Person
Akram
Harry's guide for the seven-day northern Pakistan tour in January 2022, from Swat up to Hunza and the Chinese border.
Akram
Akram (Instagram: @akramposh_) is the guide who arranged Harry and Mac’s custom tour of northern Pakistan, including the Hunza Valley. Harry credits him warmly — “we honestly couldn’t have done it without him” — and recommends him for booking northern Pakistan tours.
He joins them in Islamabad on 1 January 2022 and stays with them for a week, starting with the drive up to Swat. He is the source for most of what the bundle records about the region’s recent history — that Swat was under Taliban control from 2007 to 2009, and that the Buddhist site above the town was damaged during it — and Harry’s verdict on the first day is that without him they would have been “running around like headless chickens”. When Harry lost a drone in the river at Hussaini Bridge, Akram put out a public appeal for its return and said without hesitation that whoever found it would hand it back.
He brings Harry and Mac home for dinner at the end of the northern week, which is where most of what the bundle records about domestic life in the valley comes from. His father holds a Guinness World Record for the largest blue sheep taken, and is a well-known hunter locally.
Appears in
- First Impressions of SWAT, Pakistan 🇵🇰
- Delicious Food Tour in SWAT, Pakistan 🇵🇰
- Road Trip to HUNZA VALLEY🇵🇰 (Part 1)
- We Had 19 Police Escorts - Hunza Road Trip🇵🇰 (Part 2)
- First Impressions of HUNZA VALLEY, Pakistan 🇵🇰
- $8 Designer Shoes in Northern Pakistan 🇵🇰
- Crazy Glacier in Hunza Valley🇵🇰
- $80 Northern Pakistan Homestay 🇵🇰
- $6 Jet Ski in Hunza Valley, Pakistan 🇵🇰
- I Can’t believe this is Pakistan 🇵🇰
- I Had an Accident at the Most Dangerous Bridge in Pakistan 🇵🇰
- -20 Degrees at the China - Pakistan Border 🇵🇰
- The Pakistan the Media Does Not Show You 🇵🇰
- Travelling on the 2nd Most Deadly Road in the World
Videos featuring Akram
Video
$6 Jet Ski in Hunza Valley, Pakistan 🇵🇰
A day on Attabad Lake — a $6 jet ski that breaks down and drops him in near-freezing water, a boat he ends up driving, and the drowned village still visible under a lake that is only twelve years old.
Video
I Had an Accident at the Most Dangerous Bridge in Pakistan 🇵🇰
Crossing the Hussaini suspension bridge at −5°C, losing a drone in the river on the far side, and a hand-beaten coffee from a stand that has been there since 2017.
Video
Delicious Food Tour in SWAT, Pakistan 🇵🇰
An evening walk through Swat's bazaar — trade districts, sugarcane pressed to order, a bakery of shortbread biscuits, and dinner for two in a heated tin hut for $4.50.
Video
I Can't believe this is Pakistan 🇵🇰
A ruined hilltop fort above Attabad Lake, a 400-year-old house in Hunza's oldest settlement, a hand-loom carpet workshop, and dinner for five for $10 — plus the local account of why people here live so long.
Video
Road Trip to HUNZA VALLEY🇵🇰 (Part 1)
The first half of the twelve-hour drive from Swat to Hunza — chai stops, timber trucks, and the point where routine checkpoints turn into armed police escorts handed over town by town.
Video
Crazy Glacier in Hunza Valley🇵🇰
A short hike to a viewpoint over Hopar Glacier, reached by a barely-there cliff road — plus the answer to whether Hunza is worth visiting in winter, and the best breakfast Mac had in Pakistan.
Video
The Pakistan the Media Does Not Show You 🇵🇰
Dinner at his guide's family home in Hunza — molida, apricot oil and a Guinness record on the wall — then an invitation to a village recording studio where self-taught musicians play for twenty people.
Video
First Impressions of HUNZA VALLEY, Pakistan 🇵🇰
Harry and Mac's first full day in Hunza Valley — a dried-fruit breakfast, a historic fort tour, local Hunza food, and a night of traditional music and dancing.
Video
Travelling on the 2nd Most Deadly Road in the World
Twelve hours back down the Karakoram Highway from Hunza to Islamabad — controlled rock blasting, a landslide closure, and Harry and Mac picking their best moments of the whole trip.
Video
First Impressions of SWAT, Pakistan 🇵🇰
The four-hour drive north out of Islamabad to Swat — an ancient Buddhist site the Taliban damaged, a museum that charges to film, and a day spent unable to get cash out of any bank.
Video
$80 Northern Pakistan Homestay 🇵🇰
Two hours further up the valley to a family-run guesthouse in upper Hunza — yak in apricot oil, a heater under the table, and the SIM that finally works after three weeks without data.
Video
-20 Degrees at the China - Pakistan Border 🇵🇰
Two and a half hours up from Hunza to the Khunjerab Pass — $20 to get in, the world's highest ATM, a closed border with no traffic on it, and the coldest Harry has ever been.
Video
$8 Designer Shoes in Northern Pakistan 🇵🇰
A guided tour of an 800-year-old Hunza fort — kings, stone cooking pots and seven peaks from the roof — then a street handyman who fixes a jacket zip and upsells Harry a pair of trainers for $7.
Video
We Had 19 Police Escorts - Hunza Road Trip🇵🇰 (Part 2)
The second half of the drive to Hunza — 21 checkpoints and 19 armed escorts, explained at the end by a Chinese-built hydropower dam, and a fifteen-hour day ending in an unheatable hotel room.
Linked from
- Hunza Valley Place
- Swat Place
- Pakistan Country