Pakistan
Attabad Lake
Turquoise water fills a valley that was dry land until a 2010 landslide dammed the river.
The water is the wrong colour for its altitude. Attabad Lake in Pakistan's Upper Hunza glows an opaque turquoise that shifts to teal where shadows fall from the Karakoram walls above. Beneath the surface lie orchard walls, homes, and a drowned stretch of the old Karakoram Highway — a whole reach of inhabited valley, taken by water.
Attabad Lake was born on 4 January 2010, when a massive landslide buried part of Attabad village, killed twenty people, and dammed the Hunza River. Over the following five months the trapped river rose into a 21-kilometre lake at 2,600 metres, slowly drowning villages downstream and a long stretch of the Karakoram Highway — until new tunnels, bored years later, carried the road around the water. Boats now cross to far-shore guesthouses above the drowned orchard walls, kayaks work the shoreline beneath the Passu Cones, and the lake keeps changing — its level and colour shift with the glacial melt that feeds it.
Solo
The far-shore guesthouses, reachable only by boat, offer a rare kind of Karakoram solitude — glacial silence, turquoise water, and mountain walls with no road noise.
Couple
A boat crossing at dusk, when the Passu Cones turn gold and the water darkens to ink, is one of northern Pakistan's most quietly romantic experiences.
Family
The story of how a village became a lake holds children completely — and the boat crossing lets them see the drowned valley for themselves.
Friends
Kayaking beneath the Passu Cones on glacially cold water, then grilling trout on a lakeside platform — the Karakoram Highway stop nobody expects.
- The lake was born of the 2010 landslide that dammed the Hunza River — beauty and loss share the same water.
- Glacial rock flour turns the lake an aquamarine that photographs as almost unreal.
- Boats cross above drowned orchards and the old highway; the new road runs through tunnels bored around the water.
- Kayaks and paddleboards work the shore with the jagged Passu Cones as the backdrop.
Honeyed tumuro tea and apricot cake at the lakeside cafés, looking over water that did not exist in 2009.
Yak karahi from the shoreline kitchens — tomato, ginger, garlic and mountain heat.
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