---
type: Video
title: "Foreigner Meets Crazy Pakistani Locals🇵🇰"
description: The national mausoleum at sunset with a flag-lowering ceremony, the strictest bag security Harry has met anywhere, and a cheese paratha he knowingly overpays for.
tags: [pakistan, karachi, monuments, security, street-food, haggling]
timestamp: 2026-08-06T12:00:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQYg7oNy5r0
video_id: VQYg7oNy5r0
upload_date: 2021-12-08
duration: 873
---

# Foreigner Meets Crazy Pakistani Locals🇵🇰

Harry and [Mac](/people/mac.md)'s last evening in [Karachi](/places/karachi.md)
before the sleeper train north: the national mausoleum at sunset, and then
dinner on the street.

Two things carry over. **The security is the strictest he has met anywhere** —
no bags at all, checked or unchecked, so he leaves his with the police at the
gate and films the rest on a phone. He puts it down to terrorism and says
Pakistan is the only country besides the UAE where he has had this.

And the meal is where his haggling quietly stops. Two cheese parathas, two
pomegranate juices and a complimentary dessert come to 2,100 rupees against a
figure of 1,160 he saw earlier. He says on camera that they were given the
tourist price, that he is getting used to it, and that **sometimes it isn't
worth arguing over** — which is the closest he comes in the series to a rule
about when not to bargain.

*Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles, which are garbled in
places; amounts the transcript leaves ambiguous are marked unverified.*

## Itinerary

Market stalls and a park on the walk up → the national mausoleum → the evening
flag-lowering ceremony → back through the crowd → cheese paratha and pomegranate
juice at a street place.

## Key moments

- [01:02] **No bags, at all.** Security didn't want to search the bag, they
  wanted it not to come in — so it stayed with police officers at the gate,
  GoPro included.
- [01:34] A holy day, and the grounds full of families. Guards initially say the
  upper level is closed, then that it isn't; Harry reads an offer to get him
  further up as wanting a payment and doesn't take it.
- [03:46] **The flag-lowering ceremony** at sunset, which draws a crowd, and a
  guard who gets brusque at the end of it — Harry's guess is that they wanted to
  go home.
- [06:37] The police hand his bag back, which he notes as its own small relief.
- [07:07] **His verdict on Pakistani security**: the strictest of any country he
  has been to for taking cameras and bags into places, matched only by the UAE,
  and driven by terrorism.
- [08:54] Cheese paratha again, this one crisper, spicier, with less cheese and
  some chicken in it, and a yoghurt sauce on the side.
- [10:56] A practical worry, said out loud: they can't establish whether the
  juice was made with filtered or tap water, the language gap defeats the
  question, and they have an eighteen-hour sleeper train that night.
- [11:26] A complimentary Arabic syrup dessert (basbousa), which Mac rates the
  best thing on the table.
- [13:05] **2,100 rupees, about $14**, for two meals and two drinks. He believes
  the going price was 1,160, says they got the tourist price, and pays without
  arguing — see
  [haggle with a reference price](/tips/haggle-with-a-reference-price.md) for
  where that sits against the rest of his bargaining.

## Extracted pages

- [Karachi](/places/karachi.md)
- [Pakistan](/countries/pakistan.md)
- [Mac](/people/mac.md)
- [Haggle with a reference price](/tips/haggle-with-a-reference-price.md)