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Gilgit-Baltistan


Welcome to Gilgit-Baltistan!

Gilgit-Baltistan (Urdu: گلگت بلتستان), formerly known as the Northern Areas is the northernmost political entity under the administrative control of Pakistan. According to Pakistan's constitution, Gilgit-Baltistan is an autonomous region separate from Pakistan itself, and its inhabitants have never had any representation in Pakistan's parliament.

Three mountain ranges meet here — the Karakoram, the Himalaya, and the Hindu Kush — and the area is a "mountain paradise" for mountaineers, trekkers, and tourists. The region has some of the world's highest mountains, including five peaks over 8,000 meters, many over 7,000, and the largest glaciers outside the polar region. For comparison, neither Western Europe nor the lower 48 US states have anything that reaches 5,000 m, nothing anywhere in Russia or North America is over 6250, and the highest peak of the Andes is just under 7000.

Gilgit-Baltistan is bestowed with some of the greatest bounties of Nature. Tourists from all over the world have a great attraction toward this region because of its beautiful valleys, plains, peaks and heritage sites. Location of some of the highest mountains on Earth including K2. Trekking to Concordia (the confluence of the Baltoro Glacier and the Godwin-Austen Glacier) and the great Baltoro Muztagh, a sub-range of the Karakoram.

Gilgit-Baltistan (, Urdu: گِلگِت بَلتِسْتان, Balti: རྒྱལ་སྐྱིད་ སྦལྟི་ཡུལ།), formerly known as the Northern Areas, is a region administered by Pakistan as an administrative territory, and constitutes the northern portion of the larger Kashmir region, which has been the subject of a dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947, and between China and India since 1950s. It is the northernmost area administered by Pakistan. It borders Pakistan-administered Azad Kashmir to the south, the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the west, the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan to the north, the Xinjiang region of China, to the east and northeast, and the Indian-administered union territories Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh to the southeast.

Gilgit-Baltistan is part of the greater Kashmir region, which is the subject of a long-running conflict between Pakistan and India. The territory shares a border with Azad Kashmir, together with which it is referred to by the United Nations and other international organisations as "Pakistan administered Kashmir".

Gilgit-Baltistan is six times the size of Azad Kashmir. The territory also borders Indian-administered union territories Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh to the south, and is separated from them by the Line of Control, the de facto border between India and Pakistan.

The territory of present-day Gilgit-Baltistan became a separate administrative unit in 1970 under the name "Northern Areas". It was formed by the amalgamation of the former Gilgit Agency, the Baltistan district and several small former princely states, the largest of which were Hunza and Nagar. In 2009, it was granted limited autonomy and renamed Gilgit-Baltistan through the Self-Governance Order signed by President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari, intended to also empower the people of Gilgit-Baltistan. However, scholars state that the real power rests with the governor and not with the chief minister or elected assembly. Much of the population of Gilgit-Baltistan wants it to become a fifth province of Pakistan and opposes integration with Kashmir. The Pakistani government had rejected Gilgit-Baltistani calls for provincial status on the grounds that granting it would jeopardise its demands for the entire Kashmir issue to be resolved according to UN resolutions. However, in November 2020, Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan announced that Gilgit-Baltistan would attain provisional provincial status after the 2020 Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly election, a long-standing demand of the people of Gilgit-Baltistan.Gilgit-Baltistan covers an area of over 72,971 km2 (28,174 sq mi) and is highly mountainous. It had an estimated population of 1.249 million in 2013 (estimated as 1.8 million in 2015 by Shahid Javed Burki (2015)). Its capital city is Gilgit (population 216,760 est). Gilgit-Baltistan is home to five of the "eight-thousanders" and has more than fifty peaks above 7,000 metres (23,000 ft). Three of the world's longest glaciers outside the polar regions are found in Gilgit-Baltistan. The main tourism activities are trekking and mountaineering, and this industry is growing in importance.

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