A lot of blogs I read suggested Gilgit wasn’t worth visiting and it was just a transport hub but we decided to spend a couple nights in the town. We didn’t arrive until the late afternoon so we just popped to a busy street near our hotel to look for some food and sip lots of chai. I just adore the sweet, milky tea and at just 15p per cup we can’t get enough of the stuff. It’s apricot season so we bought a kilo for just 60p and then we found a place serving deliciously spiced and flavoured rice for dinner.

We didn’t have any plans in Gilgit itself, instead we used it as our base to do a day trip to Naltar Valley. Luckily the road leading towards the valley was close to our hotel so we headed there first thing and stuck our thumb out. It didn’t take long for a car to stop and the driver was such a delightful chap who spoke fluent English. His wife and son were in the front seats and when we asked where they were heading he suggested the other side of Gilgit so we said that was fine and just to drop us off wherever was convenient for him. Well, we chatted the whole way, about Pakistan, religion etc. The lovely man whose name translated to ‘sweetheart’ drove us the full 30km so about 50km out of his way! We couldn’t thank them enough and when we got to the junction of the valley we offered to buy them all some drinks or food and you know what he said “no, I would like to buy you something, you are our guest”. Of course we refused but even still they wouldn’t accept anything from us and it’s yet another example of how hospitable and generous Pakistanis are.

It took less than 5 minutes for the next car to stop and pick us up, the two men lived up Naltar valley and were happy to take us in their car. The views on the drive were absolutely breathtaking and it almost resembled Switzerland. There were steep mountains draped in meadows and thick pine forest with a river gushing below us at the bottom of the valley. The nice men dropped us off in the village and from there we hired a 4×4 and driver to take us up to Naltar Lakes. The terrain we were driving along was absolutely brutal and we were getting shaken about like rag dolls. We had to forge rivers riddled with rocks and boulders, torrents of water rushing over them.

The dirt road took almost 2 hours to navigate which was much longer than we anticipated for the mere 10km distance. At the final river crossing which sort of just poured down the rocky mountain side, the jeep in front of us got his wheel stuck between some rocks. It meant he blocked our way through but we were only 1.5km from the first lake so we decided to hop out and walk. The area was beautiful, with green rolling hills beneath the dramatic peaks. Locals lived a simple life up here, in little stone huts with turf roofs. Goats, cows and donkeys roamed the land, usually with someone watching on them with a shepherding stick.

Soon enough we arrived at the first lake known as Satrangi, it’s said to have 7 colours in the water and it’s the most popular lake in the area. I think it was spring fed because the water was crystal clear but the shallow lake was covered in a thick layer of fluorescent green algae. There were pockets where there wasn’t any algae growing and the water was aqua blue. We found a fabulous blue circle amongst the nuclear green which Craig declared looked like a mini Yellowstone.

There seemed to be a couple of different routes to access the four lakes and the one we took wasn’t actually on the map. We completely veered off track to clamber up a hill of boulders. It didn’t take long for us to get a view of the second lake which was set below us and a fabulous blue cover. Pary lake was the third one we stopped at but the sun wasn’t shining so the colours weren’t popping and we decided to continue up the boulders to the final Blue Lake. It ended up being a lot further away than we anticipated and the terrain was awful, some of the boulders wobbled and we felt like we had set ourselves too big of a challenge as the driver said we only had two hours to explore otherwise there would be too much water coming down the mountain and we’d struggle to drive back through the rivers.

Eventually we got a view of Blue Lake and it was a fabulous colour, almost artificial looking. The sun was out all day, shining on the mountains but it rarely hit the lakes which was a shame as the colours could have been even better than what we witnessed.

As promised the river was gushing even more on the way back and now cars couldn’t drive through it, causing a huge pile up of jeeps. We couldn’t believe how many people were turning up so late in the afternoon, I think we were very lucky to have the place mostly to ourselves.

Once the 4×4 journey was over we walked down the paved road with our thumb out. Our bodies were in pain, muscles aching on all sides from being shaken about on the dirt roads. Luckily a lovely family from the Hunza region further north picked us up and they were driving all the way back to Gilgit. Apparently Gilgit had load shedding for 8 hours today so to avoid the heat in the valley they drove up to Naltar for some cooler air and I don’t blame them, Gilgit is stifling.