Video
Pakistan TRAVEL Q&A (Is it dangerous/ Did I like it?)🇵🇰
· 36 min · Watch on YouTube
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 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 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 — 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.