The geographer Aurel Stein suggested that Aornos was located on Pir Sar - a mountain spur above narrow gorges in a bend of the upper Indus River, just to the west of Thakot in the Pakistani Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. However, the Indologist Giuseppe Tucci has instead proposed a site at the summit of Elum Ghar (Mount Ilam), a site significant in Hinduism, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.