Border Crossing: Pakistan

Checkpoint at Kunjerab Pass:
After you have taken a lot of pictures on top of Kunjerab Pass and had a good look at the view you are on your way down the pass. Immediately the nice pavement from the Chinese side ends and you now have to drive on the left side of the road.
About 500 meters down the road you drive up to a gate. There will be a very bored guard there who is probably freezing to death. He does not check any papers but will just let you through, but what he really wants to do is invite you for tea so he can talk to someone. Up to you....

National Park Office:
Once you have made it down the pass the first stop is the entrance to the Kunjerab National Park at a little place called Dih. Here you have to register and pay the entrance fee to the National Park which is 4 US dollars.They only accept dollars.

Checkpoint:
At the next stop, which turned out to be the Checkpoint at the border, they asked us if we had come from China or if we had just made a day trip up to the pass. Since we came from China we were directed to the Immigration office, which was the first building down the road to the left.

Immigration:
They had already closed for the day! We were kind of late, since we had had to fix a broken clutch cable en route.
Finally we managed to find somebody who opened a small office filled to the brim with a lot of books.
The information from our passports got copied down into the current book, the passports got stamped and that was it.

Customs office:
Further down the road, in the middle of Sost on the right hand side is the Customs office. You have to stop there to get your carnet stamped. But it has to be an effort on your part. Nobody checks you could just drive by it. Also it is hard to find, since there is no sign, so ask around. Don't just skip it, because otherwise you will have problems when you try to leave Pakistan.
A really nice old man at the Customs office offered us chai and then asked me to copy the information of the  carnet into his big book. Then he stamped the passport and again had me fill out the relevant information into the passport.
Then they had to go look for the men in charge who had the authority to actually stamp the carnets. Eventually a guy in uniform shows up and does just that. With a lot of good wishes we were then sent on our way.

Immigration Office:
First stop is the Immigration Office. We did not have any problems there. Passports got checked and we were rewarded with an exit stamp.

Customs Office:
This proved to be a little trickier. A junior officer looked at our carnets and copied the information into a big book. All the while he was complaining that the carnet had not been filled out correctly at the entry point. And he kept shaking his head and saying that this was going to be a problem.
We ignored him. Which was the right thing to do, since he was only fishing for a little bribe.
After he had copied all the information he had to call a senior officer who checked his work and then to stamped our carnets. This was done without any further problems and afterwards we were free to leave Pakistan.

Getting a visa for Pakistan:
We got our visa for Pakistan in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The Pakistani embassy is at N43 15.894 E76 56.827. The entrance for visas is at the back of the office second door.
On our first visit they made us wait 1 1/2 hours. We were then handed visa application forms, which we filled out. We also had to hand in a passport picture and a copy of our passport. On a blank piece of paper we had to write down our planned itinerary with dates, point of entry, places to be visited and point of exit.*
At first they told us to come back in a week. But after some arguing we were given a phone number that we could call the next day.
Sure enough the next day they told us to come down and pick up the visas. The visas had to be paid in US dollars, the were 50$ each.

*This information is actually not relevant for the visa. Meaning that once you have a visa you can enter and leave Pakistan whenever and wherever you want. You can also go wherever you want. However the visa will not be issued if you do not have a valid visa for the countries from which you plan to enter or leave!
For example if you say you want to enter from China and don't have a Chinese visa yet you will have a problem. So make something up that fits!

Changing money:
Entering Pakistan from China:
We were pretty late coming to the border. So we could not find somebody to change money. However there is a bank in Gulmit about 40 kilometers down the road where we changed money the next day.