Perhaps no country more than Pakistan can boast such a wonderful, wild and varied landscape, rich in colour, and entwined with such rich cultural diversity.

Here we find some of the very tallest mountains on earth, including no fewer than five which rise above 8000m, amongst them Nanga Parbat and K2, the second highest mountain on earth.

Within this tight knot of mountain chains, we explore a medley of bustling bazaar towns towns and remote, traditional villages, glorious, high-level plateaux and dramatic, isolated valleys, each bisected by fast-flowing streams, which in turn grow into mighty rivers. Of these, none surpasses the mighty Indus, the Lion River, the life-giving artery of Pakistan, which sweeps down from the lofty western reaches of neighbouring Tibet, then across the full length of the country’s parched plains, and finally discharges into the deep blue Arabian Sea, over 3000km from its source.

We will discover, too,  an extraordinary medley of tribal cultures, none more mysterious than the Kalash Kafir, believed by some to be descended from the remaining soldiers of Alexander the Great, while ancient trade routes, from the Khyber Pass in the west to the Mintaka in the east, link sections of the Old Silk Road, bequeathing to us one of the richest, yet least known, of ancient Buddhist legacies.