On the Karakoram Highway

Wednesday 15 October 2025

Breakfast was a car crash today as a coach load of 60 tourists had been allowed to start breakfast early, so by the time we got there, the food had been decimated.  There was nowhere to sit and I ended up with a couple of eggs and JC had cake.  Apparently I got very grumpy.  There have been better starts to the day, but our day immensely improved and turned out to be one of the best days of the trip.

We left Kashgar and drove southwest down the Karakoram Highway (known as KKH).  The KKH stretches 1000 km from Kashgar to Islamabad (Pakistan) and was built in the late 1960s.  Some sections involved numerous rock blasts, men hanging off climbing ropes to construct and sadly ~400 men lost their lives in its construction.  

After 50 km we had a pit stop at Opal village where we picked up freshly baked naan bread which was absolutely delicious (gluten-free me snuck in a few mouthfuls).

We stopped at Oytagh bridge to view the colour mountains.  Unfortunately it’s been highly developed and was overrun by tourists and concrete.  It would have been far more beautiful if they hadn’t built a huge car park as well.

There was an idiot flying a drone to take pictures of his family by hovering the UAV (drone) two metres above everyone’s head.  With my UK CAA head on this annoyed me.  JC had more patience to take photos,  so I slunk around taking random photos including this of oxygen bottles for sale (~£2 each).  These bottles were sold at every site we saw now, since we were now above 3000 m. I question whether half of those who bought them really needed them: even fit looking youngsters were inhaling them. 

We passed through Gez checkpoint with no hassle (our permits were fine).  We were curious at the heavy security for fuel stations.  To enter you had to wait for security to raise the barrier, sometimes using your ID card.  We later found out that all fuel stations in this region had additional security due to an attack which nearly blew one up.  Or you could call it 'close surveillance'.  The mountains started to appear which were entrancing.

Our next stop was the amazing White Sands Lake.  This was again a highly developed tourist attraction and the only way to access it was buy a ticket and follow the crowds.  I loved the entrance culvert lighting - JC less so!

The walkways were heaving with selfie-snapping Chinese but we pushed through to a slightly quieter spot.

By this stage I’d noticed people on yaks in the water having mini photoshoots. “How tacky,” I thought.  Then I decided, to JC’s horror, that it’d be quite a laugh so paid my £3 and climbed on my new friend.  Indeed it was hilarious!  Not just for getting on a yak and entering the lake, but the look on JC’s face.  

Once I’d gone back to sensible-landscape-loving-tourist we continued to absorb the amazing views.

After a massive scrum of between 100-200 women trying to use the toilets (I’d say it had to be seen to be believed, but you probably wouldn’t want to see - needless to say I can hold my own in a toilet queue) we drove on to Karakul Lake.

We had to queue to enter the car park and then our driver bought our tickets.  As usual, this involved giving him our passports (you can’t buy any tickets without one) however this time he returned with just one ticket, a nod and a wink.  Turns out he knew someone… 

Karakul Lake is surrounded by Gongger, Gongger nine peaks and the ‘Father of Glaciers’ Muztaghata.  It was a beautiful spot and improved as we shifted away from the main tourist crowds. 

There was no time for lunch so we snacked on bananas, satsumas, walnuts and dried jujube (Chinese date).  We drove on up Subash Daban (hill) around Muztaghata.

Our tour guide (who was in great contact with us via the driver) suggested an impromptu visit to one of its glaciers.  We took a shuttle bus 12 km then walked ~1 km up to 4680 m. 

It was a tad of an effort, labouring at that height, but we overtook everyone and soon reached the top.  The sun was in just the right place and the glacier shine beautifully.  This section hasn’t been developed sufficiently yet to prevent tourists reaching the toe of the glacier so I went and said hi.

I suspect if we ever came back it would be board-walked off so you couldn’t reach the shore of the glacier lake. 

We were up there as the sun began to set, eg ‘the golden hour’. 

It was now 20:00 and we had a 100 km drive to our hotel in Tashkurgan.  We reached the town at 21:15 and went to eat which took far longer than expected as they seemed to lose JC’s order. We eventually reach our hotel at 22:30.