Attabad Lake
Interesting facts
- The debris dam held back the Hunza River for about five months before water finally began to spill over it.
- Around 6,000 people upstream lost their homes, and up to 25,000 were cut off when the valley's only road went under water.
- By mid-June 2010 the rising lake had swallowed 242 houses, 135 shops, four hotels, two schools and four factories.
- About 40 percent of the village of Gulmit was submerged, along with large parts of Hussaini and Ghulkin.
- The disaster destroyed around 25 km of the Karakoram Highway together with six bridges.
- The lake reaches a maximum depth of about 109 metres, deep enough to hide entire villages beneath its turquoise surface.
- In 2012 army engineers blasted the natural spillway twice, lowering the lake by at least ten metres to reduce the risk of a sudden outburst.
- The highway realignment around the lake, with its five tunnels, cost about 275 million US dollars.
- In January 2023 the frozen lake hosted the opening of a winter sports festival, a use unimaginable when the valley was a river gorge.
Why it is worth it
Attabad Lake is a young lake born of catastrophe. On 4 January 2010 a massive landslide came down at the village of Attabad in the Hunza Valley of northern Pakistan, killing twenty people and damming the Hunza River completely. Over the following months the water backed up behind the debris and filled the valley floor, drowning the village of Ayeenabad and large parts of Shishkat, Gulmit and neighbouring settlements; thousands of people upstream were displaced, and more than 19 km of the Karakoram Highway, the only road link between Pakistan and China, disappeared under water. For five years the upper valley could be reached only by boat.
What the landslide left is one of the most striking bodies of water in the Karakoram. The lake stretches about 21 km along the gorge and reaches a depth of over 100 metres, and its colour, a vivid turquoise from the glacial silt carried by the river, stands out against the grey and ochre scree slopes and the jagged peaks of the upper Hunza, known as Gojal. The surface is often completely still, so the mountains are doubled in it. The flooded homes and roads beneath give the beauty an undertone that is hard to forget once known.
In 2015 the Karakoram Highway was rebuilt around the lake on a new 24 km alignment with five tunnels totalling about 7 km, built with Chinese assistance and named the Pakistan-China Friendship Tunnels; they were inaugurated on 14 September 2015. The road now runs high above the water, with viewpoints looking down on the lake, and the old boat landings have become places for boating, jet-skiing and fishing, and in winter the lake is used for winter sports. It is a landscape that did not exist a generation ago and has quickly become one of the defining images of Hunza.
Getting there
The lake lies on the Karakoram Highway in the Hunza Valley of Gilgit-Baltistan, about 14 km upstream of the town of Karimabad, the main base for visiting Hunza. The nearest airport is Gilgit Airport (GIL), about 67 km away in a straight line; from Gilgit the drive north follows the Karakoram Highway through the Hunza Valley. Local transport and hired cars run between Karimabad and the lake.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Baltit Fort 17.8 km · fort
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Attabad Lake, also known as Hunza Lake, is a lake located in the Gojal region of the Pakistani-administered Gilgit-Baltistan. It was formed in January 2010 when a significant landslide impounded the water in the Hunza River in Attabad village. The lake offers a diverse range of activities, from boating, jet-skiing, and fishing to various winter sports, attracting attention year-round.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
36.33684, 74.86753per Wikidata