Road Trip to HUNZA VALLEY🇵🇰 (Part 1)

A 6am start out of Swat for what they are told is a ten-to twelve-hour drive north up the Karakoram Highway to the Hunza Valley, with Mac, their guide Akram 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.

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
• Swat
• Hunza Valley
• Pakistan
• Mac
• Akram