High mountain areas like the Northern Areas of Pakistan are frequently
regarded as having been isolated from the surrounding world before th
e development of modern means of communication. The paper argues that
Gilgit, the modern center of the Northern Areas, had been subject to i
mmigration and thus contact with the outside long before the era of ro
ad construction. The relationship between immigrants and people of Gil
git changed according to the conditions and (political) context of mig
ration. Modernity did not start migration but it caused new patterns o
f migration and of relations with immigrants to emerge.