Kirthar National Park

Listen first. Out here, the loudest sound is often the wind, moving across bare rock and dry scrub. The ground underfoot is gravel and broken stone, pale and warm even in the cooler months. Ahead, the ridges rise in long folded lines, brown and ochre and grey. This is Kirthar National Park, in the hill country of Sindh, west of the Indus and within reach of Hyderabad and Karachi.

A quick note on the name of the nearby city. This is Hyderabad in Sindh, Pakistan, an old river city on the Indus. It is not the much larger Hyderabad in southern India. From the Sindh city, the land changes fast as you drive west. The green river plain gives way to dry plateaus. Then the Kirthar Range appears, a long wall of mountains running north to south along the edge of the province.

The park takes its name from that range. It was set aside as a protected area in 1974, and it is one of the largest national parks in Pakistan. It covers roughly three thousand square kilometres of hills, valleys, dry streambeds and open plains. That is a lot of country. Most visitors see only a small corner of it, usually around a visitor area and a few tracks. The rest stays quiet, rocky and largely empty of people.

Look at the hills around you. The rock is mostly limestone and sandstone, laid down long ago in layers and later pushed up and tilted. You can often see the layers as stripes on the cliff faces. Rain is rare here. When it does come, it runs fast down the slopes and cuts deep channels. Those dry channels, called nais in Sindhi, shape the whole landscape. Many paths and roads simply follow them.

Here is something many visitors do not expect. This dry, stony country is one of the most important refuges for wild mountain goats and sheep in the region. The park is known for the Sindh ibex, a wild goat with long, curved, backward-sweeping horns. It is also home to the urial, a wild sheep with a thick ruff of hair on its chest. Both animals live on the steep slopes and move with surprising speed over loose rock.

On the flatter ground, there is a third animal to watch for. The chinkara is a small, light gazelle, sandy in colour, which blends into the plains almost perfectly. You often notice it only when it moves. The park also shelters predators and scavengers, including the striped hyena and the desert fox. These are shy and mostly active at night. In daylight, you are far more likely to see their tracks in soft sand than the animals themselves.

Look up as well. Birds of prey use the rising warm air above the ridges, circling slowly without beating their wings. Smaller birds stay close to the shrubs and acacia trees, where there is a little shade. In winter, migrating birds pass through Sindh, and wetter patches near dams and seasonal pools can draw them in. Early morning is the best time to see movement of any kind. By midday, much of the life here goes still.

The plants are tough and sparse. You will see thorny acacia, low grey shrubs and grasses that turn gold in the dry season. Everything here is built to save water. Leaves are small, thorns are many, and roots go deep. After a rare good rain, the change can be sudden. Green shoots appear in the streambeds, and the hills look softer for a few weeks. Then the dry colours return.

People have lived in and around these hills for a very long time. Herding families have moved goats and sheep through the valleys for generations, following water and grazing. The wider Kirthar area also holds old graveyards with carved stone tombs, decorated with geometric patterns. These belong to a regional tradition of stone carving found across lower Sindh. They are a reminder that this empty-looking country has always had a human story too.

Not far away, within the wider Kirthar landscape, stands Ranikot Fort. Its stone walls run up and over the hills for many kilometres, and people sometimes call it the Great Wall of Sindh. Historians still debate exactly who built it and when. The fort is a separate visit, but it shows how important these hills once were as a barrier and a route between the Indus plain and the lands to the west.

Now, a practical thought. This is a serious landscape, not a city park. Summers in Sindh are extremely hot, and there is very little shade or water in the hills. The cooler months, roughly from late autumn to early spring, are far more comfortable. Roads inside the park are rough in places, and a sturdy vehicle helps. Local guides and park staff know where the animals tend to gather, and they know which tracks are passable.

The quiet itself is part of the experience. There are no crowds here, and very few buildings. At dawn, the light comes in low and turns the cliffs orange, then gold. Shadows stretch across the valleys. At dusk, the colours run in reverse, and the hills fade to grey and then to dark blue. Far from city lights, the night sky can be very clear, with more stars than most city visitors are used to seeing.

So take a moment before you move on. Feel the warm stone, and notice how the wind changes as it comes over the ridge. Scan the slopes slowly, the way a herder would, looking for a shape that is not quite rock. It may be an ibex, standing completely still. Or it may be nothing at all — just the hills, as they have looked for a very long time, on the dry western edge of the Indus valley.