Sarfaranga Cold Desert
The Frozen Desert
Hot comes to mind when you hear the word desert. But imagine a bizarre landscape of sand dunes, mountains, and extremely cold temperatures.
Welcome to a desert in Pakistan where biting cold dominates the landscape. At 7,500 feet above sea level, you’re in the Sarfaranga Desert, also called the Sarfaranga Cold Desert.
Located in the Shigar Valley near the town of Skardu, this desert displays immense diversity. The Indus River flows nearby. Towering mountains encircle the desert, with their greyish-black hues providing a dramatic backdrop that contrasts with endless golden sand fields. Sinuous, sensual dune shapes are everywhere. Ever-present strong winds create a magical atmosphere of dust and sand in the air.
Flying into Skardu in the Shigar Valley gave us our first taste of the sheer mountains in the area. You don’t gradually descend into the Skardu airport; you corkscrew your way down to the ground.
Our group leader somehow talked his way into a cockpit jump seat ride to Skardu. Arriving over Skardu, the pilot put the plane into a tight spiraling descent to the airfield, with the cockpit warning system blaring “Terrain!” repeatedly until the plane landed.
The view out my window near Skardu. Our cruising altitude isn’t much higher than the mountains!
The best time to visit the Sarfaranga Desert is from June to September when temperatures range between 46 and 75 degrees. The temperature can drop as low as 1 degree above zero between October and May. Luckily, we had a mild afternoon day in the 30s when I was there.
The Shot
On the afternoon of November 4, our photography group turned off the main road from Skardu and into the Sarfaranga Desert. Because the mountains are so high, sunset was going to occur at least an hour early when the sun dipped below the mountains.
I launched my drone with a wide-angle lens and pulled out my big camera with a telephoto lens. It turned out that one camera couldn’t capture the magic of what my eye was seeing.
I used a photo from each camera to create a focal length blend. Blending the wide-angle drone photo of the foreground dunes with the distant telephoto view of the mountains allows viewers “to be there” and experience what I saw.
Thanks for looking,
Chuck Derus