The Karakoram Highway
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The Karakoram Highway |
| Kashgar (China) to Karimabad (Pakistan) : The KARAKORAM HIGHWAY |
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On May 8th, we left Kashgar and headed South
instead of West ! And it was not a sunny day !
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| Kashgar to the Karakul Lake (China) |
| As we left the oasis of Kashgar, we headed South towards the desert. Canyons became larger as we headed up towards the lake Karakul. The wind was picking up and we were sad we were not going to see any mountain tops. |
  
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As we reached the lake we were had planned to
stay for the night, a storm broke and it started to hail (white dots on the
pictures !). Within 15 minutes
the whole area was white.
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| Stay with a Kyrghyz family |
| Having dropped Mike at a small guesthouse that charged ridiculous prices and wanted a fee for the car entering their CP, we headed a little further to find shelter for our car. |
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| Lake Karakul to Tashkurgan (CHINA) |
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| The road from Lake Karakul to Tashkurgan, the last city on the Chinese side was simply incredible. We were driving at altitudes between 2500 and 3500 and were surrounded by mountains as high as 7800 m. We have never seen more beautiful mountain scenery. Every time we would take a hairpin, the scenery would change and we would discover new angles and new faces to the same mountains. No single other spot in the world has a higher density of 7000+ mountains. |
 
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Scenery as we drive south towards Pakistan
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| Tashkurgan |
  
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Tashkurgan is the last city on Chinese side.
It is home to the customs department, a few shops and a few hundred souls
with nothing to do but to cater for the passage of travelers and trucks on
the KKH. Due to some paperwork problems we had to stay her 2 days before we
were allowed to leave the country. As it turns out, this might well have become a
habit. Whenever we are afraid not to be able to enter a new country (in this
case, we had no visas to enter Pakistan as different embassies had given us
contradictory information), we have all the trouble in the world to leave
the old one...
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| Leaving China |
| On May 11th, we left China, said goodbye to our guide and drove the 100+ km of no-mans-land between China and Pakistan. Despite not knowing whether we would be allowed into Pakistan, we were ecstatic ! |
  
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At the Chinese customs with trans-border trucks, the border, do camels have a "Carnet De Passage" ?
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| Khunjerab Pass |
| At 4730 m, the Khunjerab Pass is the highest point on the Karakoram Highway, the official border between China and Pakistan and one of the highest motorable roads on earth. |
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| Pakistan |
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We arrived at the Pakistani border in the late
afternoon of May 11th to be greeted by an English speaking border control
man with his young daughter. The immigration office was closed. We had to
hand over our passports and come back next morning. What a change from China
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First night in Pakistan and first glimpse of the country next morning.
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We were given a 30 day entry to Pakistan and
the car got in with its Carnet de Passage en Douanes. Two hours of paperwork
at a relaxed pace with lots of curious questions asked but also 2 or 3
delicious cups of Pakistani tea (essentially tea with milk and lots of
sugar). What a delight to have left the Chinese stressed out way of life ! A
few mountain chains further and it's a totally different world.
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| We have slowly made our way down the Hunza valley, only driving 20 or 40 km each day and enjoying ourselves. Crossing our first border (after the HK-PRC border) has been a great step for us and all of a sudden we have no guide and no programme. We are making the most of it ! |
We are doing well !
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| Hotan to Kashgar | Back to Trip page | Sost to Lahore |
