Pakistan is both very young and very old. It has only existed as a nation for 77 years, carved out of British India as a homeland for the Muslim minority, but its people and culture go back to the beginnings of human civilisation. The biggest attraction for adventurers, however, are the mountain ranges in the north of the country. Here the Hindu Kush and Karakoram overlap with the western end of the Himalaya and within this area is some of the most spectacular mountain scenery on the planet, including monstrous glaciers, the largest anywhere outside of the polar region. It is a trekkers’ paradise and the Hunza, Shimshal and the Rush Lake Trek is a superb introduction to what this area has to offer.

Recently, Pete, KE’s Customer Services Manager, revisited Pakistan to lead this unique trip. We caught up with him to reflect on his return after many years.

My last trip to Pakistan was over twenty years ago. It’s been 26 years since I last trekked to Rush Lake and it’s 33 years since I was in Shimshal!

Some things have changed - Islamabad has a metro system, Shimshal is now connected to the outside world by a road and there’s a new 20km-long lake in the Hunza Valley which didn’t exist before the landslide of 2010. But by the same token, very little has changed. I encountered the same super-hospitable culture I remembered so fondly and in the more rural areas, things looked pretty much as they did twenty odd years ago.

I met up with many people during this trip - former colleagues, old friends and several people who came with me on trips as young lads, now working as guides and cooks. It seemed like almost every day I bumped into someone I knew or who knew me and it was great to see them all again.

A personal highlight for me was a return to Shimshal. When I first travelled there in 1991, it was a pretty arduous 3-day journey on foot just to reach the village. Now it is a fascinating and highly scenic 4 hour road trip. One of the ‘young lads’ I trekked with back in ‘91, Hassil Shah, turned out to be the owner of the hotel where KE stay in Shimshal! It was an emotional reunion.

The Hunza, Shimshal and the Rush Lake Trek is a gem. It offers a great variety of scenery, from the cathedral-like towers and spires of Passu, to the snowy peaks of Rakaposhi, Ultar, Distigil Sar, Spantik and even a distant view of K2. It is a trip of two parts: the first part is a grand tour of the valleys, villages and forts of Hunza, Nagar and Shimshal, which means we gradually acclimatise to the altitude. The second part is a 6-day trek to the uniquely situated Rush Lake, perched on a ridge between the great glaciers of the Hispar and Barpu valleys. The trek itself is also very varied. You will cross glaciers, follow delightful, green ablation valleys, climb to 5,000m and pass through a rural idyll on trails used by shepherds to take their flocks from village to high pasture. For the magnificent in-your-face scenery, the variety of the trekking, and the getting away-from-the-madding-crowd, this trip is hard to beat.