page_title: Karakoram
section_title: Name
hierarchical_section_title: Karakoram / Name
caption_attribution_description: English: Northern Areas of Pakistan
context_page_description: The Karakoram is a mountain range spanning the borders of India, Pakistan and China with the northwest extremity of the range extending to Afghanistan and Tajikistan; its highest 15 mountains are all based in Pakistan. It begins in the Wakhan Corridor in the west and encompasses the majority of Gilgit-Baltistan and extends into Ladakh and the disputed Aksai Chin region controlled by China. It is the second highest mountain range in the world and part of the complex of ranges including the Pamir Mountains, the Hindu Kush and the Himalayan Mountains. The Karakoram has eight summits over 7,500 m height, with four of them exceeding 8,000 m: K2, the second highest peak in the world at 8,611 m, Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum II.
  The range is about 500 km in length and is the most heavily glaciated part of the world outside the polar regions. The Siachen Glacier at 76 kilometres and the Biafo Glacier at 63 kilometres rank as the world's second and third longest glaciers outside the polar regions.
context_section_description: Karakoram is a Turkic term meaning black gravel. The Central Asian traders originally applied the name to the Karakoram Pass. Early European travellers, including William Moorcroft and George Hayward, started using the term for the range of mountains west of the pass, although they also used the term Muztagh (meaning, "Ice Mountain") for the range now known as Karakoram. Later terminology was influenced by the Survey of India, whose surveyor Thomas Montgomerie in the 1850s gave the labels K1 to K6 (K for Karakoram) to six high mountains visible from his station at Mount Haramukh in Kashmir.
  In ancient Sanskrit texts (Puranas), the name Krishnagiri (black mountains) was used to describe the range.
caption: "Karakoram" is a Turkic word referencing the mountains' black gravel, as seen near Pakistan's Biafo Glacier.
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