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I don't know where they even got that pronunciation from. The wikipedia page says "Karakoram (English: /ˌkɑːrəˈkɔːrəm, ˌkær-/, Urdu: [kaːɾaːkoːɾəm])"

none of which is [kerəkɑːrəm] as the author suggests

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakoram

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Karakoram

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I would naturally read ⟨aw⟩ as /oː/ (as in e.g. ⟨hawk⟩), rather than /ɑː/. The weird part is the [e] — the only thing I can suggest is that they’re one of those people who raise /æ/ to [e] in some positions.

This whole thread is a comedy of errors stemming from different English pronunciation variants. The author of the original article evidently has the full Mary/marry/merry merger but maintains the cot/caught distinction, so "keh·ruh·kaw·ruhm" seems like a natural way of spelling the pronunciation. GP has the cot/caught merger but does not merge Mary/marry, so they read "keh·ruh·kaw·ruhm" as [kerəkɑːrəm] and understood this as distinct from Wikipedia's kær- pronunciation. And you don't have the cot/caught merger or the Mary/marry merger.

You can listen to two native speakers on Forvo: https://forvo.com/search/%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%82%D8%B1%D9%8....

The original name is Turkic and it Urdu version (especially first one) is very similar to how I read it.

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