Karimabad

Hunza was a small independent principality for centuries, ruled by the Mirs of the Ayasho dynasty from Altit and later from Baltit, the old name of Karimabad. Its position on a branch of the Silk Road between Kashgar, Kashmir and Badakhshan gave it importance out of proportion to its size, and its rulers taxed and sometimes raided the caravans that crossed the passes. The valley's terraces and long irrigation channels, cut from glacier melt across bare rock, were the work of generations and made settlement possible at all.

Altit Fort is the older seat, its Shikari tower reckoned about 1,100 years old and the oldest monument in Gilgit-Baltistan; Baltit Fort above it grew from a similar base and was remodelled in stages, including under Tibetan and Balti influence after a marriage alliance. In 1891 British forces took Hunza and Nagar in a brief campaign, and the Mirs ruled afterwards under British and then Pakistani oversight, until the state was formally dissolved in 1974.

The Karakoram Highway, finished with Chinese help in the late 1970s, ended the valley's isolation and brought trade, electricity and visitors. The town was renamed Karimabad after Karim Aga Khan IV, then spiritual leader of the Ismaili community to which most of Hunza belongs. The last Mir left Baltit Fort in 1945 and the building decayed until the Aga Khan Trust for Culture restored it in the 1990s, followed by Altit Fort and the old village of Ganish. Those projects, which won international conservation awards, turned a set of ruins into the basis of the local tourist economy.

The everyday language of Karimabad is Burushaski, a language isolate with no known relatives anywhere in the world, spoken in Hunza and Nagar and in a small pocket in the Yasin valley. Wakhi is spoken in the upper valley towards the Chinese border, and Urdu and English are used in schools and with outsiders. Nearly all the people of central Hunza are Ismaili Muslims, followers of the Aga Khan, whose development network built much of the valley's school, clinic and water infrastructure.

That combination has given Hunza a social character unlike most of Pakistan. Girls' education has been normal here for decades and literacy rates are among the highest in the country, women work in shops, guesthouses and craft cooperatives, and the jamatkhana rather than a mosque is the centre of religious life. Navroz, the Persian new year, is the main festival, and Imamat Day is marked with communal celebrations.

Polo is played in the old Gilgit-Baltistan style, faster and with fewer rules than the international game, and drums and the surnai shawm accompany dancing at weddings and harvest festivals. Crafts include woollen weaving, embroidered caps, gemstone cutting and woodcarving, much of it sold in the bazaar under the fort. Visitors are common enough that the town is used to them, but ordinary courtesies count: greetings before questions, and patience with the pace of a place where everything is arranged through someone known.

Karimabad is a small town and the headquarters of a Hunza district with about 65,000 inhabitants spread along the valley. Households farm small terraced plots of wheat, barley, potatoes and fodder, and keep apricot, cherry, apple and walnut trees; almost every family has a share of land even when its income comes from elsewhere. Water arrives through channels from the Ultar glacier, distributed on a rota that is one of the oldest institutions in the valley.

Tourism now shapes much of the working year. Guesthouses, restaurants, jeep drivers, guides and craft shops earn most of their income between May and October, and many young people work in Gilgit, Islamabad or abroad and return in summer. Government service, the army, and small trade over the Khunjerab Pass provide the rest. Aliabad, on the highway below, holds the banks, workshops and wholesale shops that serve the whole of central Hunza.

The rhythm of the day follows the light and the seasons: early starts, work on the terraces or in the shops, and quiet evenings, with far more activity in the short summer than in the long winter, when snow closes the high roads and power cuts are frequent. Current concerns include glacial lake outburst floods and landslides, the cost and reliability of electricity, pressure on land and water from new hotel building, and the terms on which Gilgit-Baltistan is governed.

Hunza cooking is plain, seasonal and built on what the terraces produce. The best-known dish is chapshuro, a round bread stuffed with minced meat, onion and herbs and cooked on a griddle until crisp. Dumplings called mamtu are steamed and served with yogurt or a tomato sauce, and harissa, a slow-cooked porridge of wheat and meat, appears at celebrations. Buckwheat and barley breads are staples, eaten with apricot oil, butter or local cheese, and thick soups thickened with flour carry households through the winter.

Apricots run through everything. They are eaten fresh in July and August, dried on rooftops for winter, pressed for oil that is used in cooking and on the skin, and made into jam and juice; the kernels are cracked for their nuts. Mulberries, cherries, walnuts, apples and grapes follow in season, and dried fruit and nuts are the standard offering with tea. The bazaar under the fort sells all of it, along with buckwheat flour and apricot-kernel oil in bottles.

Tea comes black, as green tea flavoured with herbs, or as a salted butter tea closer to Tibetan style. Hunza water, a home-brewed fruit wine, is part of local tradition though it is not sold openly. Cafés along the road below Baltit Fort have made walnut cake a Karimabad speciality, and the restaurants of Aliabad serve the rice, dal, karahi and kebabs eaten across the rest of Pakistan.