First Impressions of Rural Pakistan (Saidpur) 🇵🇰

A morning in Saidpur, a village absorbed into Islamabad, ten minutes and two dollars from the city with Mac. Goats, street cricket, a shooting gallery and a breakfast that comes to $10 for two.

The part worth keeping is an aside. Answering commenters who have asked why he doesn’t use tour guides, Harry gives his reasoning — raw interactions, getting lost, occasionally getting scammed — three days after finishing a week in the north where a guide handled everything. Neither position is a mistake, and together they are the most useful thing he has said about guides all series. See travel with a local guide.

Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles. Harry’s characterisation of the village’s mood is recorded as his own observation rather than as fact.

Key moments

• [00:30] Filming handheld because the selfie stick broke and the shop that sells them is shut.
• [01:01] About $2 and ten minutes by taxi from the city — and it is raining.
• [01:33] The first impression: goats, a cricket game in progress, and what he calls village life immediately.
• [02:05] A street shooting gallery — air rifles at balloons and cigarettes. Mac wins.
• [05:20] The honest half of the first impression: nice atmosphere and friendly people, and considerably more rubbish than he expected, plus overhead wires everywhere.
• [05:50] Why they don’t use tour guides, given as a direct answer to the comments: we like to get the raw interactions, we like to explore, we like to get lost, and sometimes we like to get scammed.
• [06:20] Street cricket. One group has no bat and is using a block of wood, and hitting sixes with it.
• [08:28] Around 15°C, and his warning against assuming Pakistan is hot — this is midwinter.
• [11:31] His summary: people seem very happy without having a great deal, which he says is good to see.
• [11:31] They have walked up from the bottom; the visitor part of the village is at the top, and he admits they did it backwards on purpose.
• [12:32] The restaurant strip: flags, decorative masks, colourful charpoy beds to eat on.
• [13:04] A man who lived in London for four or five years; Harry is from near Birmingham.
• [13:37] Cheese omelette and black tea for Harry; a full traditional platter for Mac — paratha, chickpea curry, garlic naan and sauces — which turns out to be a portion for two.
• [15:16] Tea poured from as high as he can manage, mostly onto the table.
• [15:47] 1,800 rupees for the lot, about $10.
• [16:19] A goat climbs onto a parked car and settles there.
• [17:23] A second cricket game, and this time he plays properly: he bats all right and bowls badly, and blames the ball for being much softer than he is used to.
• [21:16] A goat market on the way out.
• [21:46] Why the day mattered to him: two weeks in cities, and this was the first time out of them.

Extracted pages

• Saidpur
• Islamabad
• Pakistan
• Mac
• Travel with a local guide