Punjab: Sufi Shrines, Forts and the Five Rivers
Apply for your eVisa- Code:PB
- Type:province
- Population:127.7M (2023)
- Area:205,344 km²
- Capital:Lahore
Introduction
Punjab — the land of the five rivers — is Pakistan's most populous province and its agricultural heartland, a vast alluvial plain running from the foothills near Islamabad down to the deserts of the south. It is the country's cultural and economic centre, home to Lahore and to a dense layer of history that reaches back through the Mughals and the Sikhs to the ancient Indus, and it remains defined today by its rivers, its wheat and cotton fields, and a devotional life centred on the great Sufi shrines.
Overview
Punjab's headline monuments — the Mughal splendour of Lahore covered by Mughal Lahore — are only one layer of the province. Beyond them lies a country of Sufi saints, desert forts and ancient temples that most visitors never reach, wrapped around the liveliest, most food-obsessed cities of the plains. It makes Punjab a far deeper destination than a single stop in Lahore suggests.
Discover Punjab
South of Lahore on the old road to Sindh, Multan is one of the subcontinent's oldest cities and the spiritual heart of southern Punjab — known across Pakistan as the City of Saints for the density of Sufi shrines that crown its old mounds. The great tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam, a vast fourteenth-century octagon of tapering brick and turquoise tile, is one of the masterpieces of the region's tomb architecture and visible for miles across the city; the shrine of Bahauddin Zakariya beside it is the other pole of Multan's devotional life. The old city around them is a warren of bazaars famous for blue Multani pottery, camel-bone crafts and lacquered woodwork, and the whole place runs to a slower, hotter, more southern rhythm than the Punjab of the plains.
Ways to Experience This Destination
The City of Saints — the blue-tiled tombs of Shah Rukn-e-Alam and Bahauddin Zakariya and the old bazaars around them.
Sher Shah Suri's unconquered fortress, the ancient Katas Raj temples and the rose-rock galleries of the Khewra salt mine.
The great desert fort rising from the Cholistan sands and the palaces of princely Bahawalpur.
Food-street cities, canal-fed farmland and the local Sufi shrines of the five-rivers plain.
Frequently asked questions
This overview comes from Visaja's worldwide missions database (visaja.com), checked against official government sources; for binding answers, the mission itself always has the final word.