--- title: "Pakistan travel guide: the Karakoram, the Indus and the seasons | Wimup" description: "Pakistan on Wimup: how the Karakoram Highway, Gilgit-Baltistan, the Punjab, Sindh and the Mughal cities differ, when each half of the country opens, what the visa and the permits take, what to eat, and how to get around." url: https://wimup.com/country/pakistan type: Country guide updated: 2026-10-05 publisher: Wimup (https://wimup.com) --- # Pakistan, the Karakoram and the Indus Pakistan holds five of the world's fourteen mountains above **8,000 metres**, and the Mughal capitals sit at the other end of the same road. It is really two countries to travel: the **Karakoram** in the north, and the **Indus plain** and its cities in the south. Season and paperwork decide which one you get. ## Quick answer Most trips take one half properly and give the other a few days. The **north** is the Karakoram, open May to October: fly Islamabad to Gilgit, then **Karimabad** in Hunza for the forts and Rakaposhi, **Skardu** for Baltistan, and the **Khunjerab Pass** at 4,693 metres. The **south** is best November to March: **Lahore** for the Mughal city, **Multan** for the Sufi shrines, **Sindh** for Mohenjo-daro and Karachi. **Islamabad and Rawalpindi** are the hinge. Permits and province-by-province travel advice shape the plan. ## Quick facts - **Best months:** May–Oct north, Nov–Mar plains - **Ideal length:** 12–16 days - **Budget per day:** $40–160 - **Language:** Urdu is national and English official, with Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Saraiki and Balochi spoken across the provinces - **Getting around:** Flights to Gilgit, Skardu and Karachi, motorway coaches between the Punjab cities, trains down the Indus, shared jeeps in the mountains - **241,499,431** People - **796,096 km²** Area Pakistan runs from the Arabian Sea to the Karakoram, and almost everything about a trip here follows the Indus. The river enters from Gilgit-Baltistan, cuts past the western face of Nanga Parbat, crosses the Punjab (the plain of five rivers that names it) and reaches the sea below Karachi. Administratively the country is four provinces (Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan), the federal capital territory at Islamabad, and the administered territories of Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, whose status is disputed with India. For a visitor it divides more simply, into a north and a south. The north is the mountain half and the reason most first trips exist. The Karakoram Highway leaves the plain at Hasan Abdal and climbs to the Khunjerab Pass at 4,693 metres, the highest paved border crossing in the world, passing Gilgit, the Hunza valley at Karimabad and the turn for Skardu on the way. Baltistan is the approach to Concordia, where the Baltoro Glacier gathers four eight-thousanders into one horizon, and the trekking season there is short and unforgiving of optimism. The south is the historical half. Lahore holds the Mughal city, with the fort and the Shalamar Gardens inscribed together on the World Heritage list, and the Grand Trunk Road that has run through it for centuries. Islamabad and Rawalpindi are the arrival pair, one planned in the 1960s and the other the old garrison town beside it. Sindh carries Karachi, the port and the largest city in the country, and upstream of it Mohenjo-daro, an Indus Valley city laid out on a grid around 2500 BC. Three practical things shape the trip more than the itinerary does. The seasons are severe at both ends: the plains are punishing from May through August and the high valleys are closed by snow from November to April, which leaves two narrow shoulder windows and one short mountain summer. The paperwork is real: foreign nationals register with the local authorities in Gilgit-Baltistan, trekking above 6,000 metres needs a permit that can take up to two months to arrange, and travel in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and several districts of Azad Kashmir needs advance permission and sometimes a No Objection Certificate from the Ministry of Interior. And the security picture is regional rather than national. Foreign ministries advise against all travel to Balochistan and against travel to much of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while Gilgit-Baltistan, Punjab and the main cities are treated far more permissively. Read your own government's current advice before booking anything, because it is revised often and the map it draws is not the map of the country. ## Know before you go - **Population:** 241,499,431 - **Area:** 796,096 km² - **Density:** 303.4 / km² - **Capital:** Islamabad - **Major cities:** Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Peshawar, Multan, Islamabad, Quetta - **Tourism board:** Official site - **Currency:** Pakistani rupee (PKR) Cash rules outside big hotels and malls. ATMs are common in cities and rare in the mountains, so draw cash before leaving Gilgit or Skardu. Cards work mainly in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. - **Language:** Urdu is national, English is official Urdu is the shared language of school and broadcast, with English in government and on signs. Punjabi is the largest first language, with Pashto, Sindhi, Saraiki and Balochi regionally. - **Visa:** Apply at visa.nadra.gov.pk The National Database and Registration Authority runs the only official online visa system, visa-on-arrival categories included. Rules change, so read the portal itself. - **Permits and registration:** Required in several regions Register locally in Gilgit-Baltistan. Above 6,000 metres you need a permit that takes up to two months. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and parts of Azad Kashmir need advance permission. - **Travel advice:** Regional, and revised often Advisories are drawn province by province and change often. Check your government's current page before booking. Travelling against one usually voids your insurance. - **Calling code:** +92 - **Power:** 230V, 50Hz, plug types C and D Type C is the two-pin Europlug and type D has three large round pins, so bring a universal adapter. Scheduled power cuts are routine, and most hotels run a generator. - **Emergency:** 15 police · 1122 rescue · 16 fire · 115 ambulance Rescue 1122 covers Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. The Edhi Foundation runs the largest ambulance network, free, on 115. - **Getting around:** Fly the long legs, coach the Punjab Flights link Islamabad with Gilgit, Skardu and Karachi and save two days, but the northern routes cancel in bad weather. Coaches run the Punjab, trains the Indus, jeeps the mountains. - **Dress:** Conservative, and easier than it sounds Shoulders and knees covered for everyone, and a shalwar kameez is cheap and cool. Women should carry a scarf for mosques and shrines. In most streets a headscarf is not expected. - **Tipping:** Customary, not automatic Round up taxi fares, tip in restaurants where service is not added, and tip trek porters and drivers per day at the rate your operator sets. Carry small notes for it. - **Alcohol:** Restricted Alcohol is not sold openly to Muslims, and it is restricted for everyone else. Non-Muslim foreigners can buy it through a permit room in some hotels. Plan a dry trip. - **Driving:** On the left - **Time zone:** PKT, UTC+5, no daylight saving ## When to visit - **Jan** (good): The plain is at its coldest and clearest, so Lahore and Sindh are comfortable, though winter smog settles over the Punjab. The north is snowbound and the highway above Gilgit is largely shut. - **Feb** (good): Still the good half of winter in the south, with almond blossom starting in Hunza late in the month. The high passes stay closed. - **Mar** (best): The best month on the plain before the heat arrives, and blossom season in the northern valleys as the roads reopen in stages. Pakistan Day falls on 23 March. - **Apr** (best): The month that works almost everywhere: warm rather than hot in the Punjab, and the valleys opening up behind the melt. - **May** (good): The plain turns hot and stays hot. The north comes into its own and the Karakoram Highway is reliably open through to the Khunjerab Pass. - **Jun** (good): Peak heat below and the start of the trekking season above. Everyone who can leaves the plain for the hills. - **Jul** (peak): The monsoon reaches the northeast and the plains are hot and wet. The high Karakoram sits above the monsoon, and this is the climbing season on K2 and the Baltoro. - **Aug** (peak): The busiest month in the north, with independence week around 14 August, the heaviest trekking traffic and a real chance of landslides closing the Karakoram Highway for hours or days. - **Sep** (best): The best month of the year in the mountains: settled weather, thinning crowds, the rivers dropping and the valleys still open. - **Oct** (best): Autumn in Hunza and Skardu, the poplars turning, and the plain becoming bearable again. The other month that works at both ends. - **Nov** (good): The north closes as the passes ice over. The south opens: Lahore, Multan, Sindh and the coast are at their most comfortable. - **Dec**: Winter on the plain, cold and clear apart from the smog days in the Punjab. The mountains are for people who came for snow. ## Fun fact Pakistan holds five of the fourteen mountains above 8,000 metres, K2 at 8,611 metres among them. Four ring the Baltoro Glacier, and Concordia, where the Godwin-Austen Glacier joins it, sees them all at once. It is days on foot from the last road, so the view is famous and photographs are rare. ## Stereotypes, sorted out - **Myth:** Pakistan is a desert. **Reality:** It has a coastline on the Arabian Sea, irrigated plain across the Punjab, subtropical forest in the northeast, real desert in the Thar and Balochistan, and some of the largest glaciers outside the polar regions. The Baltoro alone runs more than 60 kilometres. - **Myth:** The whole country is off limits. **Reality:** The advice is drawn province by province. Foreign ministries advise against all travel to Balochistan and against travel to much of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but treat Gilgit-Baltistan, the Punjab, Islamabad and Karachi differently. Read the current wording. Defying an advisory usually voids insurance. - **Myth:** Pakistan and India are interchangeable. **Reality:** They share the Punjab, the Grand Trunk Road and a great deal of the food, and they were one territory until 1947. They are also two states with different official languages, different scripts for the languages they do share, and a land border that is closed to most travellers. - **Myth:** Women cannot travel there. **Reality:** Women travel in Pakistan, independently and in groups, and Pakistani women work, drive and study across the country. Dress is conservative by convention and a scarf is expected at shrines and mosques. The practical advice is about clothing, transport and where you stay, not about whether to come. - **Myth:** It is all mountains and mosques. **Reality:** The oldest layer is neither. Mohenjo-daro was a planned city with drains and a grid around 2500 BC, Taxila was a Gandharan Buddhist centre on a Greek plan, and Takht-i-Bahi is a monastery. Four of the six World Heritage properties here predate Islam in the region. - Hospitality is close to obligatory and refusing it outright is the awkward move. Expect to be fed, expect the bill to be fought over, and expect to lose that fight. Reciprocating another day is the graceful answer. - Dress conservatively. Shoulders and knees covered for everyone, and a shalwar kameez is cheap, cool and completely unremarkable to wear. Women should carry a scarf for mosques and shrines. - Ask before photographing people, and do not photograph women, military installations, checkpoints, bridges or airports. The last group is taken seriously. - Friday midday prayers empty the shops and slow the roads in most cities. Plan around them. - Ramadan reshapes the working day. Kitchens close through daylight in much of the country, hours shift, and eating, drinking or smoking in public during fasting hours is an offence under the Ehtram-e-Ramazan Ordinance. - The left hand is not used for eating or for handing things over. Food is often eaten with the right hand and a piece of bread, without cutlery. Follow the table you are at. - Alcohol is not sold openly to Muslims and is restricted for everyone else. Non-Muslim foreigners can buy it through a permit room in some hotels. Plan a dry trip and treat anything else as a bonus. ## Famous Pakistani faces - **Muhammad Ali Jinnah**: Led the Muslim League to Pakistan's creation in 1947. Quaid-e-Azam, on the currency. - **Allama Muhammad Iqbal**: Poet whose Urdu and Persian verse gave the idea of a Muslim state its language. - **Benazir Bhutto**: First woman to lead a Muslim-majority country's government, in 1988. Killed in 2007. - **Abdus Salam**: Physicist from Jhang who shared the 1979 Nobel, the first Muslim science laureate. - **Malala Yousafzai**: Shot in Swat in 2012 for campaigning for girls' education. Nobel Peace Prize at seventeen. - **Abdul Sattar Edhi**: Built the country's main ambulance network from one Karachi stall, on no salary. - **Imran Khan**: Captained Pakistan to the 1992 Cricket World Cup. Prime minister from 2018 to 2022. - **Jahangir Khan**: Six World Open titles, and unbeaten in competitive squash for over five years from 1981. - **Wasim Akram**: Left-arm spearhead of the 1992 World Cup side, first to 500 one-day international wickets. - **Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan**: The qawwal who carried Sufi devotional singing from the Punjab shrines to the world. - **Abida Parveen**: Leading living singer of Sufi kalam, filling stadiums with Bulleh Shah and Bhittai. - **Mohsin Hamid**: Lahore novelist. The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West were both Booker-shortlisted. - **Sadequain**: Painted the Frere Hall ceiling in Karachi and made Quranic calligraphy modern murals. ## Must-try Pakistani food - **Nihari**: Shank stewed overnight in spiced gravy, eaten at breakfast with naan, ginger and chilli. - **Karahi**: Chicken or mutton cooked hard in a wok with tomato, ginger and chilli, served in the pan. - **Haleem**: Wheat, barley, lentils and meat cooked for hours to a thick paste. A Ramadan fixture. - **Saag with makai roti**: Mustard greens slow-cooked and buttered, with a maize flatbread. A Punjabi winter dish. - **Chapli kabab**: Peshawar's flat minced-beef patty with tomato and pomegranate seed, griddle-fried. - **Seekh kabab**: Spiced mince on skewers over charcoal. The tandoor order to judge a place by. - **Sindhi biryani**: Layered rice with meat, yoghurt and potato, sour and hot. The potato is not optional. - **Kabuli pulao**: Mutton rice cooked in stock with whole spice, carrot and raisin. Peshawar does it best. - **Naan and roti**: Roti is the everyday wholemeal round, naan the leavened oval. Both come with everything. - **Chana chaat**: Chickpeas, potato, onion and tamarind, sharp and cold. The standard way to break a fast. - **Golgappa**: Hollow crisp spheres filled with spiced water and potato, eaten whole in one bite. - **Sohan halwa**: Multan's dense disc of ghee, sugar, nuts and sprouted wheat, sold by the boxed slab. - **Falooda**: Rose syrup, vermicelli, basil seed, ice cream and milk in a tall glass. Summer in a glass. - **Kashmiri chai**: Pink salt tea with milk and crushed nuts. Everywhere in Gilgit-Baltistan. - **Lassi**: Yoghurt blended with ice and salt or sugar, drunk by the pint through the Punjab summer. ## FAQs ### Is it safe to travel in Pakistan? It depends entirely on where. Foreign ministries advise against all travel to Balochistan and against travel to much of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and they treat Gilgit-Baltistan, the Punjab, Islamabad and Karachi very differently from those. Travel in the restricted provinces needs advance permission and sometimes a No Objection Certificate from the Ministry of Interior. Read your own government’s current page before booking, because the wording is revised often, and note that travelling against an advisory usually invalidates travel insurance. ### Do I need a visa, and how do I get one? Almost everyone does. Applications go through the government's own portal at visa.nadra.gov.pk, run by the National Database and Registration Authority, which also handles the visa-on-arrival categories. It is the only official channel: no other site is authorised, whatever it looks like. Eligibility and processing times change, so read the portal itself. ### When should I go? The country does not have one answer. The Karakoram works from roughly May to October and is closed by snow either side, with July and August the busiest and the most reliable for high trekking. The plains run the other way: Lahore, Multan and Sindh are at their best from November to March, and May to August down there is punishing. March, April, September and October are the months that half-work at both ends. ### Do I need permits for the mountains? Foreign nationals register with the local authorities on arrival in Gilgit-Baltistan, which is routine. Anything above 6,000 metres needs a mountaineering or trekking permit. The process can take up to two months, and a licensed company should arrange it. ### How do I get around? Fly the long legs. Islamabad to Gilgit or Skardu turns two hard days on the Karakoram Highway into about an hour, though those flights fly on sight of the ground and cancel often. Between the Punjab cities the motorway coaches are fast and comfortable. Trains run the length of the Indus, slowly, and show you the country. In the mountains it is shared jeeps and hired 4x4s. ## Related countries - [Japan](https://wimup.com/country/japan.md) - [India](https://wimup.com/country/india.md) - [All of Asia](https://wimup.com/asia) Part of [Asia](https://wimup.com/asia.md) ## Sources - [Tourism board](https://tourism.gov.pk/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Visa](https://visa.nadra.gov.pk/?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Travel advice](https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/pakistan?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - Rankings are Wimup editorial picks. Prices, durations and budgets are editorial estimates, not live quotes; check the official site before you go.