The night sky over the Himalayas

During my flight to Qatar through the night I suddenly became aware of something outside my window. I looked out into the night and there were a million stars. First only large stars here and there, then the smaller ones became visible too. There were stars everywhere and I felt like we were almost level with them, flying past them.
I turned on the monitor to see where we were, and the map showed me, we just passed through the sky between Kabul and Islamabad...