Travel Guide to Gilgit Baltistan

Gilgit-Baltistan (Urdu : ( ) formerly known as the Northern Areas) is the

northernmost political entity under the administrative control of Pakistan. According to
Pakistan's constitution, Gilgit-Baltistan is an autonomous region separate from Pakistan itself,
and its inhabitants have never had any representation in Pakistan's parliament.

Three mountain ranges meet here the Karakoram, the Himalaya, and the Hindu Kush and
the area is a "mountain paradise" for mountaineers, trekkers, and tourists. The region has some of
the world's highest mountains, including five peaks over 8,000 meters, many over 7,000, and the
largest glaciers outside the polar region. For comparison, neither Western Europe nor the lower
48 US states have anything that reaches 5,000 m, nothing anywhere in Russia or North America
is over 6250, and the highest peak of the Andes is just under 7000.

Gilgit-Baltistan is bestowed with some of the greatest bounties of Nature. Tourists from all over
the world have a great attraction toward this region because of its beautiful valleys, plains, peaks
and heritage sites. Location of some of the highest mountains on Earth including K-2. Trekking
to Concordia (the confluence of the Baltoro Glacier and the Godwin-Austen Glacier) and the
great Baltoro Muztagh, a sub-range of the Karakoram.

Understand[edit]

Rakaposhi in the Nagar Valley

Gilgit, now the administrative center of this region, was an important city on the Silk Road KKH
(Karakoram Highway), through which Buddhism was spread from India to the rest of Asia. A
large number of Sanskrit Buddhist texts, including the long version of the Heart Sutra have been
unearthed in Gilgit. The Dards and Cizinas also appear in many of the old Pauranic lists of
peoples, with the former finding mention in Ptolemy's accounts of the region. Two famous
travellers, Faxian and Hsuan Tsang, are known to have traversed Gilgit as per their accounts.

Gilgit was ruled for centuries by the local Trakane Dynasty, which came to an end in about 1810.
The area descended into internecine turmoil before being occupied by the Sikhs in 1842. It was
ceded to Jammu in 1846. Gilgit's inhabitants drove their new rulers out in an uprising in 1852.
The Khushwakhte Dynasty of Yasin and Gulapure led the people of Gilgit to drive out the Dogra
rulers. After Yasin was conquered by the Katur Dynasty of Chitral, the power of the
Khushwakhte was crushed. The rule of Jammu was restored in 1860. Gilgit came under British
rule in 1889, when it was unified with neighboring Hunza and Nagar in the Gilgit Agency. When
British rule came to an end in 1947, the region was briefly handed back to the maharaja of
Jammu and Kashmir. Subsequently, it came under Pakistani control. To this day, Gilgit-Baltistan
remains part of the Kashmir dispute and India considers it a Pakistani-occupied part of the Indian
state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Gilgit-Baltistan covers an area of 72,971 km (28,174 mi) and is extremely mountainous.