Karakul Lake — Karakul Yurt Camp Established Campsite

Karakul sits at roughly 3,600 metres on the Karakoram Highway between Kashgar and Tashkurgan. The lake is a collapsed volcanic caldera ringed by 7,000-metre peaks — Muztagh Ata to the south, Kongur to the northeast. A small Kyrgyz settlement runs yurt guesthouses and designated tent pitches for overlanders transiting the KKH. Expect pit toilets, no running water, and limited food supplies from the yurt families. It’s cold year-round — even mid-summer nights drop well below freezing at this elevation. Bring your own fuel and water treatment.

Access is directly off the sealed KKH — no real turn-off challenge, but altitude hits hard if you’ve come up fast from Kashgar. Foreigners require a valid Xinjiang travel permit and may need to register with local authorities. The site gets busy with domestic Chinese tourists in July and August. Open roughly May through October before the KKH corridor closes to most traffic.

Pamir lake camp at 3,600m — raw and real.