Hunza Attabad Lake Turquoise Waters Boat Ride
Visit Attabad Lake — the turquoise lake created in 2010 when a massive landslide blocked the Hunza river and submerged five villages under 21 kilometers of water, transforming a disaster into one of Pakistan's most strikingly beautiful tourist destinations, where boat rides reveal the submerged tops of trees and buildings visible through the extraordinary turquoise water.
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Attabad Lake Entry
Arrive at Attabad Lake where the Karakoram Highway descends to the water's edge — the lake formed by the January 2010 Attabad landslide that blocked the Hunza river, the impounded water rising over months until it reached its current level, the five submerged villages now buried under 100 meters of water.
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Boat Ride Across the Lake
Board a wooden boat for the crossing of Attabad Lake — the water an extraordinary turquoise from glacial minerals in suspension, the boat crossing over the submerged Karakoram Highway (now replaced by tunnels carved through the mountains at the water's edge), the drowned villages invisible below.
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Submerged Tree Stumps
The stumps of trees that were submerged in 2010 still visible at the lake's edge — the dead trunks bleached white by years of immersion, standing in the shallow margins of the lake as ghostly evidence of the valley that existed before the landslide, the landscape simultaneously beautiful and melancholy.
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KKH Tunnels Viewpoint
The viewpoint of the five tunnels bored through the mountain to replace the submerged section of the Karakoram Highway — the engineering response to the Attabad disaster, the tunnels carved by Chinese workers in an emergency project that restored road connection to upper Hunza after a three-year period when boat crossings were the only access.
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Far Shore Gulmit Village
Cross to the Gulmit shore of the lake — the village on the far bank where the displaced families from the submerged villages resettled, the community rebuilding its life on the high ground above the new lake in a location that has the same mountain backdrop as the drowned valley below.
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Lake Sunset Reflections
Watch the sunset over Attabad Lake — the mountains reflected in the still turquoise water in the evening calm, the tragedy of the drowned villages receding as the visual beauty of the lake asserts itself, the Karakoram peaks catching the last light above the darkening water.