Lake Saiful Muluk

A prince of Egypt, a fairy princess and a lake at 3,224 m

A glacial lake at the head of the Kaghan Valley, 3,224 m up and about 9 km north of the town of Naran, named for the hero of a folk tale. The tale tells of the Egyptian prince Saiful Malook, who fell in love at this lake with a fairy princess named Badi ul-Jamal, and the Sufi poet Mian Muhammad Bakhsh later set the story as a poem. The ground has a story of its own. In the Pleistocene, almost 300,000 years ago, the valley lay under ice; when the climate warmed and the glaciers drew back, their moraines blocked the stream running down the valley, and the meltwater filled the hollow the ice had left. The lake sits above the tree line, one of the highest in Pakistan, under Malika Parbat, the tallest peak in the valley, and it lies inside Saiful Muluk National Park with a rich spread of alpine plants around its shore. The way in is from Naran, open through the summer. In winter heavy snow and landslides can cut the lake off, so plan the trip for the warm months and carry out everything you carry in.