Pakistan · PK

Baba Ghundi Ziarat

High in the remote Chapursan Valley of Upper Hunza, where the Karakoram's western flank runs up against Afghanistan's Wakhan corridor, stands the whitewashed shrine known as Baba Ghundi Ziarat (also called Baba Ghundi Astana). It is the most venerated Sufi site in the Hunza region, the resting place of a saint credited with bringing Islam to these valleys, and it draws pilgrims from as far afield as Baltistan. For the traveller it is a striking fusion of devotion and wilderness: a small stone building under a pitched roof, hung with coloured prayer flags, sitting in a wide, glacier-fed meadow with no town for hours in any direction. What makes the place special is not just the shrine but the valley around it. Chapursan is a long, green and lonely trough beyond the last permanent village, crossed by the summer movement of Wakhi-speaking families from Pakistan and Afghanistan and by trekkers heading toward glaciated border passes. Each season the quiet pasture fills with music, horse-riding, polo and buzkashi during an international festival that has become one of Gilgit-Baltistan's signature cultural events. A visit here is therefore part pilgrimage, part mountain expedition, and entirely unlike a day trip to a city shrine.