Lahore

The great city of Punjab and, by common agreement including Harry’s, the food capital of Pakistan. The line his Karachi Couchsurfing host gave him holds up here: Lahore has the better food, Karachi the better people — though Lahore does not exactly disgrace itself on the second count either, since four separate establishments refused to let Harry pay for anything in a single day.

The city divides for his purposes into the modern districts — Gulberg, wide and built-up — and Old Lahore with the Walled City inside it, where the food tour actually happens. Population is somewhere around 16 to 18 million (from video – unverified); his guide’s figure is the higher one and rising.

What Harry did

Spent a full day eating his way across the city with Adil, a Lahore-born guide whose booking details Harry puts in the video description. Six-plus meals from breakfast to late dinner, mostly in places that are unmarked, unfindable, or open only until early afternoon.

The food

• Chana with kulcha — the classic Lahore breakfast, and Harry’s joint favourite of the day. Chickpeas in oil with green chilli, a hard-boiled egg and raita to cool it, eaten with sesame-seeded kulcha. The bread comes off a hand assembly line at one every ten to twenty seconds — dough rolled, flattened, dimpled with the fingers, seeded, slapped into the oven wall for about a minute — with no machinery involved at any stage. Two full breakfasts and two waters came to 500 rupees, about $1.50.
• Lassi — from a shop in its third generation, same recipe since 1947. The yoghurt is churned by hand with a wooden stick until it is nearly solid, then the malai is skimmed and layered on top with koya and a biscuit. Harry describes it as sweetened whipped cream you eat before you drink, and rates it the best he has had anywhere.
• The Walled City breakfast stall — four things at once: kachori (spiced lamb in a deep-fried crust), chana in a different style from the morning’s, puri, and halwa. Open early, done by 2pm, shut for the day. The halwa — almonds, ghee, sugar and a hint of cinnamon — is the dish he says he has never tasted anything like, and the recipe originally came from Delhi.
• Pakora — onion and coriander with black seeds, fried to order, served with apricot chutney and bread. The shop has been in the same family 74 years and the family lives above it. Level with the chana as his best of the day; treat it as a snack rather than a meal.
• Fried fish, weighed out on old brass scales at the same stall.
• Almond milk, which his guide calls the sister of the lassi — yoghurt and milk based, smooth, sweet but not cloying.
• Beef pulao — fluffy rice with black pepper and slow-cooked beef, the meat given hours over a low flame and no tenderiser. Pashtun in origin rather than Punjabi, from the tribal areas where beef is preferred to chicken. The chain he ate at runs 14 branches across Lahore off a single central kitchen. Two meals, 700 rupees, about three dollars.
• Sugarcane candy, sold in snapped-off pieces on the street. Enormously sweet; Harry was not converted by the texture.
• Tandoori chai, served from clay pots with coarse and brown sugar on the side — sweet, faintly fruity, light on caffeine. 250 rupees, and the thing he singles out from his first day in the city.

The street, on a first day

Before the food tour, Harry’s Lahore is cricket and conversation.

• Cricket is played on every surface — three separate games running in one park, plus street matches on the way there. He joins one, bowls badly with a soft ball he can’t judge, and is hit for six by a teenager.
• The infrastructure is visibly better than Karachi’s: bus lanes, and what he reads as an actual public transport system rather than every man for himself.
• Shopping: trainers asked at 1,200 went for 1,000, about $5.70, after he countered at 500 and asked for the local price. He assumes they’re copies and says the copy is good.
• The first fare set the tone for the city. A tuk-tuk driver quoted 200 rupees — the ordinary local price with no foreigner mark-up — and Harry gave him 1,000, saying on camera that he had been overcharged too often since arriving and that an honest quote was worth paying for. See reward honesty and hard work.
• What people ask him, repeatedly: whether he feels safe here, and whether he would tell other tourists to come.
• About a hundred photographs in an hour around the Badshahi Mosque, and a queue forming on Fort Road another evening. His read is that it is about being foreign rather than being recognised. He and Mac had business cards printed in Karachi for roughly £5 to hand out instead of typing a channel name into every phone.

The Badshahi Mosque

• Shorts will not get you in. Harry was turned away at the door and couldn’t buy trousers nearby in time, so he never saw inside — see cover up in conservative countries.
• The best view of it is from across the road, four floors up in one of the buildings opposite, where local families sit out. Harry rates it the best viewpoint in the city.
• Arrive well before prayer if you want it quiet; the crowds build for about half an hour beforehand.
• The area is where the rickshaw tour touts work, and where a 1,500-rupee quote became 2,500 between morning and afternoon — with the reason given openly: because they were tourists.

Grooming, at the top of the market

The other thing Lahore is good for at a price. A full men’s package — fade, clean shave, a seven-stage facial, manicure and pedicure — ran four hours and 17,400 rupees, roughly $95 (from video – unverified — Harry doesn’t say whether that covered both of them).

What he singles out is not the treatment but the hygiene: every tool soaked in disinfectant between uses, and the cleanest barber he says he has been to anywhere. The shave technique is worth knowing too — hot towel first to soften the hair and set its direction, then layered creams and oils, then the razor.

Compare the street end of the same trade, from his next trip: a 25-cent shave in Peshawar and a 45-minute massage under a highway underpass for 500 rupees.

The salon is not named: the venue is credited in the description and the video is a full package.

Gulberg, and where to actually work

Gulberg is the modern district — wide streets, shopping, upmarket restaurants and rooftop cafes, and a strip of non-Pakistani food when ten days of the local cuisine is enough. Cafe Beirut there is Lebanese, Pakistani-owned with a Lebanese chef and manager, and came to 2,500 rupees for two, about $14; Mac, who had spent three months in Lebanon that year, rated it against Beirut’s own and said the bread was the only real difference.

Things to do that aren’t food. A go-kart circuit on the edge of the city runs about $18 a head for fifteen minutes, on karts Harry was told do 50 mph and believes it; sessions are scored on best lap, booked on arrival, and you can pay for another run. He rates it and calls it slightly dangerous in the same sentence. Joyland, the theme park, is families only and turned him and Mac away at the gate.

The wifi finding is the useful one. Ten days in, the best connection Harry found anywhere in the country was 20-30 Mbps at a modest Gulberg hotel at £50 a night — against 9.3 Mbps at the $200-a-night place across town. Price and speed did not go together here.

Having a suit made

Lahore is where Harry had a suit tailored for his brother’s wedding, and the numbers are the point: 45,000 rupees asked, 30,000 paid — about $178 — with a three-to-four-day turnaround, a deposit up front and the balance on collection. Off-the-shelf suits were quoted at around 30,000, so the tailoring came in at roughly the ready-made price once he argued.

Two things made the price move. He had a real reference — what a suit costs him in England — and he was talking to the owners. They told him directly that staff are not allowed to give any discount, which is worth knowing before you start negotiating with whoever is nearest the door.

The fabric was Pakistani and the suit made in the city. He couldn’t get a linen shirt to go with it and bought one off a market stall instead.

His own verdict, said on camera: it is a lot of money in Pakistan, he probably went the wrong way on it, and what he really bought was convenience — fluent English and a fitting five minutes from his hotel room. A tailor he’d found earlier in the city spoke no English, which he notes is his problem rather than the tailor’s.

The tailor is not named: Harry publishes their number in the video description.

The Wazir Khan Mosque

Begun in 1634 and on UNESCO’s tentative list. Shoes off at the door, trousers required, and 1,000 rupees buys access up the minaret — a real climb, with the densest view of the old town at the top and dead birds on the stairs.

Go on a Friday outside prayer times if you want it empty: Harry had the tower to himself on the holy day, because the crowds come for the prayers rather than for the building.

Getting there is where people come unstuck. A ride app’s top result for the mosque’s name is a road of the same name on the far side of the city, which cost Harry half an hour each way — see don’t trust Google Maps.

The Walled City

Entered through a gate rebuilt under Robert Montgomery in 1864, and the detail worth knowing is the pair of them: a wide gate opened for dignitaries, and a low one everyone else used and had to bow their head to pass through. Inside, the streets are thin and tall, the buildings carry Hindu-influenced decoration from before Partition, and the trades are still clustered — locksmiths cutting keys by hand, butchers with brain, feet and lungs laid out, bakeries that never close.

Harry’s comparison with Karachi is about variety: there the same goods repeat down a street, here almost every stall is selling something different.

The last hookah house

Two brothers run what Adil says is the last hookah in this part of the Walled City. The tobacco is a cured leaf from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that takes two or three months to prepare, and it is strong enough that Harry takes two draws and stops. What it is really for is the point: one pipe, everyone sat around it, sharing — the social network before the internet, in Adil’s phrase. The younger generation has moved to shisha, so this is an old man’s institution now. The brothers give tobacco away to passers-by for nothing.

Getting there

The overnight Green Line sleeper from Karachi takes 17 hours and is how Harry arrived on his first visit, in December 2021. A business-class cabin is six berths with fold-down beds, a fan, power and a screen; he and Mac bought the whole compartment for about 36,000 rupees, near $200, which he justifies as a hotel night plus a working day. A flight would have cost about the same. His advice, taken from locals and followed: don’t eat or drink anything served on board.

Staying, and eating expensively

Harry’s Lahore base on the 2021 visit was a large luxury hotel at about $200 a night — three lanes of security with armed guards and dogs before a vehicle reaches the door, a pool, gym, sauna and spa, shops inside the lobby, and a conference trade that keeps it full. Room wifi ran 9.3 Mbps, which he only rates after checking it against a Lahore co-working space quoted at 6–8.

Its restaurant is where he eats the expensive version of Pakistani food for the first time in the country, having had nothing but street food until then: kebabs and lamb cooked to a caramelised crust, a lamb-and-rice dish baked inside pastry, and a set saffron dessert under edible silver leaf — which he had never eaten, and reports as tasteless and purely for the look. Three courses for two, about $40, which he calls good value and, in the same breath, still a lot of money for most Pakistanis.

The hotel is not named: Harry was given lounge access above his room grade, and staff offer viewers a discount on camera.

December in Lahore is 20–25°C by day and drops to around 10–15 in the evening — t-shirt weather for a British visitor and a clear step down from Karachi.

Practical facts

• The Wagah border ceremony is 40-45 minutes out of the city and runs every evening of the year.
• Foreign bank cards are a real problem here. Harry and Mac could not make any machine in Lahore accept either of their cards until they found a Standard Chartered, which capped withdrawals at 20,000 rupees — and the bank that had worked for them in Karachi didn’t work here.
• Fort Road food street runs beside the Badshahi Mosque and is where the evening eating happens. The rooftop restaurants above it — Cuckoo’s Den among them, which Harry is told is a historic post-Partition institution (from video – unverified) — look straight at the mosque and charge accordingly: two biryanis and two drinks came to 4,000 rupees, about $22, which he calls Western pricing paid knowingly for the view.
• The Delhi Gate market sells nothing to tourists, which is the reason to walk it. Clothing, cashmere, clocks and nuts for people who live there; Harry went in wanting a souvenir and left with none.
• Expect to be photographed. By the mosque a queue formed of people waiting to take pictures with him, none of whom knew who he was.
• A monkey handler works the food street doing tricks. Harry walks past and says why — see check animal welfare before booking.
• Many of the best stalls are breakfast-only and shut by early afternoon. Plan the day around them rather than the other way round.
• Roadside tyre repair costs around 200 rupees and takes minutes; Harry’s point is that you’re never far from a repair shop anywhere in the country.
• Rain is when people go out, not when they stay in — it’s relief from the heat.
• Lahore has a visible Christian population alongside the Muslim majority, which caught Harry out when his greeting was politely declined.
• The Orange Line metro, the roads and much of the new build are Chinese-built; his guide’s explanation is port access.

Harry’s tips

• Take a guide, and take one from here. Nothing on this route is signposted, several places are open only to 2pm, and every piece of history in the video came out of Adil rather than off a wall — see travel with a local guide.
• Expect not to be allowed to pay, and have a plan for it. Harry’s compromise when the owner refuses is to leave the money as a tip for the staff — see insist on paying.
• Eat the breakfast dishes at breakfast. The chana, the kachori and the halwa are all gone by mid-afternoon.
• Ride pillion if you get the chance. He rates the back of a motorbike as the best way to take in the city — everything at once, and everyone staring.

Source

• $100 Overnight Train to LAHORE 🇵🇰 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euRYdj569C4
• BEST Hotel in PAKISTAN ($200/night)🇵🇰 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3sf4QfJqIk
• First Impressions of LAHORE, PAKISTAN🇵🇰 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LLhYupihgQ
• Trying DELICIOUS Pakistani Food 🇵🇰 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctWQ5awQrss
• $8 Tour of LAHORE, PAKISTAN 🇵🇰 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq8KmCADsP8
• $170 Tailored Suit In Pakistan 🇵🇰 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUMZd2SxcCg
• Tourists at India & Pakistan Border 🇵🇰 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fyQaLUD6tw
• $100 Haircut in LAHORE, PAKISTAN 🇵🇰 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pgOjeOFhfw
• Exploring Modern Lahore, Pakistan 🇵🇰 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55-lApMfEvc
• $18 Go Karting In PAKISTAN🇵🇰 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAUDtgeuKSc
• Foreigners Explore Old Town Lahore🇵🇰 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oNz89I56nk
• Most Expensive Bus In Pakistan 🇵🇰(LUXURY TRAVEL) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPcs0xJiphU
• ULTIMATE LAHORE STREET FOOD TOUR 🇵🇰 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2ydcx-urcE