My biggest learnings from traveling to Pakistan
I was there a month ago for about a week for a wedding.
My little American mind was surprised at people’s acceptance of authoritarian rules. Pakistan recently instituted a curfew where most (but confusingly not all) restaurants and and events have to close by 10pm. People had to re-organize their schedules for celebrating weddings (which could no longer go all night) or going out for late night food.
Everyone I talked to about this just took in in stride. One person I talked to approved of it: “well it was getting ridiculous - people were partying all night.”
Imagine this happening in the US.
Street food - daal and bread - in Lahore
That said, Pakistan actually reminded me of the US in a lot of ways. Strong military culture, American fast food brands all over, big sprawling city/suburbs, you spend a lot of time driving, people very proud of their country.
I’m comparing it to Kenya, so this is all relative, but it was striking to me.
There were almost 0 international tourists. Besides at the airport, we saw less than 5 tourists in a week. It was hard to get by on English in a lot of places. And we were at the biggest tourist sites in Lahore.
Things are very very cheap there. A footlong at Subway was $2.70. I got formal wedding clothes for $30. Brand new casual western clothes at an H&M type store for $10.
Pakistan does tons of textile manufacturing, and also produces a ton of food, keeping prices low.
I realized how much social factors play into drinking alcohol. You can’t get alcohol in Pakistan except at very specific places that serve only foreigners. I realized that since nobody around me was drinking, I didn’t have much of a desire for alcohol at all!
On the other hand, everybody was drinking chai and I did feel I was missing out if I didn’t have that. So my alcohol consumption went to 0, but caffeine consumption shot up.
I also had a lot of juice and soda while there - you’ve got to drink something!
Evidence of Pakistan-Chinese brotherhood
Pak-Chinese friendship is a real thing. My girlfriend who is Chinese kept telling me before we visited that “Pakistanis and Chinese are brothers! We have friendship like steel!” “yeah, yeah, sure” I said.
Imagine how impressed I was when - upon landing in Pakistan - we were greeted by a Chinese flag, a sign that said “Citizens of China welcome!” and a Pakistani man who spoke fluent mandarin and whisked Jia away to an immigration line especially for her.
One friend said he knew one phrase in Chinese: “Long live the friendship between the Chinese and Pakistani peoples”. And an Uber driver we had said “Ah you’re from China? They say we are very good friends with China. I try to be friends with all peoples.”
I learned a lot about the complicated India-Pakistan relationship:
Stadium seating for Indians to view the daily closing of the Pakistan-India order at Wagah
Bollywood movies cannot be shown in Pakistan…
…but the wedding music was basically all Bollywood music (1)
The Pak-India border has a ceremony every day where each side marches around showing off how strong and proud and unafraid they are…
… but the production value of the ceremony belies a high level of coordination between the two sides
Indians are not allowed to travel to Pakistan..
… except for people who are religiously Sikh and who are traveling to a particularly important temple in Lahore
Pakistani soldiers in fun hats closing the border for the evening
I didn’t really come to any conclusions other than “it sure is complicated”.
There is a caste system of some sort in Pakistan. Though I could not find out exactly how it worked from reading on line and talking to people (I didn’t probe too hard), people did use the word “caste”.
It is much easier to buy a guitar than a tabla or tanpura in Lahore. Trying to find Pakistani instruments in music shops and constantly running into guitars made me really hate guitars.
Overall a lovely place - I highly recommend visiting!
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1. I felt very cultured because I knew two of the songs. Both of them came from movies with strong anti-Pakistan / anti-muslim themes, and both were very prominently featured in the wedding.