Pakistan Karakoram Highway — Attabad Lake Turquoise
183.40 £
The Karakoram Highway crossing the edge of Attabad Lake in Gilgit-Baltistan — the impossibly turquoise lake created by a 2010 landslide, the highway hugging the cliff base above the water, Hunza Valley peaks rising beyond.
Description
Attabad Lake was created in January 2010 when a massive landslide blocked the Hunza River at Attabad village, flooding 20km of the Karakoram Highway and several villages. The new lake — 21km long and 100 metres deep — has a distinctive turquoise colour from glacial rock flour and now sits as an unplanned scenic feature of the Karakoram Highway journey. The rebuilt highway runs along a cliff-cut route above the lake’s northern shore, and the combination of the turquoise lake, the sheer Karakoram rock faces, and the highway’s engineering creates a compressed visual landscape unique to this part of Pakistan. This image was made from a hillside position above the road during the southbound Gilgit- to-Hunza drive, the rebuilt highway visible at the cliff base with a single vehicle for scale, the lake’s turquoise surface below and the Hunza peaks in the background.
