I Survived 24 Hours in PAKISTAN with NO MONEY 🇵🇰

Twenty-four hours in Karachi with no money at all, run as an argument rather than a stunt: everyone Harry told about the plan — his parents, his Pakistani friends — said he was mad and would be kidnapped, and the video exists to answer them. He needs transport, food and a bed, and gets the first two almost embarrassingly easily. The first car he flags down takes him across the city; the first English speaker he finds buys him a cheese paratha without hesitating; chai, a mocktail and a full matka biryani are pressed on him by people he never asked. What defeats him is nothing to do with hostility. Very few people in the areas he works speak English, and asking a stranger to put you up for the night turns out to be a different order of request from asking for a paratha. He runs out of daylight, falls back on a Couchsurfing host, and says plainly at the end that he’d want to do it again without one.

It is the earlier sibling of the same challenge in Manila, where the problem was earning money rather than asking for it. He also uses the video to raise money for the 2022 floods, pledging ten US cents for every subscriber it brings in against a $10,000 target.

Obs: per the video description, the final segment — meeting the Couchsurfing host and the night at the house — was filmed on a different day, because the app had to verify his account first.

Key moments

• [00:00] The premise, and the warnings: every single person he told said he was crazy or that he’d be kidnapped.
• [00:32] The first obstacle, and it isn’t the one he prepared for — nobody he approaches speaks English.
• [01:04] The plan: reach Boat Basin, an hour’s walk away, where the cheap food is. So he hitches.
• [01:37] The first car he flags down stops and takes him, despite being headed somewhere else.
• [03:18] Flood damage still visible along the road, a month or more after the water came.
• [04:20] The fundraiser: ten cents per subscriber from this video toward flood relief, aiming at $10,000.
• [05:05] Asking restaurant to restaurant for a single cheese paratha. Several don’t understand; one tells him he has to buy it.
• [06:35] The first person he finds who speaks English says yes straight away.
• [07:39] The man who pays is a teacher who also works in a restaurant. Harry sits down with him and his friends.
• [08:44] They warn him to watch for pickpockets in the area, which he notes does not help his confidence.
• [09:21] Food solved. The two remaining problems are dinner and, much harder, a bed.
• [09:55] Recognised on the street by viewers, who buy him chai.
• [11:56] A man runs after him to hand him a free cup — Harry isn’t sure whether he was recognised or not, and takes it either way.
• [13:40] An hour sitting in a park in Clifton. The honest part of the video: not knowing where he will sleep is a genuinely horrible feeling, and he says he has never had it before, while noting how many people have it nightly.
• [14:47] More lifts, one of them from a driver he only waved at.
• [16:24] Ellie Goulding on the car stereo, and a driver whose uncle lives in Birmingham.
• [18:03] Sunset, still nowhere to sleep, and he admits the backup plan — a Karachi Couchsurfing group he hasn’t contacted yet.
• [18:57] Walid arrives, on his first trip to Asia, and says he can’t see how the challenge is survivable.
• [19:40] Harry’s own breakdown of the difficulty: transport is ten seconds with a thumb out, food is a coin flip, and a bed is the one nobody understands the request for. He also notes it is a bigger ask of a household with women in it than of single men.
• [20:19] A rickshaw to Burns Road for 170 rupees, paid by Walid, since Harry can’t spend anything.
• [21:42] Burns Road, and a man called Daniel who agrees to buy him dinner and disappears to order it.
• [23:48] While he waits, a drinks shop insists on making him their signature lemon special — lemon and mint paste with pink salt — and won’t take money for it.
• [25:20] The staff on Karachi: the City of Lights. Also cricket, and the fact that a Pakistani asked who’ll win says maybe either, where an Englishman would say England.
• [27:39] Matka biryani: chicken and rice layered in a clay pot, sealed, and finished on charcoal so it steams in its own spice.
• [29:18] Harry is now well enough adjusted to the heat that he asks for spicy and finds it normal.
• [29:48] The green chilli that undoes that, with no water anywhere.
• [30:53] The Couchsurfing host, met at a bakery, having never spoken to Harry before.
• [32:35] Nutella paratha, which retires the cheese paratha permanently.
• [33:18] The observation he keeps: late-night chai is a social institution here in a way it isn’t in Britain, and his host drinks it around ten times a day.
• [34:32] The house, in an area the host describes as safe in the morning and not at night.
• [35:06] Karachi against Lahore, settled by the host: Lahore has the better food, Karachi the better people.
• [35:40] Why the living room works — the furniture faces itself instead of a television, so people talk.
• [36:10] The host gives him a Saint Benedict medal off his own neck.
• [37:20] The closing note: everyone said it was impossible, he did it, and the Couchsurfing fallback is the part he wants to remove next time.

Extracted pages

• Place: Karachi
• Country: Pakistan
• Person: Walid
• Tips: Judge a place for yourself