I got my bags packed on a roll heading out there and I'm ready to go looking real good

in my passport photo.

Amateur Traveler episode 694. Today the Amateur Traveler talks about mountains and

mosques and jingle trucks, the world's most dangerous bridge, the Kalash people, and the Karakoram Highway

as we go to Northern Pakistan. Welcome to the amateur traveler. I'm your host Chris Christensen and I think we have a treat

for you in today's episode so let's talk about Pakistan. I'd like to welcome to the show David Harden from Travel Warren satchel.com who's come to

talk to us about Northern Pakistan. David welcome to the show. Thank you Chris. Thank you.

Nice to be here. Your accent is clearly not one from Northern Pakistan. We're

talking to you while you're in the UK near Windsor. What led you to Pakistan?

I'll give you the shortened version, but when I was 18, I decided to travel overland from the UK to

Australia and I got as far as Afghanistan.

Before you realized you'd run out of land?

It was that and the Russians got in the way.

Oh yes, well.

Yeah, that happens, doesn't it?

Tell us away two years.

And decided that I still want to go along the Silk Roads.

I'm still interested in Islamic culture and art and architecture. And so I've been filling in the gaps ever since.

So I've sort of done Australia and parts to Southeast Asia and all of Europe and a few of the

stands, but Pakistan was always there and the one that I needed to to tick off really.

Well and you chose northern Pakistan on this particular trip which as we were

talking beforehand you said is quite different from southern

...