---
type: Video
title: "Road Trip to HUNZA VALLEY🇵🇰 (Part 1)"
description: 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.
tags: [pakistan, swat, hunza-valley, road-trip, checkpoints, security, police-escort, food]
timestamp: 2026-08-06T12:00:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqKoCynRol8
video_id: gqKoCynRol8
upload_date: 2022-01-03
duration: 1135
---

# Road Trip to HUNZA VALLEY🇵🇰 (Part 1)

A 6am start out of [Swat](/places/swat.md) for what they are told is a ten-to
twelve-hour drive north up the
[Karakoram Highway](/places/karakoram-highway.md) to the
[Hunza Valley](/places/hunza-valley.md), with
[Mac](/people/mac.md), their guide [Akram](/people/akram.md) and a driver who
does the whole route without navigation. It is the longest road trip Harry has
ever done.

Half the video is landscape — the valley, the river, the first snow-capped
mountains he has ever seen in his life — and the other half is **the security
apparatus of the route**, which turns out to be the story. A stop they take for
routine turns into an armed police escort, and once one district hands them to
the next it does not stop. Harry's reaction is neither alarm nor bravado: he
says repeatedly that he doesn't know why they need it, that the officers are
kind, and that it is unsettling mostly because it is unexplained. The
explanation arrives the next day, in
[Part 2](/videos/zqErq9nNY7w.md).

*Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles; place names along the
route are rendered inconsistently and are given here only where the transcript
is legible. The tour operator whose booking links appear in the description is
not named; the guide is, because Harry publishes his Instagram and recommends
him directly.*

## Key moments

- [00:31] **Ten to twelve hours** is the estimate. Harry has never done a road
  trip longer than a run to Belgium.
- [01:35] Breakfast on the road: **paratha with yoghurt**, which he notes is
  what everyone else in the place is eating, and *crack chai* poured from vats
  of milk. He and Mac have been skipping breakfast lately and eating twice a
  day, because of the desserts.
- [04:08] **The driver runs the entire route with no navigation** — Harry, who
  says he can't drive an hour from his own house without a sat nav, is visibly
  impressed.
- [05:10] Schooling is compulsory here, same as at home; there are children
  walking to school all along the road.
- [05:40] **The first police checkpoint**, and the first snow-capped mountains
  Harry has ever seen.
- [07:57] **The officers give them biscuits and chai** while the control room is
  called for clearance. This is the tone of every checkpoint on the route.
- [08:29] Crossing into the next district. Harry credits the guides for getting
  them through: *I definitely don't think we could have done it without them.*
- [08:29] **The stop is not routine.** They are told they will be escorted
  through this town for their own security — two men and a driver, AK-47s
  visible — and that another escort will take over at the far side.
- [09:31] Escorted through, and released the moment they clear the town. Then
  the next one starts.
- [10:01] His honest reading of it: the landscape is peaceful and **the security
  is the only thing that isn't**.
- [10:32] Convoys of **timber trucks**, which he takes as the local export, and
  the painted decoration on all of them.
- [10:32] **Besham**, a town in the lower valley sheltered by the mountains, and
  a chai break spent making friends with a goat.
- [13:44] Another valley, another escort handover — **and they say he may fly
  the drone.** He asks; they are happy for him to. It is the first time he has
  ever flown anywhere like this.
- [15:28] Lunch at a spot in the mountains with almost no buildings, a beach on
  a river the colour of teal, and a waterfall a truck driver is using as a car
  wash. Harry's line: who would want the Maldives.
- [17:34] The meal is oily and, unusually for him to note approvingly, not spicy
  at all.

## Extracted pages

- [Karakoram Highway](/places/karakoram-highway.md)
- [Swat](/places/swat.md)
- [Hunza Valley](/places/hunza-valley.md)
- [Pakistan](/countries/pakistan.md)
- [Mac](/people/mac.md)
- [Akram](/people/akram.md)