Fairy Meadows

Fairy Meadows is a grass shelf at three thousand three hundred metres facing the north face of Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain on earth and the western end of the Himalaya. Getting there takes a jeep off the Karakoram Highway at Raikot Bridge onto a track cut into the cliff, then an hour and a half on foot or by mule because vehicles go no further. The German climbers who came for the mountain in the nineteen thirties gave the meadow its name. Wooden huts and tents stand at the treeline. The season runs June to October.