Qualla: Attabad Lake

Attabad Lake: Introduction

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mr.KhalidJawed, CC0. From the air, Attabad Lake looks like it has always been here -- a long ribbon of turquoise water curving through the Hunza Valley between walls of brown and grey rock. It has not. On January 4, 2010, a massive landslide above the village of Attabad sent millions of tons of debris crashing into the Hunza River, killing twenty people and creating a natural dam that no one asked for. Over the following months, the river backed up behind that dam, swallowing villages, shops, schools, and nineteen kilometers of the Karakoram Highway. What had been a road connecting Pakistan to China became a dead end at the water's edge.

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Image: Mr.KhalidJawed | CC0

Attabad Lake: Five Months of Rising Water

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zeeo Zia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The landslide struck fourteen kilometers east of Karimabad, and the Hunza River simply stopped flowing downstream. For five months, the water rose. The village of Ayeenabad disappeared entirely beneath the surface. Major sections of Shishkat went under. Around forty percent of Gu...

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Image: Zeeo Zia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Attabad Lake: A Region Severed

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peracha1, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Karakoram Highway is not simply a road in this part of Pakistan. It is the only road -- the single artery connecting Gilgit-Baltistan to the rest of the country and to China. When the lake swallowed nineteen kilometers of it, communities on either side were stranded. Goods th...

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Image: Peracha1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Attabad Lake: The Friendship Tunnels

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mudassir005, CC BY-SA 3.0. The real solution required engineering on an enormous scale. Five tunnels, collectively seven kilometers long, were bored through the mountains along a realigned section of the Karakoram Highway above the lake's waterline. Known as the Pakistan-China Friendship Tunnels, the proje...

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Image: Mudassir005 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Attabad Lake: Turquoise Where Villages Were

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hammadnasim, CC BY-SA 4.0. What strikes visitors today is the color. Attabad Lake glows an almost artificial turquoise, the result of glacial sediment suspended in the water. Boating, jet-skiing, and fishing have turned the lake into a tourist attraction, and winter sports festivals now draw crowds to its ...

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Image: Hammadnasim | CC BY-SA 4.0