Seven days in Hunza, planned properly.

Hunza is a valley, not a circuit. The mistake in most itineraries is treating each named place as a separate day trip from a fixed hotel, which means driving the same forty kilometres of Karakoram Highway six times.

This plan moves you up the valley once and back once. It also builds in one day with nothing scheduled, because at some point the weather or the road will take a day from you and it is better to lose a spare than a booked one.

If you fly, you land in Gilgit in the morning or not at all. Take the two and a half hour drive up to Karimabad the same day, with a stop at Rakaposhi viewpoint. You gain nothing by sleeping in Gilgit.

Stay in Karimabad rather than Aliabad. Karimabad is the old town on the slope with the forts and the view down the valley; Aliabad is the working town on the highway. The difference matters for four nights.

Baltit fort in the morning, Altit fort and the old settlement after lunch, the water channel walk in between. All of it on foot, none of it needing a vehicle.

This is the acclimatisation day people skip. You are at 2,440 m and going higher later in the week.

North on the KKH: Attabad lake and the tunnels, then Gulmit, then the Passu cones. The Hussaini suspension bridge is ten minutes off the highway and takes as long as your nerve allows.

Sleep in Passu or Gulmit tonight, not Karimabad. It saves two hours of driving tomorrow and puts you closer to the pass.

Leave by seven. Sost, the park gate, then the climb to 4,693 m. The pass has a gate with closing hours and turning back at the gate in the afternoon is the most common wasted day in upper Hunza.

Come down the same day and sleep in Passu again. Do not plan a hike this evening. You have gained and lost two thousand metres in a day.

Drive back to Karimabad in the morning. In the late afternoon take a jeep up to Duiker for sunset. It is a rough forty minutes and a car will not do it.

If you want the famous sunrise instead, that means leaving Karimabad around four in the morning. Pick one. Doing both in twelve hours is how people ruin the last two days of a trip.

Hoper glacier and Nagar across the valley, or Borith lake above Gulmit, or nothing at all in Karimabad with a book.

This is also the day that absorbs a landslide, a closed pass or a cancelled flight without breaking the plan. Keep it empty on paper.

Two and a half hours down to Gilgit. If you are flying, take the morning slot and accept that a cancellation means an overnight in Gilgit.

If you are continuing to Skardu instead, do not do it from Karimabad in one day. Sleep in Gilgit and leave for Skardu before six the next morning.

A private car with a captain for the Gilgit–Karimabad legs is PKR 6,500 each way. The Khunjerab day trip from Passu or Karimabad is PKR 14,000 return in a car. Duiker needs a jeep, around PKR 6,000 for the evening run.

Booking one vehicle and captain for the whole week usually works out cheaper than seven separate arrangements, and it means the same person knows where you are going next.