Upper Kachura Lake

Shangrila's still blue.

Two lakes sit within a short drive of Skardu: the resort-developed Shangrila Lake, with its distinctive crashed-plane restaurant, and the wilder Upper Kachura Lake beyond it, ringed by apricot orchards and reachable by rowboat across the water. Both offer some of the stillest, clearest water in the region, mirroring the surrounding peaks on calm mornings.