Sadpara Village: Home of Mountaineer Ali Sadpara

Ali Sadpara's village is Sadpara (also written Satpara), a Balti farming village in the valley above Satpara Lake, about 15 km south of Skardu on the road that climbs to Deosai. Muhammad Ali Sadpara was born here on 2 February 1976, started work as a porter from here, and his family still lives here. There is no museum or ticketed memorial: it is a working village that people pass through on the way to the Deosai plains.

This guide covers where the village is, who Ali Sadpara was and what he climbed, what has been built or promised in his name, and how to stop here without being a nuisance.

Where is Sadpara village?

Leave Skardu on the Satpara road heading south. After about 7 km you reach Satpara Dam, and the road then runs along the lake, which sits at 2,600 metres and has grown since the dam was finished. The village is not on the lake shore. Its hamlets are spread along the stream above the head of the lake, roughly 15 km from the centre of Skardu, on the road that carries on up to Deosai National Park.

Sadpara and Satpara are the same name in two spellings, used for the village, the lake, the dam and the road. Our Satpara Lake guide covers the lake itself.

An ordinary car manages the road to the lake. Beyond the village the road becomes the climb to Deosai, which is jeep country; see Skardu to Deosai for that stretch and the Deosai entry fee guide for the park gate.

Who was Muhammad Ali Sadpara?

He was the youngest of eleven children, eight of whom did not survive childhood. He studied to intermediate level at a government college in Skardu, where he played football, married at 19, and had three children.

Like most climbers from this valley he began as a porter. By Dawn's account he carried supplies to army posts on the way to Siachen in the mid-1990s, and got his first proper climbing job in 2004 with an expedition to K2. When there was no expedition work he went back to farming. In 2006 he climbed Gasherbrum II, his first 8,000-metre peak, without proper climbing gear.

He went on to climb eight of the world's fourteen 8,000-metre mountains, more than any other Pakistani at the time.

The climb that made his name abroad was Nanga Parbat in winter. On 26 February 2016 he reached the summit with the Spaniard Alex Txikon and the Italian Simone Moro, the first time the mountain had been climbed in winter, and the first winter ascent of any 8,000-metre peak by a Pakistani.

What happened on K2 in 2021?

In February 2021 he set out to climb K2 in winter without bottled oxygen, with his son Sajid, then 21, the Icelander John Snorri Sigurjonsson and the Chilean Juan Pablo Mohr. They left their top camp on the evening of 4 February. Near the Bottleneck, the steep gully below the summit, Sajid's oxygen regulator failed and his father sent him down. He was the last person to see the three alive.

Army helicopters searched from 6 February without result, and on 18 February the three men were declared dead. Their bodies were found above Camp 4 on 26 July 2021 by a Sherpa team from a commercial expedition. Sajid, who had gone back up that summer to look for his father, brought the body down from the Bottleneck and buried it in the snow, marking the place with a Pakistani flag. Ali Sadpara's grave is on K2, not in the village.

Sajid Sadpara has kept climbing. In 2023 he became the first Pakistani to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen or Sherpa support, and that summer he helped organise a clean-up of part of K2.

What is there in the village?

Houses, terraced fields and the stream that feeds the lake. That is all, and it is the point: this is the kind of place the porters and climbers of Baltistan come from. Sajid Sadpara has said the village has produced a line of recognised climbers, among them Hassan Sadpara and Nisar Sadpara as well as his father.

Two things have been announced here in Ali Sadpara's name. In February 2021 the singer Abrar ul Haq said he would build a school in the village, which had been one of Sadpara's own wishes. On 10 December 2022, the day before International Mountain Day, the ground was broken in Sadpara for a Sadpara Mountaineering and Adventure Institute, at a ceremony led by the army's northern areas commander with the Gilgit-Baltistan tourism minister present. We could not confirm that either is open, so do not arrive expecting to tour a school or a climbing centre.

Elsewhere, a roundabout in Gilgit was renamed Sadpara Chowk with a monument to him, and Pakistan International Airlines named its mountain air safari after him.

Visiting with respect

Most people see Sadpara through a car window on the way to Deosai, and that is fine. If you want to stop:

• Ask before photographing people, children or houses. A family lost a husband and father here within recent memory.
• Do not go looking for the family home. If someone offers to introduce you, that is their choice to make, not yours to ask for.
• Hire locally if you can. Men from this valley still work as porters and guides on the Baltoro, and giving them work is the most useful tribute a visitor can pay.
• Dress as you would in any Balti village, and keep music off.
• Take your litter back to Skardu. The stream here is Skardu's water supply.

Is it worth a stop?

On its own, no: there is nothing set up for visitors, and an hour's round trip from Skardu for a look at someone's village is an odd use of a morning. As part of a day at Satpara Lake or on the way to Deosai it costs you nothing, and knowing the story changes how the valley looks. Our Skardu and Deosai itinerary goes over Sadpara on the day it climbs into Deosai, and the Skardu guide covers the rest of the area.

If it is the mountaineering you are interested in, read about K2 and the K2 base camp trek, where men from this village have earned their living for generations.

Frequently asked questions