chinese border. The capital itself is a young city, planned in the 1960s by the Greek architect Constantinos Doxiadis to replace Karachi, laid out on a grid of numbered sectors with wide avenues and trees, and tucked below the green wall of the Margalla Hills. Rawalpindi, the older garrison town next door, is far more crowded and loud, and the two together form one urban area.

   Read the complete Islamabad write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Islamabad is where the day begins. Next is Abbottabad.

2. 2. Abbottabad

   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.

   Read the complete Abbottabad write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Abbottabad comes up about 105 km into the recorded legs. Next is Besham.

3. 3. Besham

   Besham is a bazaar town clinging to the bank of the Indus, and it earns its place on the Karakoram Highway the way many towns on that road do: it is where everyone stops. The highway comes up from the lowlands through a deep gorge, the Indus running brown and fast beside it, and by the time you reach Besham the mountains are close and steep on both sides. The altitude is modest, but the sense of enclosure is complete. Locals will tell you that Besham is where the Himalayas really begin, and a rider arriving at midday with sore knees will agree.

   Read the complete Besham write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 244 km.