Pakistan Travel Guide

Lahore was the seat of the Mughal Empire and remains Pakistan's cultural pole — the UNESCO-listed fort and Shalimar Gardens, the vast Badshahi Mosque and the painted-tile interior of Wazir Khan, all covered in depth by the Mughal Lahore guide. The haveli lanes and bazaars of the walled city, the Gandhara collection of the Lahore Museum and the food streets fill several days, and the surrounding province of Punjab adds the Salt Range, Multan and the desert forts.

Pakistan's far north is one of the great mountain regions of the world, where the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush and the Western Himalaya converge on K2 and Nanga Parbat — the peaks, glaciers and trekking routes are the subject of the K2 and Karakoram guide. The road journey itself is the other half of the experience — the Karakoram Highway threads the Hunza valley's forts and orchards up to the Khunjerab Pass, while the living valleys below belong to Gilgit-Baltistan.

The planned modernist capital at the foot of the Margalla Hills is anchored by the immense Faisal Mosque and a hiking-trail network that starts directly behind the city, while twin-city Rawalpindi keeps the bazaar and colonial layers. Under an hour west lie the UNESCO ruins where the Hellenistic and Buddhist worlds met, told in full by the Taxila and Gandhara guide.

Karachi on the Arabian Sea is Pakistan's largest city and its economic capital, with British-era set pieces, the mausoleum of the country's founder and the seafront promenades. The province beyond it runs deep — Sindh holds the Sufi shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar at Sehwan Sharif and the vast Makli Necropolis at Thatta, and the Bronze-Age city at the province's heart has its own read in the Mohenjo-Daro guide.

Peshawar is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in South Asia and the gateway to the Khyber Pass, with a walled old city of havelis, the storytellers' bazaar and one of the world's great Gandhara sculpture collections in its museum. Beyond it, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa climbs through the Galyat hill stations to the Swat valley and the Kalash valleys of Chitral, home to a unique pre-Islamic culture and its spring festivals.

Pakistan's spiritual map spans all the great pre-modern South Asian traditions: a living Sufi shrine network whose Thursday qawwali and dhamaal visitors can hear from Lahore to Sehwan Sharif, Hindu pilgrimage anchors from Hinglaj Mata in Balochistan to the Katas Raj temples, and two of Sikhism's holiest sites — Guru Nanak's birthplace and his resting place at Kartarpur, covered with the corridor's practicalities in the Sikh heritage guide. Access to the minority-faith sites runs on dedicated procedures and religious visas.

Pakistan carries one of the deepest archaeological stacks in the world: the Bronze-Age Indus Valley cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, contemporaries of Old Kingdom Egypt; the Gandhara region where Hellenistic and Buddhist art first met and the Buddha was first portrayed in human form; and a Mughal layer running from Lahore Fort and Jahangir's garden tomb to the Badshahi Mosque. The British colonial layer in Karachi, Lahore and the hill stations closes the circuit.