---
type: Video
title: "$8 Tour of LAHORE, PAKISTAN 🇵🇰"
description: Turned away from the Badshahi Mosque for wearing shorts, a hundred photographs in an hour, and a rickshaw tour whose price rose a thousand rupees because they were tourists.
tags: [pakistan, lahore, mosques, dress-code, attention, haggling]
timestamp: 2026-08-06T12:00:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq8KmCADsP8
video_id: Xq8KmCADsP8
upload_date: 2021-12-14
duration: 1068
---

# $8 Tour of LAHORE, PAKISTAN 🇵🇰

A day around the Badshahi Mosque in [Lahore](/places/lahore.md) with
[Mac](/people/mac.md), which produces the two things this city keeps giving him:
a practical lesson and an enormous amount of attention.

**He doesn't get into the mosque.** He is wearing shorts, is turned away at the
door, and notes on camera that it is the second time this has happened to him.
A local salesman then spends twenty minutes walking him round the surrounding
streets trying to find trousers, negotiating the local price on his behalf, and
refusing any money for it. They don't find any, and the visit is lost.

**The photographs are the other story.** By his own count he is asked for
roughly a hundred in an hour — enough that he and Mac had business cards printed
in Karachi for about £5, because typing out a channel name for every person was
taking too long.

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

## Itinerary

A rooftop viewpoint over the mosque → the mosque entrance, and the shorts →
hunting for trousers through the old streets → the crowd, and the photographs →
a rickshaw tour of Old Lahore ending at the Delhi Gate market.

## Key moments

- [01:31] **The rooftop viewpoint**, four floors up opposite the mosque and full
  of local families, which he rates the best view in the city. Old Lahore is
  calm and quaint next to Karachi, in his description.
- [02:31] Arriving half an hour before prayer, with the crowds building.
- [05:05] **Refused entry in shorts**, for the second time in his travels.
  Trousers or jeans are the requirement — see
  [cover up in conservative countries](/tips/cover-up-in-conservative-countries.md).
- [06:06] A salesman volunteers to take him to buy trousers and to negotiate the
  local price rather than the tourist one, saying so in as many words. He then
  refuses payment for his time, twice.
- [09:48] **The business cards**, printed in Karachi for around £5, handed out
  instead of typing his channel name into strangers' phones.
- [11:23] A papad off a street seller, 30 rupees, and a man who won't take change
  for it.
- [12:24] The mosque's custodian arrives with a police and army escort. Harry
  asks whether he can film, gets an ambiguous answer, and doesn't risk it.
- [13:25] **About a hundred photographs in an hour**, and his read on why: not
  because anyone recognises him, but because they are foreigners. The slow-motion
  walking video is the specific request, over and over.
- [14:28] **The tourist price, admitted out loud.** A rickshaw tour quoted 1,500
  earlier in the day is 2,500 by the afternoon. Harry asks why it went up a
  thousand and is told, cheerfully, *because we're tourists, brother.*
- [16:34] **Why it's called the Delhi Gate**: it faces Delhi, and there is a
  matching gate in Delhi facing Lahore.

## Extracted pages

- [Lahore](/places/lahore.md)
- [Pakistan](/countries/pakistan.md)
- [Mac](/people/mac.md)
- [Cover up in conservative countries](/tips/cover-up-in-conservative-countries.md)