Update1.7
* New icons for easy recognition
* Some placemark locations corrected


Did you know that Pakistan is home to 5 peaks above 8000m!!!
4 of which are visible from Concordia!!!

and 108 peaks above 7,000m!!! (from "Pakistan Trekking Guide")



Angel Sar and K2 from Concordia Concordia is at a height of 4700m and K2 tops at 8611m!! And they're 15km apart!!!
(Broad Peak, 8,047 m, is on the right, peak not visible)
A familiar sight, but where is Angel Sar? It's the white snow-covered peak on the left of K2 in the above picture!! Most people have never heard of the Angel Sar, even though they've seen it in almost every picture of K2, these are the Northern Areas of Pakistan, where many 6800m peaks lie "insignificantly" in the background of higher peaks.

Concordia is the point where the Baltoro Glacier (from the southeast) and the Godwin-Austen Glacier (from the north, i.e. from K2) meet.


Some of the world's largest glaciers outside the polar region are also in Pakistan, like Baltoro Glacier, Biafo Glacier and Hispar Glacier (all are more than 50-60km long!!!). There are countless other glaciers and glacial systems, many of which are tens of kilometers long!! You have to see it to believe it, so download the file and start exploring!!

This is an attempt to cover the many glaciers, peaks, rivers, minor tributaries, towns, villages and other interesting places in the whole Northern Pakistan. Download the file and enjoy. What started as a few placemarks of towns and some peaks around the Karakoram Highway has now evolved into this mega project.




Stats
Now some areas are in hi-res, especially Nanga Parbat's base camp, part of Hispar Glacier (where it's 1.5km wide!!), Gilgit, Skardu are also in hi-res now!! several other areas are also now hi-res.
Total 750+ Placemarks
50+ Towns on or around KKH
170+ Other towns and places
20+ Lakes
135+ Mountain Peaks above 4,000 m (60+ above 7,000 m)
50+ Glaciers
132+ Rivers and Tributaries placemarks
40+ Mountain Passes
15+ Other Interesting Places

Accuracy
Many placemarks are very accurate, but I'm afraid there are many that are not too precise as of now. Don't hesitate to send me your comments, corrections or any suggestions for improvement/categorization.

Organizing
I've divided the placemarks under Towns, Lakes, Peaks, Glaciers, Rivers, Mountain Passes and other Sites of Interest. There are so many towns, peaks, glaciers and rivers (many tributaries of Indus, Gilgit, Hunza and Khunjerab Rivers) in the list that for a better overview of the region, I've enabled only the folders "Airports", "KKH Towns", "8000+ peaks" and "Sites of Interest" as the default view.
What I have in mind for further categorization is to divide the towns and villages placemarks into two or three levels of importance (and maybe use different icons for each level), because right now there are some minor points on glacier treks listed under "Towns", alongwith important, main towns.

I will keep updating the placemarks as often as possible, in the meanwhile, enjoy these and let me know what you think about it.
Thanks!

Map for the boundaries of Districts of Northern Areas
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/420099/an/0/page/0#420099
There are six Districts of Northern Areas. Open the above mentioned overlay map in Google Earth and it clearly shows what lies in which district (but this map is old, Astore district was carved out of Diamer District later on in 2004, works for all other boundaries).

I casually photographed this map in low-light (in Gilgit in 2002) and it was useless until now because the text is too small to be readable.

Sources
1- Karakoram Highway Map by John Callanan - lists many minute details that aren't usually pinpointed on maps
http://www.johnthemap.co.uk/pages/kkh_page1.html
(referred to as "JC Map" in many placemarks).

2- Many maps and the text from "Pakistan Trekking Guide", by Isobel and Ben Shaw, printed 1993. This is a very popular, excellent book, probably the best on the subject. Even though the last edition was probably published in 1993 and the prices for food, travel and accomodation mentioned are outdated, the places marked are very accurate according to my limited knowledge (even though the paths change, several roads and bridges may not exist now, and several new ones may have been built). (Isobel and Ben Shaw are a mother-and-son team of trekkers who explored Pakistan in the 1970's and 1980's.)

3- A detailed overlay map of Nanga Parbat from Keyhole BBS.

4- Most of the peaks were taken from the Keyhole BBS post of "All 158 peaks above 7000m".
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/139207/an/0/page/11#139207

5- Many coordinates were also taken from the List of highest mountains

6- Three maps of LAS made in google earth that show glaciers and peaks in Baltoro Muztagh, Hispar Muztagh and Rakaposhi-Haramosh Range (referred to as LAS Map in many placemarks).

Updates
Google Imagery Update - Summary of Northern Pakistan Updates:
Northern Areas
Gilgit, Skardu, Nanga Parbat Fairy Meadows side, part of Hispar Glacier in a long chaipi, a couple of chaipis on high peaks like K6 (Baltistan peak), Khaplu etc, Chilas, Sazin

Azad Kashmir
several chapis, the area bordering with Northern Areas and with Indian Occ Kashmir)

NWFP
Peshawar, a long chaipi from below Chitral down to Swat, several chaipis in Tribal Areas, FATA etc

Def:
Chaipi = Punjabi for "Patch" (in this case, the hi-res patch)

Update1.61
* Corrected a few placemarks like Hunza, Malam Jabba and added some photos
* Dozens of new photos added (Muzaffarabad, Kaghan Valley etc).
* 50+ new placemarks all around.
* Corrected many placemarks

Update1.7
* New icons for easy recognition
* Some placemark locations corrected

Update1.6
* Dozens of new photos added (Muzaffarabad, Kaghan Valley etc).
* 50+ new placemarks all around.
* Corrected many placemarks

Update 1.5
*New icons for all placemarks ("T" Icons for towns, Blue "R" icons for rivers, "L" icons for lakes and "I" icons for other "sites of interest")
*60+ new placemarks from Upper Swat and Chitral region (rivers, lakes, towns, peaks and passes).

Update 1.4
*Fixed some image links.
*Added several pics (Skardu area, Deosai, Lakes)
*After Google earth imagery update of June 9, many parts of Northern Pakistan are now in hi-res image!!
Gilgit, Skardu are also in hi-res now!! Some of the others include Nanga Parbat's Fairy Meadows base camp, part of Hispar glacier (50-60+km, more than 1km wide!!!). Several other patches are also there in Azad Kashmir, one is from Chitral down to Swat valley, among many others...

Update 1.3
Added Placemarks of towns, passes and rivers in Ishkoman and Yasin Valleys, and in the Northern NWFP (south of Wakhan Corridor).

Update 1.2
Added some towns and places from the post by 1mran (some inaccurate placemarks were too obviously wrong for me, some are definitely accurate, the rest I've added for now).

Update1.1
Fixed some links, better description for some peaks and places, and different icons for district capitals.

Fixed the links and attached the file.

hi Waqas_!

thanks for this great, really well-detailed, informative and impressive post!
-5 stars-

in this thread you can find pretty good map overlays on some of your locations (gilgit, hunza, baltit, northern areas) and some additional infos on the subject.

i hope you will find it exciting!

keep up the good work!

g

Thanks a lot for the appreciation syzygy426, I came across that thread while I was uploading and updating this post, I have downloaded the overlay maps but I haven't explored them yet. You're right about the category and search idea, because any article is only useful if the users can find them through search easily. I'm not sure if it should go into travel category, but I'll browse the travel category and other categories to see where this post fits best.
Also, I had it in my mind to list all good Pakistan-related or Northern Pakistan-related threads under one thread, but I've been too exhausted from all the work through the night I'll explore these things in the next available slot of time.

I also intend to put a list of good pictures from the areas under one list, and maybe upload them to a central location at a later time (with permission from the original photographers). I've been updating several wikipedia articles on these locations as well... Hope to post more updates soon...

For now, some of my pics online:
http://pbase.com/waqas
http://waqas.fotopic.net

Thanks again,

Waqas

Thank you who ever left the rating, but I'll appreciate if you leave any comments when you leave a low rating (as to why the low rating, and what could be improved).

Update 1.1
Fixed some links, better description for some peaks and places, and different icons for district capitals.

Added some towns and places from the post by 1mran (some inaccurate placemarks were too obviously wrong for me, some are definitely accurate, the rest I've added for now). The new placemarks are mostly in NWFP (that I have barely touched yet), Swat and Kaghan regions.

Update 1.3
Added Placemarks of towns, passes and rivers in Ishkoman and Yasin Valleys, and in the Northern NWFP (south of Wakhan Corridor).

Stats
Total 530+ Placemarks
50+ Towns on or around KKH
150+ Other towns and places
13 Lakes
120+ Mountain Peaks above 4,000 m (60+ above 7,000 m)
50+ Glaciers
110+ Rivers and Tributaries
35+ Mountain Passes
15+ Other Interesting Places

GO THIS WAY!
SAT IMG OVERLAY OF KANJUT LOCATION!!!

...and please let me know if you find the exact location in Quetta , i asked in previous post on the same thread above!

thanks!

g