Skardu in Winter: What's Open, What Closes, and What It's Actually Like

The confusion starts with the word closed. Search for Skardu in December and you will find a great many pages saying the season is over, which is true of tour operators and untrue of the valley.

Skardu town runs all winter. The bazaar trades, the airport works when the weather allows it, the hospital is open, the schools run, and the Balti families who have wintered here for a thousand years are not going anywhere. What closes is the high ground and the tourism infrastructure built on top of it — the plateau roads, the seasonal camps, the lakeside cottages, most of the jeep operators, and a good share of the town's hotels.

So the honest question is not whether Skardu is open but what is still reachable and who is still working. Reachable in an ordinary winter: the valley floor, the Katpana and Sarfaranga dunes, the Indus banks, Kharpocho Fort, the Shigar road when it is clear, and — with a local driver and a look at the sky first — the Kachura lakes. Not reachable: Deosai, the passes, and anything that needs a trekking approach.

The second thing worth understanding is that this is a season with a different reason for being here. Nobody comes to Skardu in January for a packed itinerary. People come for the light, the silence, and the fact that they will have the dunes to themselves.

Three airlines currently fly Islamabad to Skardu: PIA, Airblue and AirSial, the last of which opened the route in May 2026. On paper that is more capacity than Skardu has ever had. In practice, winter capacity is whatever the weather allows.

Skardu is a visual-approach airport. Pilots need visual contact with the terrain through the approach, and when cloud fills the valleys or visibility drops below limits, flights are delayed, diverted or cancelled outright. That is not a Skardu quirk; it is how a runway inside the Karakoram works. The UK Foreign Office puts it plainly in its Pakistan advice: flights to Gilgit and Skardu may be unreliable, may change at short notice, and are frequently cancelled in the mountains because of extreme weather.

The road fallback is long. Babusar Pass, the short summer route, is closed roughly November to June under snow, and its reopening date moves by weeks from year to year. Once Babusar shuts, the only road is the Karakoram Highway via Mansehra, Besham, Dasu and Chilas to Gilgit, then the Gilgit-Skardu road east. That last stretch is 167 kilometres, paved and widened by the Frontier Works Organization in 2021; the official line is three to four hours, and in winter you should budget five to seven and accept that snow can close it outright for a day or two.

One caution we would rather state than skip: the UK Foreign Office currently advises against all travel on the Karakoram Highway between Mansehra and Chilas via Besham. We are not going to pretend that advisory does not exist because it is inconvenient for a hotel to mention. Check your own government's current advice and make the road decision knowingly.

Gilgit-Baltistan runs mostly on run-of-river hydropower. In winter the rivers drop and freeze, generation collapses, and demand for heating peaks at exactly the wrong moment. Reporting from the last two winters puts daily load-shedding across the region at eighteen to twenty-one hours, with Skardu named among the worst-affected areas.

Eighteen to twenty-one hours. That is the number that decides your winter trip, and almost no guide mentions it.

What it means inside a hotel is that heating, hot water, lighting, Wi-Fi and phone charging all depend on whether the property has its own generation and is willing to run it. Plenty of Skardu hotels close for the winter precisely because running a generator for four guests does not pay. Others stay open and ration.

We run generator-backed power through valley outages, heating in every room and hot water before the morning flights, and the kitchen serves breakfast from six because that is when people leave for the airport. Winter is also the cheapest we are all year, which is the honest reason to come in January rather than July.

On altitude, most winter advice is wrong in an interesting way. Skardu Airport sits at about 2,230 metres, with the wider valley averaging nearer 2,500. The CDC puts the threshold for altitude illness in unacclimatised travellers at sleeping altitudes of 2,450 metres and above; the Wilderness Medical Society sets it near 2,500 while noting that susceptible people can be affected as low as 2,000. Skardu town sits at or just below that line, and you are unlikely to become properly ill here.

The real risk is the shape of the journey rather than the town. Flying from Islamabad at roughly 500 metres to Skardu in an hour is a fast ascent with no acclimatisation, and any onward height is where trouble starts. A headache and a poor first night's sleep are ordinary. Give the first day to nothing much.

Packing is layers rather than bulk: a thermal base, a fleece, a properly insulated outer, a hat that covers the ears, gloves, and boots with a sole that grips ice. A power bank, and then a second power bank. Lip balm and moisturiser, because the air here is desperately dry.

On cash: there are ATMs in Skardu, but they are few, they run out, and they depend on power and connectivity — both unreliable in winter. Bring more rupees than you think you need, from Islamabad, and do not assume a card will work anywhere. On signal: Zong has 4G in Skardu and coverage in town is generally workable, but coverage outside it is not, and the towers are subject to the same power problems as everything else. On permits: no NOC is required for ordinary tourism in Skardu district, the requirement for foreigners visiting Gilgit-Baltistan having been abolished in 2019. Restricted buffers near the Line of Control still apply, trekking and mountaineering permits are a separate regime entirely, and registering at police checkposts along the road is routine rather than a problem.