Place
Faisal Mosque
Islamabad's mountain-backed modern mosque, where Harry was asked for a hundred photographs in an hour and where the walk up runs through a troop of monkeys.
Faisal Mosque
The great modern mosque of Islamabad, in Pakistan, set against the Margalla Hills at the top of the city. Harry’s first sight of it is at sunset — four minarets, pink cloud, mountains behind — and his description is that it looks like something out of Hogwarts.
How big it is, he can’t keep straight: within one video he calls it the sixth largest mosque in Pakistan, the sixth largest in the world and the largest in Asia (from video – unverified). All three are recorded as spoken; none is adopted.
Visiting
- Shoes off at the entrance, and there is a proper cloakroom system — it is government premises, so collecting them again takes a while.
- Sunset is the hour. The setting is what he keeps returning to rather than the building: green foothills, mountains, and the valley below.
- The best photo spots are contested. The obvious viewpoint has trees in the way and the clear one is packed; he ends up shooting from the side.
- Expect to be photographed constantly. Around twenty requests in the first few minutes and something like a hundred people over an hour — Harry’s own advice to Western visitors is to expect exactly this at the places tourists gather, and that it is friendly rather than intrusive. Filters, slow-motion walking videos and FaceTime calls to relatives all feature.
- The walk up passes monkeys. On the trail approach a troop sits across the path; one charged Harry to within half a metre while he filmed, and he was told afterwards that they attack in groups.
