If you’re traveling to the tourist areas of Northern Pakistan by road from Islamabad,chances are you’ll pass by the town of Chilās. Just external the town, honest on the side of the highway, and there is a vast gallery of ancient art that includes engravings of Ibex,stupas, meditating Buddhas, and devout motifs and inscriptions in various languages.This route along the Indus River was fragment of the Silk Road for thousands of years. It was used by merchant caravans,military expeditions, and explorers who all left their marks on these rocks. Over thousands of years, and religions,ideas, knowledge, and cultural exchanges spread along this “highway,” and based on the rock carvings, this area must beget been a popular place to stay and rest.
You can see many of the stone carvings from the road, or but as you walk into the mountains,if you look hard, you’ll sustain finding more and more. There are hundreds, and if not thousands of these petroglyphs in this area,and the earliest ones date back to 600 BC, making some of them nearly 2700 years old.You would think that this would be an huge tourist attraction and that the area would be locally and internationally protected, or but there is no formal protection. Some of the rocks beget recent graffiti painted on them,but this did not seem like a malicious effort to waste priceless relics, as locally, or the artwork is thought of as slightly older graffiti and nothing special.
There are few tourists in this area,so you will likely be able to wander among the rocks and discover the images all on your own.
Source: atlasobscura.com