Hiking & Trekking Tours & Trips in Pakistan

Had the most amazing adventure of a lifetime on the K2 Base Camp & Gondogoro La Pass Trek, did this back in August. If you're a mountain and/or nature lover and can handle some tough camp living, technical terrain and high altitude, this is the trek for you! I've done the Everest Base Camp Trek and the Annapurna Circuit/Base Camp Treks before and this tops them both. Ajmal, Majid and the rest of the team at Exploria were awesome in their communications with me and handling all the planning, admin and logistical details despite some challenges on the ground that were totally out of their control, such as weather events like rain, landslides and flooding (this is mountain country after all). I also requested for some extra days to explore the Hunza region as well as a couple of days in Lahore, however due to some social unrest and as mentioned before rain, flooding and landslides, things didn't go exactly according to plan. The team put my safety and wellbeing above all else. In the end I did get to see most of the Hunza region and they put me up at a really (really) nice place to stay (The 2 Magpies) for the few nights I was there, loved it there. My excursion to Lahore didn't materialise also due to bad weather which caused me to be stranded in Skardu, but they did manage to make up for this with the time that I had remaining to explore Islamabad, Rawalpindi and the ancient ruins of Taxila. I was really happy with the guides I had, Rashid in Hunza and Abdullah for Islamabad. They really made me feel like having a friend show me around their hometowns with their warm and friendly personalities. If there's anything I can complain about, it would be the two guides (one head guide and one assistant guide) I had on the trek itself, Exploria subcontracted the guiding of the trek to another company called Apricot Tours (this is at least from my personal experience), all my other trekking team mates booked their trek directly with Apricot Tours. Anyhow, the two guides would bring up the topic of tipping often (maybe on a daily basis). As customers (and all of us have a lot of experience travelling), we are all very familiar with the concept of tipping, so it was a bit annoying and uncomfortable having them remind us of this constantly. They just made it a bigger deal than it needed to be. On the topic of tipping, there must be a better way of distributing the tips we give out. As with any multi-day supported trek, there's a team behind us with each team member having a role to play from the guides to the head porters, porters, head cook, secondary cook, etc. All in all, there were about 40 support crew to the 11 of us. Each of them would get a different percentage of the total amount we would tip according to their roles. Some of the crew where in the forefront of supporting us, while others supporting in the background weren't so obvious and we felt that these guys could easily miss out. In the end the 11 of us all put our tips into a pool of money and gave it to the head guide with instructions on how much to handout to each member. To make it even more complicated, there were four of us, me included that went on to do the Gondogoro La Pass while the rest of the trekking group returned the same way we came. This meant splitting the support crew accordingly too, to cater to those of us that would do the Pass and crew for the rest of the trekking group. We had the assistant guide take us and we would finish the trek at different locations and so the tip money went back the same way with the head guide while we didn't have money left to tip the guys that came with us over the pass. This caused some confusion (due to some lack of communication from the head guide to these guys) and they thought they weren't going to be tipped. I was most dissatisfied with the assistant guide as he was the one that talked about tipping the most. Not only that, he would often leave the slowest trekkers of the group behind rushing ahead and not waiting for them. I often found myself stopping and waiting where it should be him that takes the initiative, it just felt really unprofessional. Despite these complaints, they are a very minor thing when looking at the overall big picture of my trip to Pakistan and the Karakorams (nothing is perfect right)? The Gilgit-Baltistan Region of Pakistan, in my humble opinion has to be the most beautiful and spectacular places on this planet. If you’re able to, I highly recommend you visit and Exploria made this happen for me!

I had a wonderful trip with Rock Valley Tours Pvt Ltd. The whole trip is enjoyable. Both our guide Manzoor and driver Qasim are friendly and helpful. During the trip, we faced a small scale landslide which blocked our road. Manzoor and some other locals worked hard to clean up and resumed the traffic, so that we did not need to turn back and can go as scheduled.

This was a truly magical adventure. Hunza has some of the most beautiful landscapes, but what really makes it special are the people. I've never felt so welcomed in a place before, nor have I ever seen such towering mountains, that too so close to camp. I had my reservations about traveling in Pakistan as a woman, but I was so, so wrong. I felt safe and well looked after the whole trip. I'm definitely coming back!