Inhabiting Northern Pakistan are the Balti people whom are descendents of a people whom spoke a Sino-Tibetan language(Language family that contains the Chinese language). The speakers of this language number in at 330,000 and are no longer Mongoloid(Predominantly). I came across these people while looking for Tibetan pics. Interesting people. The area they live in is reffered to as Baltistan.

They are shia musilims,right?

i read about these balti people in a book about himalayan mountain climbing by some westerners. they apparently used these really poor backwards people as porters, kind of like sherpas. they always wanted higher pay and weren't satisfied with their treatment, and sometimes got violent or betrayed the expedition. of course this is probably a quite biased opinion. they were described as being very isolated and having no modern medicine whatsoever, living in little tiny remote villages deep in the mountain valleys, and many who were exposed to western diseases got sick easily. they were muslims but i think they were pretty superstitious too. there aren't that many muslim groups in that area either. they also have some slight tibetan influence i think. i think recently there might have been some efforts to try to modernize these people, and there aren't many left of them i think. apparently their region is known as baltistan

The Balti are used as porters for Europeans whom want to trek the Himilayas, but I do not know of them being treated bad, probably are, you know how Euopean trekkers like to use and abuse the natives of the lands they visit. As far as not many of them left is concered, there are over 330,000 Balti speakers, so there is a good number of them. Their land use to be a part of Tibet.

Their language is a dialect of the Tibetan language.