I Can’t believe this is Pakistan 🇵🇰

Three stops in upper Hunza Valley with Mac — the ruins of a hilltop fort above Attabad Lake, a 400-year-old house in what he is told is the oldest settlement in the valley, and the carpet workshop next door to it — then a local-food dinner for five that costs $10.

The thread running under all of it is longevity. The guesthouse owner had told him the night before that people here live unusually long, and gives the reasons: organic food, yak that eats nothing but grass, and a working life spent active. His own grandmother is 97 and, he says, fully capable. Harry adds a theory of his own on top, about cold exposure, and puts it to the audience.

Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles. The longevity claims are recorded as what the guesthouse owner and Harry each say, not as established fact; nothing in the video sources them beyond one family’s account.

Key moments

• [00:32] He recommends taking a guide in Hunza and links the ones he used.
• [01:02] You can drive to the viewpoint or walk it in about an hour. They drive, and he explains why: they are filming so much every day there isn’t time, not that they’re lazy.
• [01:32] The sun goes down around 2:30pm here in winter, because of where the mountains sit.
• [02:02] Even after driving it is a ten-minute climb, and the layering problem — cold one minute, too warm the next, in four layers.
• [02:32] There was a fort up here, used for defence because of the height. It is no longer standing because nothing was preserved and it took a lot of damage; he is told it was about 100 years old (from video – unverified).
• [03:02] The defence was rolling stones down at anyone coming up the hill.
• [04:46] The view that gives the video its title: the valley, the river running into Attabad Lake, two small villages, and the Chinese-built highway of 2010.
• [05:54] Why he flies the drone — a bird’s-eye view shows where you are in a way that pointing a camera cannot.
• [06:26] He asks viewers to subscribe to Mac’s channel and his Pakistan playlist.
• [06:26] Walnuts of a type found only in Hunza, handed over fresh.
• [07:03] Every season has its case. Winter is quieter and has its own charm; spring, summer and autumn are green and warm.
• [07:33] The longevity account, from the guesthouse owner: life expectancy here is far above most of the world because the food is organic and fresh — yak eats only grass — and because people stay physically active with farm work. His grandmother is 97 and fully capable.
• [08:36] Harry’s own addition, offered as his rather than the owner’s: cold exposure improves the immune system, he takes a cold shower every day at home, and the combination of that with organic food and an active life extends your life. He asks the audience whether they do any of it. See use cold exposure and breathwork.
• [09:07] The honest caveat: he has eaten badly across this trip — desserts and fast food — and is healthier at home.
• [10:09] A 400-year-old house in the valley’s oldest settlement, now kept for visitors rather than lived in.
• [10:39] The doors are deliberately small so that you bow going in, which is a mark of respect — the same as at the two forts.
• [11:10] One room was for storing dried apricots.
• [12:18] The mud construction insulates: cool inside in summer.
• [12:49] The carpet workshop next door — rugs woven by hand on a loom, several people working the same piece at once, the thread dyed by hand.
• [13:20] About fifteen days to make one rug.
• [14:58] A handmade wallet, 1,000 rupees — six or seven dollars.
• [15:59] Dinner at a local-food place named after the mountain tea drunk here.
• [16:37] Hunza bread, crisp and hard, which he puts closest to a croissant.
• [17:08] The soup again — noodles, vegetables and the local cottage cheese, stronger in this version than the night before.
• [18:16] A very thin filled flatbread with cottage cheese and vegetables, which he explains to the table as a quesadilla and then has to explain what a quesadilla is.
• [19:23] Not spicy, again, and again he counts that as a virtue.
• [19:53] 1,400 rupees for five people — about $10.

Extracted pages

• Attabad Lake
• Hunza Valley
• Pakistan
• Mac
• Akram
• Use cold exposure and breathwork