It was a 5.30 am departure for the team from the hotel for the 14 hour drive to Chilas, along the Karakoram Highway (KKH). Luckily rain and cool weather made the bone jarring journey more bearable. As the day progressed, the journey took us through an increasingly, dry, barren and inhospitable desert. The KKH is truly an amazing engineering feat, carved out of cliff faces thousands of metres high as it snakes its way to Gilgit and Skardu just above the valley floor.
We arrived in Chilas at around 8pm, a welcome stop after a long day.