Author name: Ali Mustafa

You are sitting at your desk, passport in hand, looking at photos of Hunza Valley that a colleague just shared — the cerulean blue of Attabad Lake, golden poplar trees in autumn, wide gravel paths running between stone walls and apricot orchards. You want to go. But the question you are actually typing into Google

Picture this: you are standing at the edge of Attabad Lake in northern Pakistan. The water is that particular shade of turquoise that makes you wonder if someone has dyed it. A local family has waved you over from their boat and is pouring tea from a flask without asking whether you want any —

The conversation usually starts the same way. Someone has seen the photos — the turquoise water of Attabad Lake, the ancient stone towers of Baltit Fort, the apricot orchards of Hunza in spring — and they want to go. Then comes the first practical question: “Do I even need a visa?” If you hold a

Nanga Parbat stands at 8,126 metres — the ninth highest mountain in the world and one of the most storied peaks in mountaineering history. To trek to its base camp is to travel through some of the most dramatic high-altitude scenery on earth: deep river gorges, ancient glaciers, pine and birch forests, and then the

Pakistan is a large and geographically varied country, and the best time to visit depends almost entirely on where you plan to go. The north — Hunza, Gilgit-Baltistan, the Karakoram Highway, Skardu — operates on a completely different seasonal calendar from Lahore, Islamabad, and the Punjab plains. The beach towns of the Makran Coast in

Getting a visa to Pakistan is more straightforward than many people expect. The country has significantly simplified its visa process for tourists over the past several years, and most visitors from Western countries, the EU, Australia, Canada, and a range of other nations can now apply online through the official e-visa system rather than going

For a few weeks every spring, the Hunza Valley undergoes a transformation that draws visitors from across Pakistan and increasingly from overseas. The apricot and cherry trees — which line every terraced hillside, irrigation channel, and village edge in the valley — come into bloom, and the effect is unlike almost anything else you will

Hunza gets asked about more than almost anywhere else in Pakistan, and the question people ask most often is: when should I go? The honest answer is that there is no single best time — there are several good times, each with a different character. What the best time to visit Hunza actually means depends

Skardu sits at 2,228 metres in a broad valley carved by the Indus River, surrounded on all sides by mountain ranges that include some of the highest peaks on earth. To the north, the Karakoram rises toward K2 and the Baltoro Glacier. To the south, the Deosai Plateau stretches away at over 4,000 metres, one

Pakistan is safe for tourists. That statement will surprise people who have formed their picture of the country from news coverage, and it is worth addressing directly. The gap between what international media reports and what visitors actually experience in Pakistan is one of the largest of any destination in Asia. Hundreds of thousands of