Pakistan

Pakistan is a country of staggering extremes. In the north, the Karakoram Highway - the highest paved road on Earth - threads through mountains so massive they make the Alps look like foothills. K2, the world's second highest peak at 8,611 meters, rises here, along with over 100 other summits above 7,000 meters. The Karakoram, Himalaya, and Hindu Kush ranges converge in northern Pakistan in a knot of rock and ice found nowhere else on the planet. This is the most vertically dramatic landscape on Earth.

Then there is the other Pakistan - 230 million people making it the world's fifth most populous country, with a history stretching back to the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the oldest in human history. Mohenjo-daro, built around 2500 BCE, had running water and a sewage system thousands of years before most of Europe. Lahore's Mughal architecture rivals anything in India. Karachi is a megacity of 15 million that never sleeps. The food alone is worth the journey - from Lahore's legendary food street to the spice-heavy cuisine of Peshawar. Pakistan is complicated, contradictory, and overwhelming, but for those who visit, it is unforgettable.

The country's cultural fabric is woven from Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtun, Baloch, and many other ethnic threads. Sufi shrines draw millions of devotees who dance and sing in spiritual ecstasy. Truck art - the wildly colorful decoration of commercial vehicles - is a folk art tradition unlike anything else on Earth. Cricket is not just a sport but a national religion, and when Pakistan wins, 230 million people celebrate as one.