Overview

In Balti, Deosai is called “Ghbiarsa” — roughly, “summer’s place” — because for nine months of the year this vast plateau lies buried under snow, sealed off from the world. For the short window it’s open, usually mid-June to mid-September, it turns into something few other places on Earth resemble: a treeless, rolling tableland stretching to a flat horizon in every direction, its grasslands giving way to carpets of wildflowers by July. At an average elevation of 4,114m, Deosai is often described as the world’s second-highest plateau, and it sits right between Skardu and the Astore Valley — close enough to visit as a tour from Skardu, remote enough to feel like nowhere else.

The plateau’s real claim to fame, though, is what lives on it. Deosai became a national park in 1993 specifically to protect the Himalayan brown bear, whose population on the plateau had fallen to roughly 19 animals at the time; conservation efforts since then have brought that number up considerably. Sightings are never guaranteed — this is still a genuinely wild landscape spread across thousands of square kilometers — but golden marmots are a near-certain sight, standing upright at their burrows along the roadside, and red fox, Himalayan ibex, and golden eagles are regularly spotted too.

This tour drives the plateau by 4×4, stopping at its two signature landmarks — Sheosar Lake and Bara Pani — with time on foot at each to take in the scale of the place, before overnighting on the plateau itself under some of the clearest night skies in Pakistan.