Came across this article on another forum. Found it very interesting.
Anyone here from Northern Areas or been there 
A BRIDGE TOO FAR: The journey through northern Pakistan can be hair-raising at times as crude bridges test your courage, but the warm smiles of the people you meet along the way make it all worthwhile.
The terrain is some of the most challenging travellers will ever face, but the gentleness of the hard working people in northern Pakistan makes the trip well worth the effort.
http://www.thestar.com/images/cci/tr-pakistan1a.GRADVFB4.1.jpg?GXHC_gx_session_id_=459b07fdd5eaec1a
A bridge over troubled waters
WHAT IS IT with border towns? That special aura of transience and sleaze that infects them all, from Nuevo Laredo to Niagara Falls and this place, Sost.
It’s hot. It’s dusty. There’s a tang of urine in the air.
Even prior to completing customs formalities, even before our passports are stamped, we find ourselves surrounded by unctuously smiling men offering hotels, tours and currency exchange. “Special rate, just for you!”
I’m trying to keep an eye on the guys unloading our bags from the top of the bus when a young man with flowing black hair and wearing loose, billowing Pakistani clothes appears out of the swirling dust. There’s something almost biblical about his appearance.
“May I help you, sir?” he asks gravely.
He offers to drive us to Hunza for a couple of hundred rupees. I’m not exactly sure where Hunza is, whether I want to go there or how much that couple of hundred rupees translates into in dollars.
Also, I can see our bags are about to come flying off the roof of the bus. I hand the Lonely Planet guidebook to my wife, Donna, and ask her to look up Hunza and talk to the young man while I get the luggage. When I return a few minutes later, Donna says, “We’re going to Hunza.” Then she hands me his business card. “Hunza Classic Tours,” it says. Offices in Gilgit, Islamabad and … Oakville. Oakville?
“My partner is a Canadian,” he says, beaming.
We load our bags into the back of his Jeep and set off through stunning mountain scenery for Hunza, which is not a town but a valley.
Pakistan was something of an afterthought for us. We already had crossed China from Beijing in the east to Kashgar in the far west. From there, we had taken the awesomely scenic Karakoram Highway into Pakistan, a two-day trip with an overnight stop at the Chinese border city of Tashkurgan — another hole.
Our plan for Pakistan was to get to Islamabad as quickly as possible and fly home.
Nawaz — that was the young man’s name — had other ideas. When he found out we had no specific plans and didn’t have to be home for a couple of weeks, he said he’d draw up a “Jeep safari” itinerary that would take us to the major scenic spots of northern Pakistan. He presented it that evening on the patio of the Hunza View Hotel in Karimabad. We were perched on the side of a mountain, the valley below and peaks opposite illuminated by the waxing moon, a distinct improvement over Sost.
I looked at the names he had written — Hoper, Gilgit, Deosai, Skardu, Phundar … Of the 12 on the list, the only one I recognized was Peshawar. Nawaz explained the first leg of the trip would take us into the Himalayas, the second through the Karakoram range and the third into the Hindu Kush. It would cost $60 (U.S.) per person per day for transportation, food and accommodation. Some nights — just a couple — we’d camp. He’d provide the tent and sleeping bags.
“I promise you a trip you will never forget,” he said earnestly.
He was right.
We had not been expecting much. Pakistan does not enjoy a good press. Think Pakistan and, inevitably, images of military coups, poverty and violence flit through your mind. What we encountered was very different — stunning natural beauty and courteous, hospitable people.
Descriptions of mountain scenery tend toward sameness, studded with words like “awesome” and “majestic,” and northern Pakistan is all of that. What makes it different from, say, the Rockies is that the region is stitched together by twisting, precipitous jeep tracks, which provide a far different perspective than broad, paved Canadian highways.
And each of the three mountain ranges that converge in the region has a unique character — the massive, humpy Himalayas, green clad in monsoon season; the younger, stonier, jagged Karakoram; the lower, browner, drier Hindu Kush.
And another difference. Unlike the Rockies, which basically remain a wilderness, northern Pakistan has been populated for millennia. There are neat stone villages, old forts and terraced fields, herds of cattle and sheep. There is something about the combination of dominating nature and human habitation, something fragile and beautiful.
While each day fulfilled its quota of ooohs and ahhhs — plus a few “don’t look downs” — three stand out.
Four days after leaving Karimabad, our Jeep climbed up through the western reaches of the Himalayas to the hamlet of Tarashing, dramatically situated beside a glacier at the foot of Nanga Parbat, the 9th highest mountain in the world and second highest in Pakistan at 8,125 metres.
Nanga Parbat — the name is Sanskrit for “Naked Mountain” — is not a classic conical peak but a massive rampart-like ridge covered in ice and snow. Thirty-one climbers died before the German Herman Buhl made the first successful ascent in 1953, an expedition that claimed the lives of another 11 climbers and 15 porters. Hence Nanga Parbat’s other name — Killer Mountain.
Even under a sunny August sky last year, it exuded power rather than beauty. Daoud, a local guide, led us across a glacier to alpine meadows on the flanks of the mountain. Along the way, we encountered a group of teenage schoolgirls, wearing headscarves but not veils, who fled laughing at the sight of our cameras.
Daoud kept up a fast pace and we were happy when he flopped down in the shade after about 90 minutes. He was a bit of a jokester and laughed a lot. He told us he had worked at a Chinese restaurant in Islamabad and was looking forward to returning to the capital in the fall. Despite the stunning scenery, opportunities to make a living were few and far between in Tarashing.
The Nanga Parbat Hotel, which had the best location in town with an unobstructed view of the eastern face of the mountain, was on the simple side. There seemed to be only one (cold-water) tap in the courtyard, near the pit toilets. I could see through the chinks in the plank walls of our room and was glad for the plentiful blankets through the cold mountain night.
Night, however, also provided a spectacular view of the mountain. There was a clear sky and a full moon. The white mountain was like a great iceberg glowing in the darkness.
The next morning we climbed deeper into the Himalayas, finally emerging on the otherworldly Deosai Plain, 4,500 metres above sea level. Nawaz stopped the Jeep beside a hummocky hill and said that if we climbed it, we’d get a view of K-2, the second tallest mountain in the world. We jumped out of the Jeep and began to climb but after only a few steps were gasping for breath. Despite the thin air, it felt as though I was moving through some thick liquid. Still, at the top of the hill, there was K-2 and its neighbour, Broad Peak. Nawaz casually mentioned that he ran treks to K-2 base camp. The crème de la crème of Pakistan treks, he said, planting a seed in our minds.
Deosai looked rather like Arctic tundra, a green, treeless, plain pocked with crystalline pools and freezing streams. Our destination was a “seasonal hotel” — basically a group of tents. We washed in a glacial stream and the “toilet” was a snow-filled gully. It was filled with other stuff, as well — you had to watch your step.
We dined in a big army-type tent with a colourful carpet on the floor. Our supper consisted of chicken — live chickens are trucked in and they live in cages before going to their fate. I saw the guts and feet of our bird by the river the following morning when I went down to wash. (Face it, you don’t get this kind of adventure in the First World.)
We bedded down early, fully clothed, inside sleeping bags and covered with blankets, as the temperature dropped sharply after the sun went down. Nawaz and Rahim, our driver, slept in the Jeep, which by morning was coated with frost.
Inevitably, we woke in the night and stepped outside the tent. The moon still was almost full and at this altitude blazing white, so bright it was casting shadows.
While the appeal of Nanga Parbat and Deosai is their majesty and desolation, the Khyber Pass is soaked in bloody history. It is a short drive from Peshawar, so we added a day to our itinerary. Nawaz hired an armed guard who joined us for the trip through the strange bandit country between Peshawar and the Afghan border. All the buildings we passed were fortified and many of the men hopping off pickup trucks had AK-47s slung across their backs. No uniforms, just guns.
We passed the spot where the British army was ambushed in 1842, and a plaque that recorded the passage of invaders from the Aryans (1500 B.C.) to the Mongols (A.D. 1397).
At the top of the pass we stopped and looked down into Afghanistan. It was Aug. 9 last year.
Who knew that a month later war would return to this place and that the mountainous region just to our left, Tora Bora, would become a bombing range?
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