Guide book

A guide book or travel guide is "a book of information about a place, designed for the use of visitors or tourists". Travel guides can also take the form of travel websites such as the free and open Wikivoyage.

It will usually include full details relating to accommodation, restaurants, transportation, and activities. Maps of varying detail and historical and cultural information are often included. Different kinds of guide books exist, focusing on different aspects of travel, from adventure travel to relaxation, or aimed at travelers with different incomes, or focusing on sexual orientation or types of diet.

History

Antiquity

A forerunner of the guidebook was the periplus, an itinerary from landmark to landmark of the ports along a coast. A periplus such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea was a manuscript document that listed, in order, the ports and coastal landmarks, with approximate intervening distances, that the captain of a vessel could expect to find along a shore. This work was possibly written in the middle of the 1st century CE. It served the same purpose as the later Roman itinerarium of road stops.

Pakistan

Coordinates: 30°N 70°E / 30°N 70°E / 30; 70

Pakistan (ⁱ/ˈpækᵻstæn/ or ⁱ/pɑːkiˈstɑːn/; Urdu: پاكستان‎ ALA-LC: Pākistān, pronounced [pɑːkɪst̪ɑːn]), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu: اسلامی جمہوریۂ پاكستان‎ ALA-LC: Islāmī Jumhūriyah Pākistān IPA: [ɪslɑːmiː d͡ʒʊmɦuːriəɪh pɑːkɪst̪ɑːn]), is a country in South Asia. It is the sixth-most populous country with a population exceeding 199 million people. It is the 36th largest country in the world in terms of area with an area covering 881,913 km² (340,509 sq mi). Pakistan has a 1,046-kilometre (650 mi) coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest and China in the far northeast respectively. It is separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north, and also shares a maritime border with Oman.

The territory that now constitutes Pakistan was previously home to several ancient cultures, including the Mehrgarh of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation, and was later home to kingdoms ruled by people of different faiths and cultures, including Hindus, Indo-Greeks, Muslims, Turco-Mongols, Afghans and Sikhs. The area has been ruled by numerous empires and dynasties, including the Indian Mauryan Empire, the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Alexander of Macedonia, the Arab Umayyad Caliphate, the Mongol Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Durrani Empire, the Sikh Empire and the British Empire. As a result of the Pakistan Movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the subcontinent's struggle for independence, Pakistan was created in 1947 as an independent nation for Muslims from the regions in the east and west of the Subcontinent where there was a Muslim majority. Initially a dominion, Pakistan adopted a new constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic. A civil war in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh.

Skardu

Skardu (Urdu: اسکردو, Balti: སྐརདུ་་ from Tibetan (Balti): skar rdo སྐར་རྡོ་ — "star stone, meteorite") is a town and capital of Skardu District, in Gilgit, Gilgit-Baltistan. Skardu is in the 10 kilometres (6 miles) wide by 40 kilometres (25 miles) long Skardu Valley, at the confluence of the Indus and the Shigar River. Skardu is at an altitude of nearly 2,500 metres (8,202 feet). The town is surrounded by grey-brown coloured mountains, which hide the 8,000 metre peaks of the nearby Karakoram range.

History

The first mention of Skardu dates to the first half of the 16th century. Mirza Haidar (1499–1551) described in his in the forties of the 16th century wrote Tarikh-i-Rashidi Baltistan and called Askardu as one of the districts of this country. With the conquest of Kashmir in 1586 by the Mughal Emperor Akbar (1556–1605) were starting with Ali Sher Khan Anchan, the kings of Skardu mentioned as ruler of Little Tibet in the historiography of the Mughal Empire. These are, in particular, histories of Al-Badaoni, Abu'l Fazl, 'Abdu-l Hamid Lahori, Saqi Must'ad Khan and Inayat Khan.

Hunza Valley

The Hunza (Burushaski and Urdu: ہنزہ‎) is a mountainous valley in the Gilgit–Baltistan region of Pakistan. The Hunza is situated north/west of pakistan.

History

Hunza was formerly a princely state bordering Uyghurstan to the northeast and Pamir to the northwest, which survived until 1974, when it was finally dissolved by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The state bordered the Gilgit Agency to the south and the former princely state of Nagar to the east. The state capital was the town of Baltit (also known as Karimabad); another old settlement is Ganish Village. Hunza was an independent principality for more than 900 years. The British gained control of Hunza and the neighbouring valley of Nagar between 1889 and 1892 through a military conquest. The then Mir/Tham (ruler) Mir Safdar Ali Khan of Hunza fled to Kashghar in China and sought what would now be called political asylum.

First Muslim Mir/Tham

Mir/Tham

The traditional name for the ruler or Prince in Hunza was Tham (also Thom or Thum), which is also a respectful greeting used by the people of both Hunza and Nager who belong to the clan of Boorish. The Shin use the term Yeshkun for the Boorish.

Shangrila Lake

Shangrila Lake or Lower Kachura Lake is a part of the Shangrila resort located at a drive of about 20 minutes from Skardu (nearly 2,500 m or 8,200 feet) town.

It is a popular tourist destination, and has a unique restaurant that is built on the fuselage of an aircraft that had crashed nearby.

Shangrila was established in 1983 with the opening of the first Resort Hotel in Skardu, Baltistan. Shangrila Resort Hotel was founded by the late Muhammad Aslam Khan, the first commander of the Northern Scouts of the Pakistan Army.

Shangrila was named after a book titled Lost Horizon by James Hilton. In the novel, the author narrates a tale in which an aeroplane crash landed near a riverbed, in the early 1920s. The surviving passengers came across some Buddhist monks from a nearby temple and sought their help. They were taken to a beautiful lamasery filled with a variety of fruits and flowers. The monks looked quite young, although they claimed to be hundreds of years old. The idyllic place was called Shangri-la, a Tibetan word meaning "Heaven on earth".