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The more you know about the area you are going to, the more you will enjoy your visit.
Mountaineers and trekkers with a liaison officer can borrow the restricted army maps from the Pakistani Tourism Division.
The maps available to the general public, even the most modem, are on scales between 1:200,000 and 1:500,000 and are none too accurate. They do not show the terrain in any detail, and marked bridges may have since washed away and been relocated. The best route up a valley or over a pass is not always the most obvious one. Even a small river not featured on your map can prove to be a major obstacle.
These maps are, however, useful for planning the general route for the trek and allow a rough estimate of distances and altitudes. They also give a good idea of the geography of the region and can be fun to pour over before, during and after the trek.
Good maps are not easily available in Pakistan, so buy your maps before you leave home. 
As The best map of the Karakoram is the orographical sketch map published in 1990 by the Swiss Foundation for Alpine Research, in Zurich. Printed to the scale 1:250,000, it comes in two sheets (four sheets in the United Kingdom). The map shows the main mountain ridges and gives contour lines for every 1,220 metres. Although these maps do not show international boundaries with India and China, nor many of the modem jeep roads, their village names, trekking routes, passes and mountain names and heights are more accurately recorded than on the U502 maps covering this region.
The best contour maps are the American Military Service (AMS) U502 series, which are also drawn to the scale 1:250,000. However, road detail and village names are up to 50 years out of date. Also, the cease-fire line between India and Pakistan is not marked, so if you are trekking in Kashmir or Baltistan you must find out where it is. Take careful note of the reliability diagram on each map, rating the areas as good, fair or poor.
The U502 maps for northern Pakistan are: NJ 43-13 (Mastuj) for northern Chitral;
NJ 43-14 (Baltit) for Hunza; NJ 43-15 (Shimshal) for Shimshal and Hispar; N1 43-1 (Churrai) for upper Swat; N1 43-2 (Gilgit) for Gilgit and Nanga Parbat; N1 43-3 (Mundik) for Skardu;NI43-4(Siachen-) for Concordia and K2;andNI43-6(Srinagar) for Azad Kashmir and the valley of Kaghan. The maps covering the border areas with Afghanistan (Nj 42-16 and N1 42-4) are restricted.
Another good set of maps is published in Japan in the book Mountaineering Maps of the World: Karokorom, Hindu Kush, Pamir and Tien Shan (1978), on the scale 1:200,000. The text is in Japanese, but the maps are labelled in Roman script. The maps cover most of Pakistan's mountain region (including Nanga Parbat) and are reasonably complete and accurate, though they do not show modem jeep roads. The cartographers put question marks wherever they are not sure of the terrain. The book is hard to find and is very expensive, but a good map shop may have black-and-white or colour photocopies.
There are two superb 1:50,000 German maps—one of Nanga Parbat and the other of the Minapin Glacier—made by the Deutsche Himalaya Expedition in 1934 and updated in 1980.
There is also an excellent Chinese map of the Batura Glacier on the scale 1:60,000. It was compiled in 1978 by the Institute of Glaciology, Cryopedology and Desert Research, Academia Sinica, Lanzhou.
The aeronautical maps compiled and published by the Defense Mapping Agency Aerospace Center, St Louis Air Force Station, Missouri, scale 1:500,000 are fairly accurate for heights of mountains, courses of rivers and names of major towns, but they show few roads and almost no villages, so are not particularly useful to the trekker.