$6 Jet Ski in Hunza Valley, Pakistan 🇵🇰

A morning at Attabad Lake in upper Hunza Valley with Mac and the guides — jet skis, then a boat, in about 2°C.

The scenery is the draw and the history is the substance: the lake is only twelve years old. A landslide on 4 January 2010 blocked the river, the water backed up over the valley floor, and a village went under. You can still see its trees and buildings from the boat. Everything on the shoreline now exists because of that.

It is also the video where Harry states the change in his own picture of the country most plainly: he had no idea Pakistan was even cold, let alone that it had snow-capped mountains and a lake this colour.

Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles; figures the transcript leaves ambiguous are marked unverified. The tour operator whose booking links appear in the description is not named.

Key moments

• [01:03] About 2°C, and pleasant with the sun on it.
• [01:33] The drowned village — trees standing out of the water, buildings in the silt, from the 2010 landslide.
• [02:04] The colour, which he gives up trying to describe: somewhere between green and turquoise.
• [02:35] A traveller from Syria on the shore, and the surprise on both sides at three weeks in Pakistan.
• [03:17] 1,000 rupees, about $6–7 for the jet ski. First time on one in winter.
• [03:49] Nobody has measured the lake, so the depth isn’t known — which he raises while contemplating falling in.
• [04:52] Calm water means no bouncing and easy speed, unlike the sea. His hands go numb almost immediately.
• [06:01] What the trip changed for him: he had no idea Pakistan was cold, had mountains, had snow, had lakes like this.
• [06:32] The jet ski breaks down and he goes in the water, minutes after saying he did not want to. He takes it as cold-water therapy.
• [07:33] A local puts the depth at about 15 m, contradicting the earlier claim (from video – unverified; neither figure is settled on camera).
• [09:10] The lake is only ten years old, as he keeps repeating in disbelief.
• [10:10] Boat next: 4,000 rupees for 20–25 minutes, split five ways. The first boat won’t start; the replacement is a quiet electric one.
• [12:11] In summer the boats are all taken and you queue — the concrete argument for coming in winter.
• [12:42] Harry drives it, for the first time in his life, and finds the steering badly delayed.
• [13:42] Before the lake there was no highway, and upper Hunza was reached by boat. The Chinese-built road with its seven minutes of tunnels came after the 2010 disaster.
• [14:15] Flying the drone off a moving boat, which he calls risky while listing what could go wrong.
• [16:19] The date the river was blocked: 4 January 2010 — and the guide’s point that the disaster is what brought tourism to the area.
• [16:19] The shoreline restaurants, Chinese food and pizza among them, are shut for the winter.

Extracted pages

• Attabad Lake
• Hunza Valley
• Pakistan
• Mac
• Akram