These Incredible Pictures Showcase a Unique Side of Hunza Valley

Pakistan is blessed with a beautiful and diverse landscape and has rivers, deserts, lakes, waterfalls, springs and glaciers in abundance.

The most renowned places of all is Hunza, a mountainous valley in the Gilgit–Baltistan. Referred to as heavens on Earth, Hunza is enveloped in the grand Himalayas and the Karakoram mountain ranges and has been a great tourist attraction for many years.

Here are some of the most unique photos taken in Hunza region which showcase the people instead of the scenery we are so used to seeing. For foreigners, they tell a different story to the one portrayed on media about Pakistan.

Women traveling back to their houses after gathering wood

A woman tends her potato field in the fortified village of Altit.

Preparing chalpindok, chapatis drizzled with a salty sauce of kurut (dried yak milk curd) and butter.

A kitchen in a home in the village of Aliabad.

After breakfast, a woman in the village of Altit checks on her baby.

Preparing a dinner of maltashtze giyalin (Hunza pancakes), to be served with mulberry syrup and a cup of rock-salted milk tea.

In the winter pasture of Zor Abad, Zamrad Begum and Nasib Sultan gather wood for cooking and heating their homes. The pasture is about a two-hour walk from their village.

In the remote village of Shimshal, Baba Jan’s family gather together to prepare dinner: chai and chapatis sprinkled with apricot oil.

Rubina Ismail and Yahyah Naig pluck and cook ducks in the village of Shimshal.

These pictures were taken by  Matthieu Paley, a National Geographic photographer, who visited Hunza in late 2014. Paley spent months in the mountains, capturing photos which tell a complete tale about the place and its people.