Gilgit

Cost of Living in Gilgit

Budget around $480 a month. A one-bedroom runs roughly $120 to $280 and the rental market is small and mostly informal, arranged through contacts rather than listings. Market produce is cheap and the region's apricots, cherries and apples are exceptional in season and dried for the winter. Eating out is inexpensive and the food is more Central Asian than Pakistani, with more meat and bread and less spice. Imported goods are expensive and the choice is limited by the road. Utilities are cheap but supply is intermittent, and winter heating is a real cost and a real logistical problem.

Where to Work in Gilgit

Connectivity is weak and this is the single biggest constraint. Gilgit Baltistan is served by limited bandwidth up the Karakoram Highway, speeds are modest and outages are frequent, and mobile data thins to nothing as soon as you leave the main valleys. Power cuts are routine, particularly in winter when the hydropower runs low. There is no coworking. The time zone is five hours ahead of GMT, which gives a workable European afternoon. Anyone whose work requires reliable video calls should treat Gilgit as difficult, and anyone heading further into the valleys should assume no connection at all.

Getting Around Gilgit

Gilgit town is small and walkable, and shared jeeps and minibuses handle everything beyond it. The Karakoram Highway is the spine of the region, running north to Hunza and the Khunjerab pass into China and south towards Islamabad, and it is one of the great roads in the world and also a landslide-prone one. Journeys take considerably longer than the distance suggests. Gilgit Airport has flights to Islamabad that are spectacular and are cancelled often, since the approach requires visual conditions through the mountains. The road to Islamabad takes fifteen to twenty hours.

Sorting transport? Book an airport transfer, or compare car rental on Auto Europe and QEEQ.

Visas for Gilgit

Pakistan operates an online visa system that has become considerably easier: most nationalities can apply for a tourist e-visa in advance, often with approval in days, and a visa on arrival scheme exists for some countries through approved tour operators. There is no remote work visa. Gilgit Baltistan itself no longer requires a separate permit for most areas, though the Khunjerab pass, some border zones and certain peaks do need permits arranged in advance. Registration with police is required in some districts. Check current requirements directly, since Pakistan's visa policy has changed repeatedly in recent years.

Best Time to Visit Gilgit

May to October is the season, with temperatures around twenty five degrees in summer, the passes open and the valleys accessible. The Khunjerab pass into China opens roughly in May and closes at the end of the year. Autumn from late September to October is when the poplars and apricot orchards turn and the light is at its best, and it is the photographers' month. Winter from November to March is cold, the higher roads close, and Gilgit itself sits at fifteen hundred metres and gets genuinely cold. Spring blossom in the Hunza valley in April is the other reason people time a trip.

Pros and Cons of Gilgit

The case for Gilgit is its position: this is where the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush and the Himalaya meet, five of the world's fourteen peaks above eight thousand metres are within the region, and the Hunza valley two hours north is one of the most spectacular inhabited landscapes anywhere. Costs are very low and the hospitality is genuine and much remarked on. The case against is connectivity, the road, the winters, limited medical care, and a security picture that requires current government advice rather than assumption, since parts of the wider region carry serious warnings.

Who Gilgit Is For

Gilgit suits mountaineers, trekkers and photographers above all, for whom this is one of the great destinations on earth and reason enough to accept everything else. It suits anyone travelling the Karakoram Highway in either direction. It suits people with a working connection to the region through development or research. It does not suit remote workers, because the connection cannot support the work, and it does not suit anyone travelling on a fixed schedule, since landslides, weather and cancelled flights make timings approximate here rather than firm. It also suits anyone drawn to the Wakhi and Burusho communities of the upper valleys, whose languages are unrelated to anything spoken around them and are among the linguistic puzzles of Asia.