After a few days in the small town of Gilgit, where we relaxed a little bit and did some work on the bikes, we continued our journey in order to see more of Karakorum. First we went to Skardu, on a spectacular road high above the mighty, wild, and brow-coloured Indus River – an impressive sight. But a real adventure was awaiting us when we crossed the Deosai Plains, south of Skardu.

The Deosai Plains are a high plateau with an altitude of continuously more than 4000 m. There are Brown Bears, Snow leopards, and Marmots living there – but we have only seen the latter. The landscape resembles the Scottish Highlands; and the number of mosquitos is like in Finland.

We crossed the entire plateau, and some passages were really hard to drive. The weather was cold and wet, and the high altitude was also getting us down. In total it took us two days and we were completely wasted afterwards. We were camping on an altitude of 4200 m, directly at a small lake and with beautiful scenery – especially the next morning was absolutely stunning. In the night the temperatures dropped to 2° C.

Then the batteries of the motorcycles stopped working because of the cold, and the low speed with which we were driving the whole day – and once more the stupid starter of the R1150 GS stopped working – but we could fix it. However, we had to wear our motorcycle clothes the whole time, including helmet, because of the very thirsty mosquito swarms.

And our potato crisps blew up! If you want to try it, here is how: take a bag of crisps, which was sealed at sea level, take it up to 4200 m, and then put it into the sun for about 10 minutes…..

After this adventure we stayed 4 more days in the Karakorum area, before we returned to the lowlands. The landscapes were simply stunning, and compared to the rest of Pakistan the security situation is rather good. This part was definitely one of the highlights of our trip due to the amazing landscape.

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We published more photos in our last blog post Karakorum – Part 1.