Into the Mighty North - preparing for our Pakistan adventure

Preface

As with many other destinations, Pakistan’s Karakoram Highway has been on my wish list for a number of years. In 2011 we travelled a stretch of the famed route, the highest paved international road in the world, from Kashgar in China towards Pakistan to Kara Kul Lake. We needed to register with the police and obtain a special permit in order to do so. The scenery along the road was stunning, further fuelling my desire to travel along the ‘main’ part of the KKH, as it is known, in Pakistan.

View along the Karakoram Highway from the Chinese side taken on our trip in 2011

This year (2025), is the time to fulfil this long-held dream, travelling on a private bespoke trip arranged by Undiscovered Destinations.

The KKH runs from Hasan Abdal in Pakistan to Kashgar in China. The green line is the section where we travelled in 2011, and the blue is the part of the Karakoram Highway that we will be following this year.

Pre-trip preparations

Some six weeks before departure, we make an appointment with Nomad Travel Clinic in Bristol to check what inoculations we may need for the trip. They recommend going to our local health centre for the boosters we require for Typhoid and Cholera, as the NHS is contractually obliged to provide those for free. All we take away from Nomad today is some malaria prophylaxis.

We are travelling right through the High Risk area on the road to Gilgit.

Our local GP surgery prove less than helpful, however, insisting that they cannot do it with less than ten weeks to go before a trip. We have six. I have since heard from several people who have encountered similar obstacles from the NHS in other parts of the UK, not just our practice. The general consensus of opinion is that staff are told to put up as many obstacles as possible in the hope that we will go elsewhere to obtain the vaccines rather than from the NHS. My advice is to approach your GP surgery at least three months before travel, giving them fewer excuses as to why they cannot provide the inoculations.

From our local health centre's website

Conflicting advice on the generic NHS website

According to the government's foreign travel section on their website, we are at a high risk for typhoid, so it is worth paying for it privately.

Thankfully, Nomad has no shortage of appointments, and we are able to get in with the same delightful nurse the very next day. She is able to provide us with some protection against both Typhoid and Cholera, and gives us strict instructions not to brush our teeth in tap water (take note of that, David!). On their advice, we decide against topping up our Rabies vaccine (which is also out of date), but instead they suggest we resist the temptation to stroke or play with stray cats and dogs we come across on our travels. We walk away from the Nomad clinic £250 poorer. Thanks, NHS!

Flash Floods 21st July

While researching some of the places we will be visiting, I come across a news story detailing an awful catastrophe in an area we will be travelling through on the Karakoram Highway (KKH). Cloudbursts, followed by flash floods have washed away fifteen tourist cars, buried several villages, with landslides eroding the KKH in over a dozen places. Six people have been killed, fifteen people are still missing and 250 tourists have been left stranded. Many families have lost their homes and livelihoods, not to mention their lives, making me feel incredibly selfish for worrying how this disaster will affect our trip.

Screen prints from news reports

The Karakoram Highway is the only road to this remote part of Pakistan. There is another route that bypasses the area, meeting up with the KKH further north. Unfortunately, this road is specifically mentioned by name on the Foreign Office ‘Do not travel’ list, which would render our insurance invalid should we choose to travel that way. The reality of the situation is that if the KKH is not repaired and re-opened by the time we leave, the trip will have to be cancelled.

Screen Print from the FCDO website

Blue shows our route (we are travelling from Hasan Abdal to Passu), the red circle is the affected area, and the purple shows the alternative route bypassing the disaster zone, but which is not considered safe.

More troubles in the area

While searching online for more information about the disaster, I come across this article, which happened a couple of weeks earlier.

Also this:

And this, which highlights the problems you might encounter on what has been dubbed the ‘World’s Most Dangerous Road’.

I consider myself as a bit of an adrenalin junky (albeit our adventures being on the soft side these days), and the scaremongering in the article (and some YouTube videos I also found), only adds to my excitement, rather than put me off. To be fair, the KKH does not look any worse than the roads on the other side of the border, in Indian Administered Kashmir, where we travelled extensively in 2013.

Some photos of the roads in Indian Ladakh in 2013

6th August 2025 - checking out visa requirements

Although it is still 28 days before we go, I thought I'd check out the visa application for Pakistan to see what we need. They helpfully provide a 43-page PDF about how to complete the application

That should have been the first red flag.

Not only do they want a list of the places we will be visiting in Pakistan, the name, place, and date of birth of my parents; but they also want to know details of the countries we have visited in the last three years: the country, date of entry, how many nights, and the places we visited within each country.

Of every single one of the 26 countries we have visited in the last three years, two of which we have been to twice, and another three times.

There are times I am grateful for keeping all my documents from previous trips. But even so... I think I will start early filling in this.

11th August 2025 – Applying for Visa

I feel ready to tackle the Visa application today, as I think I have all the information they want, so I create an account on their portal. After receiving an email, I verify that account, and a message pops up with a QR code that needs to be scanned with an Authentication app. The first app I try doesn’t work, whereas the second one does. I am, however too slow in typing in the code from the app, and by the time I finish typing it in, it has changed on the app, and I have to do it again. After confirming that I am a human by entering their Captcha Code, I am finally in.

David’s account proves to be a little more tricky. Despite having eight characters as suggested in the very helpful application guide, the system refuses to accept it. Only after discovering that eight characters should really be twelve, do we get somewhere.

The guide says eight characters, the form wants twelve.

As for scanning the QR code, David has to do it five times before it accepts his Authenticator app. Finally we are both in.

An announcement on the top of the page explains that a simplified version of the form has been implemented for applicants of 120 countries, including Norway and UK. This means that the list of countries / places I have compiled is not required as it has been greyed out on the form. So has details of previous occupations, bank account details, blood group, religion, native languages, and the details of every place we will be visiting while in Pakistan. Yay! That saves me a lot of time.

They want to know where we are staying, the name of the hotel, address and telephone number. As we are touring, we will be using twelve different hotels, but they only have one box. I google the details from the first hotel.

All goes well until it comes to the page where we need to upload photos, passports and any other supporting evidence (which in my case is my right to reside in the UK). I try to upload the latter, but the system rejects it, and tells me that the maximum number of uploads have been exceeded, despite nothing being uploaded yet.

When I attempt another upload, the system hangs. After a few minutes, I am left with no choice but to ‘kiss it goodnight’ (close it by using the X in the top right corner). I try to sign in again, but it tells me I’m already logged in.

I log out of all sessions, and try again. The password and authenticator code go well, but the Captcha Code is difficult to read. I fail. Twice.

I am finally in, but the delight is short lived, as I get this message:

I log out and back in again (password, QR Code, Captcha code) and try uploading some photos again. Passport fine, supporting evidence fine. Photograph: Image not suitable. I refer to the guide to see where I have gone wrong. In my opinion, my photo looks fine (other than the fact that it is a dreadful photo of me), but obviously they are not happy with it.

The Upload Guide offers a useful tool (with another Captcha scenario, of course) for verifying your photo. I try it.

It fails. After trying all sorts of things, David suggests that maybe the background is not white enough. I try removing any colour cast and lightening the image until I look like I am on death’s door. It finally accepts it.

Or so I am (wrongly) informed. Apparently, it is too small, despite being slightly larger than the dimensions suggested in the guide.

I re-size it in Photoshop. Apparently now it is too big. As you can see, according to Photoshop, it is within the range.

I take a deep breath and try to suppress my growing frustration. Re-sizing it in a different way within Photoshop, the system finally agrees with me, and I am good to go! Phew!

Now it is David’s turn. Having learned how to do the re-sizing to their ‘standard’, I am confident his photo will be accepted first time.

Really?

I try making David’s face darker and the background lighter.

Can you see the difference? The one on the left is the unacceptable one, the one on the right is fine

This works, and we can both submit our applications!

Fingers crossed we get the visas! While there should be no reason why not, it is always a slightly worrying time.

11th August 2025 – Visa Approval

Less than 24 hours after submitting the visa application, I receive an email to say it has been approved. That’s pretty impressive in anyone’s book, especially as yesterday was a Sunday!

I follow the link to download and print the visa. The first hurdle:

The next issue is that it doesn’t like my Authenticator code. It does this three times.

When I finally get through to the next stage, it yet again tells me that I am already logged in. I am not.

When I finally get through to the next stage, it yet again tells me that I am already logged in. I am not. After yet again logging out and back in again, I come across another obstacle: It doesn’t like my Captcha code.

Then it tells me that I need a password, despite the password being there and correct.

On the third attempt it lets me through, and I am finally in the correct portal where I can download my approved visa.

Receiving the visa means we are one more step nearer the trip!

15th August 2025

Pakistan hit the BBC six o’clock news today, as a result of more cloudbursts, and more landslides.

My heart sinks when David tells me, and I go online to find out more details: Five of the affected areas are places we plan to visit: Ghizer Valley, Khaplu, Skardu, Gilgit, Satpara, and Hassanabad. Twelve people have died in the region, several houses have been washed away, tourists are stranded yet again as roads are closed, and power / drinking water has been cut off.

My heart goes out to all those affected, and I realise we have to be flexible and expect that changes to our itinerary may well well happen.

This is the road we are due to take

It's not looking good

The 7th September is the date we arrive in the area

23rd August 2025

And there is more. Yesterday saw a glacial burst in Gilgit-Baltistan, blocking the Ghizer River. A lake measuring 2,000 feet long and more than 50 metres wide has emerged as a result of the flood debris, due to which the Gilgit-Chitral Road is still closed.

The lake has started discharging water according to the online news I am reading, meaning the threat of a burst is receding, but flash floods in downstream districts cannot be ruled out until the lake is completely cleared.

According to the Dawn online paper:
“Hundreds of people in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) have fallen victim to water-borne diseases owing to a severe shortage of clean drinking water following devastating floods in the region, government data showed on Thursday.

On Wednesday, a glacial lake outburst flood (Glof) swept away part of the Karakoram Highway (KKH), while on Tuesday evening, a powerful torrent surged through the Juchar nullah in Gulmit, Gojal, and Hunza, triggered by accelerated glacier melt."

"Another senior nurse, Zaffar Abbas, said he sees around 20 to 25 patients daily who are suffering from water-borne diseases, adding that this has been an issue for weeks.

“We often stay open till 2am due to the influx of people coming to private clinics since government hospitals have run out of medicines,” he said."

Things were looking a little better a few days ago.

25th August 2025

The danger has now apparently now eased off, according to the paper.

That is great news for the people whose livelihoods, homes, and lives were at risk, and selfishly, also for our holiday, of course. The constant “Is it on? “Is it off?” is beginning to affect my stress levels. I shall be glad when we are on that plane out of Heathrow, as then what happens will be in the lap of the weather-gods.

Stay tuned to see how it turns out.