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 466 km, Islamabad to Chilas - roughly 5 h 56 in the saddle. It goes by way of Abbottabad and Besham. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 3,300 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Islamabad is where the day begins. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Abbottabad comes up about 106 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 245 km into the recorded legs you reach Besham. Next is Chilas.
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 closes the day.
Islamabad → Abbottabad is 106 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Abbottabad → Besham is 139 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Besham → Chilas is 221 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.