TRAVERSE 60
changes things.” He wasn’ t complaining, just observing. Progress here is not a simple story of gain or loss, it is a negotiation, much like everything else in Hunza.
His daughter, sitting nearby, showed me her phone, images of the valley framed perfectly, filtered and shared with thousands of followers.
“ This is our home,” she said.“ Now people everywhere can see it.”
It is a simple statement, but it carries weight. Visibility brings opportunity, but also responsibility, questions about sustainability, about preserving what makes Hunza distinct in the first place. And it is distinct. As the days passed, what struck me most was not any single landmark or view, but the way everything seemed interconnected, history, landscape, culture, and daily life forming a continuous thread rather than separate elements.
The ancient carvings on the rocks, the irrigation channels cutting across impossible slopes, the languages spoken in quick succession, the stories of loss and adaptation around Attabad Lake, all of it belongs to the same narrative.
TRAVERSE 60