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loves you, sometimes she slaps you. You learn to endure.”
That night, I lay awake in the comfort of a somewhat modern hotel in the city of Gilgit. The irony wasn’ t lost, I was enduring comfort and cool air-conditioning while my newly made friends, the truckers, were sleeping beneath their trucks. I was thinking about endurance. Pakistan endures power cuts, fuel crises, political instability. Gilgit-Baltistan endures marginalisation. The truckers endure the road’ s cruelties. And yet the Indus keeps flowing, indifferent, carrying its sediment south as it always has.
By morning, rumours spread that negotiations had opened. Perhaps the blockade would lift. Perhaps it would drag on. The only certainty was that the trucks would not move until the villagers did. Our plans had been changed dramatically by the blockade, yet nothing that could compare to the villagers or the men trying to survive a life along the Karakoram. We turned north from Gilgit, as I carried with me more than the dust of the road. I carried the voices of men who spend their lives between mountains and rivers, forever in the middle, always moving yet often stuck.
On the Karakoram Highway, progress is never a straight line. It bends, it stalls, it protests. And sometimes, it sits cross-legged on the tarmac, pouring tea into chipped cups, demanding to be heard. LW
When Traverse was invited by M8 Moto to ride the roads of Pakistan, we didn’ t just expect a motorcycle journey— we braced ourselves for something bigger. What we found was a ride stitched together by raw landscapes, openhearted people, and cultures as layered as the mountains themselves.
Every turn of the throttle felt like a crossing between worlds: from dusty bazaar towns where children ran alongside our bikes, to high mountain passes where silence was broken only by the echo of engines. Pakistan wasn’ t just a destination; it was a revelation. Riding with M8 Moto turned the journey into an epic— not just for the miles conquered, but for the warmth, resilience, and spirit of the people who made the road itself unforgettable. Visit m8moto. com to start your journey to riding the extraordinary.
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