Karakoram

The Karakoram separates China from Pakistan.

Earlier this month, BWCDO and The White Lion Foundation, TWLF — a UK-based global wildlife charity — jointly released exceptionally rare footage of a wild snow leopard calling in the Khaplu Valley in the wilds of Pakistan’s Karakoram mountains.

Located in the Karakoram range along the Chinese border, K2 was the last of the world’s 14 tallest mountains higher than 8,000 meters to be climbed in winter.

The Labiate genus Perovskia, to which the plant here figured belongs, is a somewhat anomalous one, comprising four species, two of which are natives of Turkestan with a third confined to Beluchistan, and a fourth, the one now depicted, which extends from the mountains of Afghanistan through the Western Himalaya to Western Tibet. In the Karakoram Range it is met with at elevations up to 10,000 feet above sea level.

To reach the Karakoram the expedition had to cross the vast mountainous region which lies between Kashmir and Chinese Turkestan, taking a different route each way.

The two sides also appeared to have dismantled recent construction along the river valley high in the Karakoram mountains, satellite images showed.