Hunza Valley
— — the valley the apricots flower first.
Not only on a wall.
“A valley in Gilgit-Baltistan, threaded by the Hunza River and the Karakoram Highway, walled on every side by snow. Rakaposhi rises 7,788 metres above the road south of Aliabad; Ultar Sar rises behind Baltit Fort above Karimabad. The apricot blossoms open in late March, just before the road clears at the Khunjerab Pass. The Burushaski-speaking villages of central Hunza are among the oldest continuous settlements on the route between Kashgar and the plains.
Hunza Valley, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Hunza is a mountain valley in the north of Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan region, running roughly northwest from the Hunza River's confluence with the Gilgit at about 1,500 metres up to the Khunjerab Pass at 4,693 metres on the Chinese border. The valley is divided into Lower, Central, and Upper Hunza, with Karimabad as the regional centre at around 2,400 metres. The Karakoram Highway, completed in 1979 in joint construction with China, follows the river through the length of the valley.
Baltit Fort sits on a spur over Karimabad at about 2,400 metres, the seat of the Mir of Hunza for some seven centuries until 1945. Its timber-and-stone construction shows clear Tibetan influence; the Aga Khan Trust for Culture restored the building through the 1990s and reopened it as a museum in 1996. Altit Fort, the older of the two by about three hundred years, sits 3 kilometres downstream above the river gorge and was restored on the same programme through 2007.
The apricot blossom opens across Hunza in late March and early April, six to eight weeks before the Khunjerab Pass clears for the summer season. Some forty varieties of apricot are still grown in the valley, dried on flat rooftops through July and August, with the kernel pressed for oil. The autumn turn through October sets the poplars and apricot leaves yellow against the peaks. Snow closes the upper road from late November to roughly the start of May each year.