--- type: Place title: Islamabad description: Pakistan's purpose-built capital in the foothills — green, quiet and clean after Karachi and Lahore, and the city Harry arrives in expecting to like and does. tags: [islamabad, pakistan, capital, air-quality] coordinates: {lat: 33.6938, lng: 73.0652} timestamp: 2026-08-06T12:00:00Z --- # Islamabad The capital of [Pakistan](/countries/pakistan.md), north of [Lahore](/places/lahore.md) in the foothills, and the third stop of the 2021 series. Harry arrives having been told it is clean and calm, which is exactly what he wants after two weeks of [Karachi](/places/karachi.md) and Lahore and a week of being ill. **The first thing he notices is the air.** Coming off the bus he says the air feels cleaner and there is nothing like the smog he had been breathing in Lahore — where from a minaret the next district had been invisible. The approach turns mountainous on the way up. ## Getting there The **luxury coach from Lahore takes about four to four and a half hours** and cost $18 — reclining seats, a fridge, free drinks, an onboard toilet, food at 600 rupees a dish, and wifi at 6–10 Mbps, which Harry points out is better than some of the hotels he had stayed in. There is a fifteen-minute service stop halfway, where the Western fast-food chains are: a KFC box came to 560 rupees, around $4–5, against over 1,000 for a McDonald's earlier in the trip. ## How the city is built Islamabad is a **purpose-built replacement capital** — the capital was [Karachi](/places/karachi.md) before — and Harry's first impressions are almost entirely about the planning. - **Sectors, not neighbourhoods.** Districts are lettered and numbered: F7, F8, F9. Each has a ***markaz***, a central block holding that sector's shops and restaurants, which he compares to a small mall per district and rates the best thing about the layout. - **Parks were protected as part of the design**, and the roads are swept while he watches. - **Tuk-tuks are banned** because of the noise — after three weeks of riding them daily elsewhere in the country, the first city without any. - **Security is visible and constant**: two police checkpoints and five army positions on one walk, which he reads as seriousness rather than danger. - His comparison is central Europe, and his advice is to do the cities in the order he did — Karachi, Lahore, then here — because the reverse would make Karachi unintelligible. ## The Faisal Mosque The city's landmark, at the top of it against the Margalla Hills, and the place every visitor is photographed — see [Faisal Mosque](/places/faisal-mosque.md) for the visit itself, the monkeys on the approach and what an hour of photo requests looks like. ## Staying An Airbnb at about **$80 a night**, which Harry calls expensive for Pakistan and says outright he overpaid for — poor location, poor value, and chosen because there was little else he wanted. He talks about moving to a hotel instead. **December is cold here**, noticeably more so than Lahore and a real change after three weeks of warm cities. ### The top of the market Islamabad's most expensive hotels run to about **$300 a night**, and Harry rates the one he used in January 2022 as possibly the best he has stayed in anywhere. What that actually buys, on his account: - **A great deal that is included rather than charged** — complimentary minibar, a room phone usable for international calls *and* as a hotspot, multiple key cards, and a private airport transfer offered when he was about to book an Uber. - **A large buffet breakfast** he ranks among the best meals of his trip: Pakistani dishes alongside pastries, porridge, baked beans, an omelette station, and **chicken sausages rather than pork**. - A gym, a spa, gardens and a pool — **too cold to swim in January**. - Independent shops trading inside the hotel, tailors included, which he notes is standard in big Pakistani hotels. - **Western food at Western-ish prices**: about $10 for a pasta dish and a shake. - **Laundry at $3 an item**, expensive but fast. **The wi-fi is the catch, and it is a pattern by now.** About 6 Mbps at reception, no better through the room phone's hotspot — worse than the £50 hotel he had used in [Lahore](/places/lahore.md). Price and connection speed do not track each other in Pakistan. *The hotel is not named here: Harry appears to have been upgraded and was given the airport transfer, which is the benefit-received trigger.* ## Eating out The restaurant districts are modern and stay open late — snooker halls, an Irish cafe, a lot of coffee places, busiest on a Friday, which is the day off. - **Cheese paratha, the restaurant version.** A 24-hour paratha place does it with mozzarella, cheddar and cream cheese together, thin and crisp with a garlic dip. Harry had been eating the street version for weeks and can taste every cheese in this one. - **Burning Brownie** for dessert, on a local recommendation: a cheesecake he rates the best thing he has eaten in weeks despite disliking cheesecake, plus cookie ice cream and a cupcake — **just over 1,000 rupees, about $6, for all three**. - A shop called **Poundland**, pound sign and all, which works because **£1 is about 200 rupees**. - **Western food is easy to find here** and Harry uses it after three weeks of Pakistani food disagreeing with him: pasta and a juice at an Italian place came to about $9, which he calls closer to Western prices and worth it. - **Nitrogen ice cream** in the F8 markaz, frozen to order in front of you, about $4 — which he rates above ordinary ice cream purely because it is minutes old. - **Arabian food** does well here — chicken mandi, slow-cooked over seasoned rice and not spicy, 1,700 rupees for two, about $9. - **The F7 markaz** is the one Harry ends up basing himself around: restaurants, a bakery whose brownies get the strongest reaction of his trip, and a converted house running as a 30-room hotel. ## Saidpur A village absorbed into the city, ten minutes and about $2 away by taxi, and the one place in Islamabad that looks nothing like the rest of it — see [Saidpur](/places/saidpur.md). ## Getting around Taxis inside the city ran 600 rupees for a five-to-ten-minute ride to F8 and 250 for the way back. Fares up into the hills are a different matter: **2,000 asked against an app price of 895.** Harry's answer was that he was in no rush and would work down the rank until somebody was reasonable — at which point **a passing stranger with no stake in it took over the negotiation on his behalf.** He paid the 2,000 in the end regardless, on the grounds that the road up is long and steep and the driver who took him had earned it. ## The lake and dam area Outside the city, and the local recommendation for a day out. Boats on the water with fishermen working around them, and on the far side a cluster of **four or five small theme parks** — no large ones — plus a go-kart circuit and a driving range. - **Carnival entry is 20 rupees.** Two rides — a zipline and a Ferris wheel — came to 900-1,000 rupees, about $4 each. - **The zipline runs about 450 feet from roughly 50 metres up**, and operates after dark. - Most of the rides are built for young children; the zipline and the wheel are the two an adult would bother with. - **Getting there is the hard part.** Harry's driver put him at a boatyard on the wrong side of the water, and he covered the rest on the back of strangers' motorbikes — four up on a main road at one point, and neither rider would take money. ## Eating with a view **Monal**, up a long run of switchbacks into the Margalla Hills, is the restaurant Harry is taken to and the one he recommends — the whole flat, lit city below it, which he admits the camera cannot capture. Chicken karahi and garlic naan; a chocolate molten lava cake and gulab jamun after. Bags are searched on the door and drones are refused entry. Getting up there is its own negotiation — see Getting around above. ## Wealth, and what he says about it The housing in the good sectors is better than anything Harry knows in the UK or US, and he says so on camera — along with what follows from it, that the inequality here is severe. He declines to treat that as a Pakistani peculiarity, noting most countries have the same, and **he refused to film the houses** because filming where people live felt rude to him. ## Shopping **The street market is where you kit out for the north**, and the prices are the most useful list in the cluster: a thick winter jacket 3,000 rupees (about $16), a shirt 200 (about $1, carrying a British high-street label Harry assumes is fake), gloves 300, socks sold as they come in bulk. Shoe repair at the kerb is 150 rupees and takes ten to fifteen minutes; a shoe shine runs about 100. Harry's haggling here is affectionate rather than sharp — gloves talked from 250 to 200 and then paid at 300, because he enjoys the negotiation and liked the seller. He paid 2,000 for the shine. The **Beverly Center in F7** is the indoor alternative: a food court with Western options, where omelettes and smoothies for two came to 2,990 rupees, about $17. **A street shave is 200 rupees** at a first-floor shop off the food market — three passes, razor then razor then electric, with cream, aftershave and a wash between. Harry couldn't find one by looking and got there by asking a sunglasses seller, who left his stall to walk him over and wouldn't take anything for it. The copy-goods trade works the same as Karachi's but quieter — a shop front with a **back room** for the better fakes. A jacket asked at 2,950 rupees went for 2,300, about $12, against $40-50 for the real thing. The seller's counter to being pushed further was to offer Harry a cold drink instead of a discount. ## Grooming The most elaborate treatment of the whole Pakistan trip happens here, and it started as a haircut. Ninety minutes, seven or eight stages, and a bill of **8,000 rupees — about $40**, plus a 1,000-rupee tip. What that buys: - A fade and a beard trim, then **the most thorough clean shave Harry has had**. - Steam, cleansing cream applied as a face massage, and **blackhead and whitehead extraction** that makes his eyes water and that he rates as worth it. - A hydrating stage, a **galvanic electric device** — a buzz rather than a shock — further massage, and a closing mask. - The nose cleaned separately, and eyebrows if you want them; without those, [Mac](/people/mac.md) paid 3,000. Harry rates it against **the expensive Lahore treatment** and can't separate them. It is not cheap by Pakistani standards and he says so. **How he found it is the transferable part**: he searched *best barbers* rather than *barbers near me*, and took the top result. The shop confirms the search is where both its tourists and its local customers come from. *The shop is not named here — Harry links its page in the description, which is the trigger for leaving it out.* ## Source - [Most Expensive Bus In Pakistan 🇵🇰(LUXURY TRAVEL)](/videos/yPcs0xJiphU.md) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPcs0xJiphU - [Islamabad Cheese Paratha Hunt🇵🇰](/videos/lOleJ-vLSRI.md) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOleJ-vLSRI - [First Impressions of ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN (My Favourite City) 🇵🇰](/videos/VfLFIsSP860.md) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfLFIsSP860 - [$4 Nitrogen Ice Cream In Pakistan🇵🇰](/videos/Rbr8o0ERYcI.md) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbr8o0ERYcI - [Why I Love Pakistan (Food Tour Islamabad)🇵🇰](/videos/0FlplbjZZNE.md) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FlplbjZZNE - [First Impressions of Rural Pakistan (Saidpur) 🇵🇰](/videos/Lf5aNful4qM.md) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf5aNful4qM - [$300 BEST Hotel in Pakistan (Serena Hotel)](/videos/MzPHfSkWhrg.md) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzPHfSkWhrg - [$45 LUXURY Pakistani Haircut 🇵🇰](/videos/uk2406EO7Kg.md) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk2406EO7Kg - [$1 Theme Park Islamabad 🇵🇰](/videos/1gZZXVHkq5o.md) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gZZXVHkq5o - [BEST Restaurant In Islamabad (Monal) 🇵🇰](/videos/g1fRwTJKcVc.md) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1fRwTJKcVc - [$36 Pakistan Market Hunt 🇵🇰](/videos/kKKKy4AAVB8.md) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKKKy4AAVB8 - [Honest Pakistani Barber Gets a Reward 🇵🇰](/videos/EhF1qij0ggk.md) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhF1qij0ggk