> How safe is it for Indians to visit the Khyber region? I speak Hindi/Urdu with conversational fluency. Can I get by? What’s the best and shortest route to take to get there?

As an Indian citizen, it will be basically impossible for you to get a visa to Pakistan, especially to visit Khyber Pass.

Indians are only eligible for business, pilgrim or visitor visas to Pakistan. The pilgrim visa allows Indians to visit 15 sites in Pakistan for religious tourism.

The visitor visa is granted if you have close family members or friends in Pakistan and you can only visit a maximum of 5 cities for 3 months. More so, you will have to register and present yourself to the police every week I think.

If you have a citizenship of some other country, it does become easier but there will be an "eye" kept on you since both Pakistani and Indian governments are quite paranoid about each other's citizens being spies and visiting an area like Khyber Pass invites more suspiciousness.

When I went, there was special permitting required to go up the Khyber Pass but nothing for DAK. So assuming you can get a visa for the country, you should be able to reach DAK easily from Peshawar.

I think foreigners are banned from Kohat Tunnel

It's pretty safe.

I don't know about the visa details etc but being able to speak urdu/hindi fluently should be enough. No one's will be able to tell if you are an Indian as alot of people from Punjab province who speak Urdu and look like indians visit alot.

The locals will mistake you for being a Punjabi. :)

Lahori here, isn't Hindi obviously different from Urdu to the ear? Or is it similar enough to the locals that they can't tell?

I'm pretty sure they can't tell. Some younger ones who may have watched alot of Bollywood movies should be able to but almost no one knows if hindi is only exclusively spoke in India.