Pakistan

Pakistan has five of the world's fourteen eight-thousanders, including K2 - the hardest of the lot, the one climbers mean when they say mountain. The Karakoram Highway runs north from Islamabad through gorges and glaciers to the Chinese border, one of the great road journeys on earth, built at enormous human cost through terrain that resists the idea of a road entirely. Lahore is a Mughal city of extraordinary density - food, architecture, history - that operates with a hospitality so determined it becomes difficult to pay for anything. Pakistan is one of the most undervisited countries relative to what it offers, and that gap is slowly, genuinely closing.

Our guide is being written from the ground up, with the time this place deserves.

We are still gathering the notes that make a guide worth keeping: Karakoram Highway stages, Lahore's walled city, Hunza valley guesthouses and the nihari kitchens that open at midnight and are worth every hour of the wait.