[1] Situated at the height of 2,500 metres (8,200 ft), it has had an operational resort for tourists on its bank since 1983.

Through the architectural work of the resort and the background Karakoram hills, the landscapes of the lake make it one of the attractive tourist destinations within the northern Pakistan.

[5] The Shangrila Resort Hotel was founded by Aslam Khan Afridi, a Pakistani military officer who served as the first commander of the Northern Scouts of the Pakistan Army.

[2] The resort was named after Shangri-La, an idyllic Himalayan paradise described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon written by the British novelist James Hilton.

In the novel, Hilton narrates a tale in which the surviving passengers of an early–1920s airplane crash encounter a group of Buddhist monks from a nearby temple, who answer the passengers' call for help and take them to a lamasery filled with a variety of fruits and flowers; the monks claim to be hundreds of years old, but appear youthful in their appearance.