Gilgit-Baltistan

Deosai: a summer country above the treeline

The second-highest plateau on earth is open for about four months a year, and for one of them it is covered in flowers.

6 min read Skardu

There is a moment on the climb out of Skardu when the last tree goes past the window and nothing replaces it. The road keeps going up, the valley walls fall away, and you come out onto something that does not behave like mountain country at all — a rolling grass plain, streams braiding across it, and no horizon worth the name.

Deosai averages 4,114 metres. After the Changtang in Tibet, it is the highest plateau on earth.

A short history

The name comes from two Shina words, deo and sai — giant, and shadow. The land of the giant, or the giant's shadow, depending on who is translating. The Balti name is more practical: Ghbiarsa, the summer place, because that is the only season anyone has ever been able to use it.

Deosai was made a national park in 1993, and the reason was a bear. The Himalayan brown bear was down to nineteen animals on the plateau that year. Protection worked slowly and then clearly: forty by 2005, seventy-eight by 2022. It is one of the few conservation stories in the region where the numbers went the right way and stayed there.

The park covers 358,400 hectares — a little over 840 square kilometres. Hunting and poaching pressure has largely gone. What threatens the bears now is climate and nutrition, which are harder problems than a rifle.

Places worth your time

Sheosar Lake: At the western end of the park, and the single image most people carry home. Still water, and the Himalaya standing in it. It is reachable from the Skardu side on a long day, or from Astore on the way in.
Bara Pani and Kala Pani: Big water and black water. Two stream crossings that double as the plateau's campsites and the places most likely to put a marmot in front of you.
The July flowers: For a few weeks the whole plateau goes over to wildflowers, with butterflies working them. It is not a meadow in one corner; it is the entire visible world, to every edge.
The crossing itself: The drive from the Skardu side over toward Astore is the reason to come. There is no view to stop at because the whole thing is the view, which is a strange feeling after a week of valleys.

What makes it special

The brown bears, and the fact that you probably will not see one

Deosai is the best place in Pakistan to look for a Himalayan brown bear, and seventy-eight animals spread across 840 square kilometres means the odds are against you on any given day. Guides who have worked the plateau for years count their sightings in single figures.

We think that is the point rather than the problem. You are crossing a place that was set aside for something that does not perform on schedule, and the ordinary business of the plateau — marmots standing up in the grass, 124 species of bird, ibex on the skyline, the possibility of a snow leopard that nobody sensible expects — is more than enough. If a bear turns up, it is a story for life. If not, you spent a day somewhere very few people get to stand.

Before you go

Roughly June to September, and no earlier — the snow decides, not the calendar. The shortest way in is about 30 kilometres from Skardu. Nights on the plateau approach freezing even in July, so pack as though it is a different country, because at 4,000 metres it is.

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