Delicious Food Tour in SWAT, Pakistan 🇵🇰

An evening in the Swat bazaar with Mac and their guide Akram, walking the market at blue hour with the mountains behind it, and ending at a restaurant five minutes from the hotel.

Two things stand out. The market is organised by trade the way Harry remembers Jordan being — a whole quarter of car repair shops, famous locally for cheap wheel rims — and the food is startlingly cheap even by Pakistani standards: two full dinners and four cups of chai for 830 rupees, about $4.50, which he notes is the local price rather than a foreigner’s one.

He also buys a piece of local winter clothing and puts it straight on, which does not have the effect he hoped — see wear the local dress.

Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles; amounts the transcript leaves ambiguous are marked unverified. The tour operator whose booking links appear in the description is not named; the guide is, because Harry publishes his Instagram and recommends him directly.

Key moments

• [00:31] Why the guide is worth it, said plainly: without him they would not know what they were doing.
• [01:01] The town is zoned by trade — this quarter is car repair, and Akram says it is known across the region for cheap rims. Harry compares it to Jordan.
• [01:32] The energy drink, and the reason for it: he and Mac are editing late every night to bank uploads, because they expect to have no wi-fi in Hunza.
• [02:03] A griddle the size of a table cooking eggs, beef patties, tomatoes and spices all at once.
• [03:04] Dried fruit, nuts and spices — a shop Harry photographs rather than buys from, admitting he can’t identify half of it.
• [04:04] Three weeks into Pakistan by this point: Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, now the north.
• [04:34] Pomegranate is everywhere in Pakistan, as fruit and as juice, and Harry keeps saying he prefers the fruit.
• [05:04] Sugarcane juice pressed to order from locally grown cane, cut down at the stall.
• [05:34] A stretch of the market selling wedding decorations — garlands and bright colours, which sets him off on how much colour Pakistani public life uses, buses included.
• [06:04] The junction, which he says is Karachi all over again: no rules, every man for himself.
• [07:28] 600 asked, 500 paid (about $2.80) for a piece of local winter clothing, after trying several for size.
• [08:29] He wears it out of the shop, asks the camera whether he fits in now, and answers his own question — he is stared at more than before, not less.
• [08:59] The bakery: cakes, pastries, biscuits, and a chocolate cake Mac goes straight for.
• [10:32] He asks the staff what to try instead of choosing, and gets three shortbread-type biscuits — a plain one, one with nuts, one with coconut.
• [11:36] The plain one wins. His comparison is an English biscuit with a cup of tea.
• [12:37] The restaurant: individual tin huts rather than a dining room, with fire heaters inside. Asked whether they are for privacy, the answer is privacy and warmth in winter.
• [14:10] Chicken fried rice, his default order across Pakistan, with the chicken cut very fine; a red paratha with sesame seeds; chai and green tea.
• [15:49] Portions are enormous — he says there are very few meals in Pakistan he has managed to finish, and doesn’t finish this one.
• [16:19] 830 rupees, about $4.50, for two large meals and four chais.

Extracted pages

• Swat
• Pakistan
• Mac
• Akram
• Wear the local dress