Pakistan Expedition 2024

A tourist visa is needed for Pakistan and it is your responsibility to pay the visa fees, apply for this in advance and get the visa granted in time.

The visa process differs between nationalities. Many nationalities (including the UK) require a Letter of Invitation from the tour company which we will provide you with and you can submit this with your application.

We will also provide you with a step-by-step guide on how to apply for a visa for Pakistan to make it easier.

Click here to check if your country is eligible for a tourist visa for Pakistan and click here for the official tourist E-Visa website.

This tour is not available for Indian Nationals due to visa restrictions and is not available for Pakistan Nationals due to the tour being aimed at foreigners to the country.

As you can tell from the itinerary, we are doing a lot of hiking/trekking on this tour because this is the best way to see the mountains of Pakistan! The expedition has treks that can be demanding treks with some having rather steep climbs, while others are short and rather easy.

Although we will spend a fair amount of time on the bus driving, this is NOT an on-off bus tour of Pakistan, we will spend a lot of time off the bus, walking and doing physical activities.

Therefore, to book on to this tour you should have a relatively good level of fitness. You do not need to be super fit and a really experienced hiker but I ask that you arrive with the fitness and ability to hike and ensure you do some hillwalking/hikes/gym cardio sessions before you come on the tour (you’ll want your walking boots to be worn in too!).

Overall, the better your fitness, stamina and walking mentality are, the more you will enjoy the expedition!

The tour will be a great way to keep your fitness up in the few Summer months leading up to it and we can keep each other motivated and reminded in the Whatsapp group beforehand.

If you have old injuries or issues affecting your mobility, please look into these before booking onto the tour to ensure you will be capable to do these mountain and glacier treks before the tour starts.

With that said, the trekking guides are used to people with different fitness levels and there will always be a guide at the back of the group so no one gets left on their own, and for example with the Nanga Parbat hike, if you struggle due to fitness, sickness or altitude, there are places to stop and you don’t need to do the full trek so we can be flexible if unexpected issues arrive but it will help if your general fitness level is good to start with.

As mentioned above, we will stay in a range of accommodations on this tour like wooden log cabins in the Fairy Meadows, hotels in Lahore and guesthouses in the North.

All of our accommodation is used regularly by people doing this expedition so everything has been vetted to ensure we get the best experience but this is Pakistan and facilities will differ and be limited to what you might be used to.

Not all of our accommodations will have hot water. The itinerary has been planned where if we stay somewhere that doesn’t have hot water, the next hotel will have it, however, power outages are common, especially in Northern Pakistan so even though we expect a hotel to have hot water, it may not or may go off during our stay.

Because we are travelling in Autumn, we will benefit from comfortable daytime temperatures and beautiful golden colours, but the temperature will drop at night and hotels in this region do not have the full radiator power we are used to in Western countries so you will need to wear thicker PJ’s and embrace having some big blankets when needed.

There are 2 main things to be aware of with transport in Pakistan. Firstly, this expedition does have some long travel days to get up North and back down South. We have chosen to drive rather than get flights as flights can be unpredictable and if we get a cancellation it’s unlikely we will be able to book our whole group on another flight which will result in delays and need to travel by bus anyway.

The next thing is that road closures etc may affect our travel times and delay us. This is out of our control but our experienced and well-connected guides will do their best to minimise delays and get us there on time.

We will be relying on Wi-Fi when travelling around Pakistan and although it will be pretty good in our Lahore Hotel at the start and end of the expedition, the Wi-Fi in Homestays and Hotels up North may not be great and we will not have Wi-Fi on travel days.

I ask that you only book if you are aware of this and don’t need constant connection back home or for any other reason.

It’s a great opportunity to disconnect from the busy online world for a while!

Stomach issues are the main sickness that we’re likely to experience with some diarrhea and possible sickness being the outcome.

We will ensure we only drink bottled drinking water and we will only eat in restaurants and cafes that have been used by tours before us and have been checked but we cannot guarantee that your body won’t have some kind of reaction from the food.

I will give you tips on pro and prebiotics to take before the tour to help strengthen your gut and if you experience sickness or diarrhoea we can get you over-the-counter medication to help ease the symptoms.. and plan as many bathroom breaks as possible!

If you’re a fellow Asian, I’m sure you’re more than used to the kind of food we’ll eat and won’t have any issues!

All of our guides and drivers will be local males who have been trained by Ready for Road Adventures and adhere to a strict code of conduct. I know they will be excellent guides who will help us as much as they can and make our trip the best it can be.

We will be with the guides pretty much the whole time throughout the tour and with the drivers a lot too.