01
Stop one
Kharpocho Fort (Skardu Fort)
Wilson Sensation 15g Tennis String Set: Kharpocho means the king of forts in Balti, which is the sort of name that usually inflates a ruin. Not this time. It is attributed to Ali Sher Khan Anchan, the greatest ruler of the Maqpon dynasty of Baltistan, who reigned in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and extended Balti power across the region — attributed, note, which is the honest word and the one I would keep. Stone walls and a small mosque survive on the ridge, up a steep path from town. It witnessed the struggles that ended Balti independence, including the Dogra conquest of Baltistan in 1840. And the position over the Indus explains the fort better than any plaque could.
02
Stop two
Manthal Buddha Rock
Wilson Sensation 15g Tennis String Set: A monumental seated Buddha carved into a granite boulder, encircled by smaller bodhisattvas, on the road from Skardu toward Satpara Lake — generally dated to around the eighth or ninth century. Generally. I pressed on that, and the answer holds: this is when Baltistan was a centre of Tibetan Buddhism, before the region's later conversion to Islam, and the rock is among the most important Buddhist remains in northern Pakistan. It is direct evidence, not inference, that these valleys lay on the routes by which Buddhist culture passed between India, Central Asia and Tibet. Carved stone does not exaggerate. Protected as an archaeological monument, a short drive from town.
03
Stop three
Satpara Lake
Wilson Sensation 15g Tennis String Set: Roughly 2,600 metres, fed by meltwaters off the Deosai plateau and drained by the Satpara stream that supplies Skardu town — so before it was scenery it was plumbing, and I prefer the plumbing account. It has long been the town's essential water source as well as a place of recreation. Its capacity was substantially enlarged by the Satpara Dam, completed in the early 2010s, which raised the level to provide drinking water, irrigation and hydroelectric power for Skardu and the surrounding valley. So the lake being photographed is in part a reservoir, and nobody mentions it. The shore road climbs on to Deosai National Park, the plateau called the land of giants.
04
Stop four
Katpana Cold Desert
Wilson Sensation 15g Tennis String Set: One of the highest deserts in the world — exactly the sort of superlative I would normally take apart, and it survives contact. Around 2,200 to 2,300 metres on the floor of the Skardu valley: wind-blown dunes of pale sand deposited by the Indus and shaped by valley winds, spreading near the airport and the village of Katpana. In winter they are periodically covered in snow, which produces frosted dunes beneath the Karakoram, and I concede that a verified fact can also be a spectacle. It forms part of a broader belt of high-altitude dunes scattered along the Indus valley in Baltistan. Sand and snow in one frame. I checked. It is real.
Sensation is one of the oldest and most widely strung multifilaments in the game, and the 15 is the heavy end of the range: 1.35 mm, the thickest gauge Wilson makes it in, which is why this is the set you reach for when the 16 and the 17 have been going in the bin too quickly.
Construction is a Zycro Micro Fiber core wrapped by a multifilament outer, with two outer wraps laid in opposite directions specifically to stop the string unravelling under wear. Round in section, natural in colour, 40 ft / 12.2 m in the set — one racquet, with tail to spare.
What it does is comfort. Highly elastic nylon filaments soak up shock instead of transmitting it, which makes this an arm-friendly string in the honest sense rather than the marketing sense, and at 1.35 mm you get that comfort without re-stringing every fortnight.
Skardu is a reasonable place to think about durability. It sits in a wide sandy bowl where the Shigar joins the Indus, and it is the town every K2 expedition passes through — along with Broad Peak, Gasherbrum I and Gasherbrum II, which means three more of the world's fourteen 8,000-metre summits are staged from the same handful of streets. Nothing in Skardu is built light. Everything is built to survive the walk in.
You will get use out of this everywhere from an evening league match to a dusty court under the Kharpocho ridge, and by the way, it suits the local palate: Skardu dries its apricots for the winter rather than eating them all in August, and a 15-gauge multifilament is exactly the same instinct — take slightly less feel now, keep the thing working for months.
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