Group TourSkardu
Skardu, Shigar & Kachura 7-Day Tour
Baltistan at a comfortable pace: the cold desert, both Kachura lakes, Kharpocho Fort and a night inside Shigar Fort.
PKR 61,000PKR 52,000$186 · per person
Baltistan
Skardu
Cold desert, blue lakes, gateway to K2
Why go to Skardu
The capital of Baltistan, sitting where the Shigar river meets the Indus. Sand dunes at 2,200 m, lakes on three sides, and the staging post for every K2 expedition.
Skardu is the strangest-looking town in Pakistan: a cold desert of real sand dunes in a bowl of 5,000 m rock, with the Indus running through it the colour of wet slate. Sarfaranga, the dune field south-west of town, is used for jeep rallies and looks like the Sahara with the Karakoram behind it. Upper Kachura and Shangrila (Lower Kachura) lakes are twenty minutes out, Satpara Lake is the town’s water supply and the road up to Deosai. Above it all sits Kharpocho Fort, built in the sixteenth century by Ali Sher Khan Anchan. Everything that goes to K2, Broad Peak or the Gasherbrums assembles here first.
Don’t miss
- Sarfaranga Cold Desert
- Upper Kachura and Shangrila lakes
- Kharpocho Fort above the Indus
- Manthal Buddha Rock, 8th century
- Satpara Lake and the Deosai road
Common questions
Fly if you can — one hour instead of twenty, and the approach down the Indus gorge is one of the great scenic flights. But PIA Skardu flights cancel readily for weather, so we build every fly-in trip with a road contingency.
Eighteen to twenty-two hours via the Karakoram Highway and the Skardu road, usually broken with a night at Chilas. The Skardu road along the Indus was rebuilt and is now fully metalled.
Tours to Skardu
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