Mansehra: Gateway to the Kaghan Valley

Mansehra stands at the southern end of the Pakhli plain in the hills of Hazara, about 19 km north of Abbottabad and roughly 1,100 metres above sea level. Pine-covered ridges surround the town, and the Bhut stream, a tributary of the Siran River, runs past it. It is the headquarters of Mansehra District, which stretches north through the Kaghan Valley to the Babusar Pass.

The 2023 Census counted 137,278 people in the city and 1,797,177 in the district. Hindko is the first language of most townspeople, with Pashto and Urdu also widely spoken; the Swati Pashtuns have long been prominent landholders in the surrounding countryside.

Mansehra is above all a crossroads. The Karakoram Highway runs through the town on its way north to Thakot, Besham and Gilgit, while the N-15 branches off towards Balakot, Naran and the Kaghan Valley, so in summer its bazaars fill with families heading for the lakes. Around the town, the hills grow maize, wheat, potatoes, rice, fruit and tobacco, and a government sheep farm operates at Jaba.

Visitors who stop will find one of Pakistan's most important ancient monuments on the edge of town: three great boulders carved with the fourteen major edicts of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE. Hazara University, founded in 2002, has also made Mansehra a student town.