SKARDU AND THE PTDC HOTEL
As you leave the airport for Skardu, two signs announce that Skardu is a "Hajib Culture" and request that the women respect their sensitivities. We spent several days in the city of Skardu and I may have seen only one Pakistani woman.

This is generally OK for trekkers who usually hightail it out of town. Skardu is actually a pretty good base for doing day trips although surely intimidating for some western women. It is primarily Shiite Muslims who are famed for being conservative.  This is in contrast to the regions of Hunza and Chitral (or so I was told).

The PTDC Hotel seems to be the main one for trekkers and climbers. Each year they put up another bulletin board for the climbers to add their photos and comments.  I found the upper-right message which says both "SUCCESS!" and "2 DIED" quite curious  I guess it depends on how one defines success.

Actually I found it a little melancholy to read those bulletin boards because quite a few people have died climbing there. Several people told me that K2 was tougher than Everest.

THE SHANGRI-LA HOTEL
Although the PTDC Hotel seems more popular, the nicest hotel in Skardu is the Shangri-La a half-hour's  drive away. We thought we could afford lunch but when we showed up, the staff seem somewhat taken aback.  Although the hotel has 96 bungalows, it had absolutely no guests. None!

To their credit they did manage to get us lunch in fairly short order.

The Shangri-La has it's own genuine "crashed" DC-3. In busier seasons it is used as a coffee shop. A plaque on the side says that it crashed a few minutes out of Skardu (with no deaths, fortunately) and the founder of the hotel bought if for 150 Rupees and had it dragged there. Also, one of it's famous passengers was James Mitchener. I have seen that old black-and-white movie "Lost Horizons of Shangri-Law " about three times, so I especially enjoyed the theatrics of it.

During both our trips to the northern areas, it was obvious that the Kashmir crisis had taken a major toll on tourism. I assumed it had mostly scared off foreigners but the manager of the Shangri-La told me that Pakistani nationals had all but abandoned Skardu this year. When we were there, the conflict had greatly reduced but the anti-American vitriol was hotter than ever. It's sad; although Baltistan offers world-class beauty and adventure, who can blame foreigners for vacationing elsewhere, considering all the inflammatory and irresponsible rhetoric against them.