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 868 km, Islamabad to the finish - roughly 11 h 04 in the saddle. The stops in between: Abbottabad, Besham, Chilas and Gilgit. The highest point is about 4,700 m. It crosses from Pakistan into China - carry ID and check the toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
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.
123 km on Passu → Khunjerab Pass.
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 105 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 244 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, about halfway. 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 sits at 646 km, about halfway. 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.
Hunza Karimabad comes up about 697 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 745 km into the recorded legs you reach Passu. 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.
Finish at Khunjerab Pass. That is the ride. Nothing on this route is higher.
Islamabad → Abbottabad is 105 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.
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 123 km. This is the part worth slowing down for - look through the bends and use the pull-offs.