---
type: Video
title: "Pakistan TRAVEL Q&A (Is it dangerous/ Did I like it?)🇵🇰"
description: Harry answers viewer questions from home after five weeks in Pakistan — the safety question straight, what the trip cost, what he got wrong beforehand, and the one thing he names as a real negative.
tags: [pakistan, safety, visas, costs, food, reflection, cricket, road-safety]
timestamp: 2026-08-06T12:00:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88YCycko6xg
video_id: 88YCycko6xg
upload_date: 2022-01-20
duration: 2179
---

# Pakistan TRAVEL Q&A (Is it dangerous/ Did I like it?)🇵🇰

Not a vlog. Harry is back in the UK, answering questions he collected on
Instagram, and it is the only place in the series where he sets out what five
weeks in [Pakistan](/countries/pakistan.md) added up to — the itinerary, the
costs, the safety answer with its caveat attached, and the negatives he says
he will not shy away from.

**On the question in the title he is direct and then immediately qualifies
himself**, which is what makes the answer usable: not as dangerous as Western
countries claim, he never felt in danger once in four weeks, *and* he might be
being naive, and none of that means the country has no dangerous places. He
makes the same point about time rather than geography — Karachi was not a safe
city ten years ago, and places change.

*Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles.*

## The trip, as he summarises it

**Karachi 7 days → overnight train to Lahore, 5–6 days → luxury bus to
Islamabad, 5 days → 15 hours by road to the north, stopping at Swat → 7 days in
Hunza → 15 hours back → flight to Karachi → one day filming.** Fifty videos in
total.

## Key moments

- [01:01] **Crossing the road is as hard as it looks.** He couldn't manage a
  three-lane highway; two tuk-tuk drivers he'd met the day before took an arm
  each and walked him over.
- [02:02] **How the uploading works**: hotels chosen partly on wi-fi reviews —
  which failed him in Pakistan, where expensive hotels had bad connections —
  filming by day, dumping to hard drives, editing at night, uploading unlisted
  and scheduling. He keeps a couple of videos in hand in case he gets ill.
- [04:33] **The safety answer**, with the caveat kept attached. Never in danger,
  people were consistently protective of them, every country has bad areas, and
  he could drive ten minutes from his house in England into the same situation.
- [05:34] **What he calls the eye-opening thing**: poorer people he met seemed
  happy, and people he knows at home on high wages are not. He qualifies it
  himself — money solves money problems and creates others.
- [06:36] **Go in autumn or spring**, especially for the north. He enjoyed
  winter and still recommends against it.
- [08:37] Asked about learning Urdu, he agrees it makes people friendlier and
  says he wants more than greetings and food orders next time.
- [09:08] **On the food**: he expected more spice and never found a dish too hot,
  which he thinks the vlogs made unclear. **Hunza food is among the best he has
  ever eaten anywhere** — the noodle soup with local cheese, and the flatbread he
  calls a Hunza pizza.
- [10:10] **Practicalities: the visa is the hard part** — allow at least two
  weeks. A PCR test was required; he isn't certain vaccination was.
- [11:41] **The best thing about the country is the people**, and his example is
  a meal in Karachi where a stranger paid the bill and a second stranger asked to
  pay it five minutes later, not knowing.
- [12:43] On tourism's future: four or five travel vloggers were in the country
  while he was, all positive, which he expects to matter once the pandemic eases.
- [14:43] The rings he bought held up in water — his conclusion is about the
  seller rather than the rings: he wasn't lying, and honesty matters to Harry.
- [16:45] **Favourite city: Islamabad** — clean and peaceful, and the one he says
  he would actually live in.
- [17:17] **Favourite region: Hunza**, the Passu cones, and Hopar Glacier — the
  first glacier he had seen in his life after studying them at A-level.
- [17:47] **Cheese parathas are better in Karachi than in Islamabad**, offered as
  an honest opinion likely to annoy people.
- [18:18] **His own biggest negative is burnout.** He kept filming while ill in
  Lahore to make the most of the time and regrets it.
- [19:19] **Why he didn't film the malls.** A lot of viewers asked him to show
  the modern side; his answer is that he could drive ten minutes from home for a
  shopping centre, and he came for markets, street shaves and local food — done
  without a guide and without asking directions. He did film some modern areas so
  that both sides were there.
- [21:22] **What he got wrong beforehand**: he expected it to be warm, and he
  expected it to be more dangerous. He blames the media narrative and says the
  pattern will repeat for every country with a bad image — *it's never as bad as
  you think.*
- [24:29] **The one unpleasant experience in Karachi**: [Mac](/people/mac.md) was
  called a terrorist. Harry's framing — one incident against roughly a thousand
  people met.
- [26:00] **Was it cheap? Less than people assume.** Hotels ranged from cheap to
  English prices; food was genuinely cheaper.
- [27:02] **What to do**: Hunza is a must, and the border ceremony at
  [Wagah](/places/wagah-border.md) — which he would like to see from the Indian
  side too.
- [31:07] **The negative he names about the country itself: road safety.** Some
  cars have no seat belts at all, and he disliked not having the option. He calls
  himself hypocritical for it, having ridden motorbikes with no helmet by choice.
- [33:10] **The stereotype that holds: cricket.** Not just the enthusiasm but the
  frequency — proper games in the street and the park daily, which he says
  Britain has lost.
- [33:10] **What he thinks the country lacks: proper theme parks.** The ones he
  went to were for children or families, with nothing like a real rollercoaster.
- [33:40] **Where he still wants to go**: Skardu, Peshawar and Kashmir, top of
  the list.
- [35:12] **The channel went from about 1,000 subscribers on arrival to 33,000
  at the time of filming**, and Pakistan is what made it monetisable.

## Extracted pages

- [Pakistan](/countries/pakistan.md)
- [Karachi](/places/karachi.md)
- [Lahore](/places/lahore.md)
- [Islamabad](/places/islamabad.md)
- [Hunza Valley](/places/hunza-valley.md)
- [Hopar Glacier](/places/hopar-glacier.md)
- [Wagah Border](/places/wagah-border.md)
- [Mac](/people/mac.md)
- [Travel in the off season](/tips/travel-in-the-off-season.md)