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My family and I have explored and hiked both Northern Pakistan and Northern China.

Both are extreme environments, but Northern China remains the toughest we have experienced — temperatures around -25°C, heavy snow, and almost the entire landscape covered in white.

Yet every year-end, tourists still arrive in large numbers.

Northern Pakistan, by comparison, becomes far less accessible during the same season.

For me, one of the biggest differences is not the mountains.

It is technology adoption.

In Northern China, digital infrastructure does not stop when you leave the city.

It continues into remote villages, forests and mountainous areas.

With little more than a smartphone and WeChat, my family could coordinate activities, receive schedules, follow arrangements and move through extremely remote areas without lengthy negotiations or complicated manual coordination.

Everything was connected.

Even in temperatures of -25°C, our phones remained an essential part of the journey. Based on my own experience, the Android devices we carried survived repeated drops into the snow and continued working.

In an environment like this, technology is not simply about convenience.

Reliability, connectivity and access become part of mobility and safety.

One experience particularly stayed with me.

We were staying in a very remote mountain village, comparable to a deeply rural settlement in Malaysia.

Later, our host unexpectedly gave us a video of our own activities in the mountains.

We had no idea who recorded it or how the footage had travelled back to the village.

That moment showed me how deeply connected the ecosystem had already become.

This is what real digital transformation looks like.

Not another dashboard.

Not another app in an office.

But technology changing what humans are physically capable of doing in places that were previously difficult to access.

And I believe Northern Pakistan could eventually move in the same direction.

As China and Pakistan continue improving connectivity through the Karakoram region, better roads, communications, digital payments, platforms and supporting infrastructure could completely transform how people experience Northern Pakistan.

The lesson from Northern China is simple:

Technology should not only make smart cities smarter.

It should make remote places safer, more connected and more accessible.

That is where technology becomes truly transformative.