For most of its visitors, Skardu is the “gateway” to the Karakoram – the world’s second-highest mountain range.
Arguably, the Karakoram is even more spectacular than the Himalaya; having experienced both, I reckon the Karakoram takes the metaphorical “biscuit”, handsomely.
All fourteen of the world’s “recognised” 8,000 metres+ peaks are in either the Himalaya or Karakoram; my beloved and I have seen at least six of them.
Most of the Karakoram is in Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region.
At 2,230 metres ASL, Skardu’s airport sits just slightly above the bottom of a deep valley.
The pictured tarmac is two metres higher above sea level than is the Australian continent’s highest peak.
At 10.43 am on 15 May 2024, we were more than 2,000 metres below the nearest snow.
We had no need of a jacket – the brilliantly sunny morning’s “shade” temperature was circa 22 degrees.
Had we landed on the very same runway in January, chances are excellent that snowplows would have had to clear the tarmac, with snow blanketing every other solid thing in sight.
An hour after our landing in Skardu, we were enjoying lunch at the Shangrila Resort, circa 18 kilometres away.
Unsurprisingly, “Shangrila” featured a picturesque lake and gardens, overlooked by towering peaks.
To our astonishment, it also featured a substantial, fixed-wing aircraft.
All will be explained in this series’ next chapter.