Deosai National Park
The second-highest plateau on earth, in bloom.
Deosai is a 3,000 km² plateau averaging 4,114 m between Skardu and Astore — the 'Land of Giants', home to the Himalayan brown bear, carpeted in wildflowers July–August and crossed by a single seasonal track past Sheosar Lake. It opens roughly mid-June to mid-October and is best done as a private day safari or overnight camp from Skardu.
Nothing in Deosai prepares you for its flatness — after weeks of vertical Karakoram, a grass ocean at 4,100 m reads as an optical error. Then the scale asserts itself: storms visible ninety kilometres away, marmots the size of house cats, and at Bara Pani, with luck and a long lens, the bears.
Sheosar Lake is the plateau's full stop — a blue disc against Nanga Parbat's distant white. SafarGB runs it as a champagne-breakfast stop on Skardu itineraries and as a private overnight camp for photographers who want the plateau's four-second sunsets to themselves.
Deosai National Park, asked and answered
Can you see brown bears in Deosai?
Sightings concentrate around Bara Pani at dawn and dusk in July–August. They're wild and distant — bring or borrow our 600 mm lens — and the park's protection success means numbers rise yearly.
Is altitude a problem on Deosai?
You'll cross 4,100 m within ninety minutes of Skardu's 2,228 m, so we pace stops, carry oxygen and keep the day's exertion low. Most guests feel nothing beyond big-sky euphoria; we still plan as if they might.