Getting around Pakistan

Look at a map of Pakistan for the first time and the country reads compact. It isn't. Karachi to Gilgit is essentially the length of it, and on the ground that's most of a week. Decide early which long legs you fly, which you take on rails, and which are better on a coach than either.

Short version: fly the long north-south legs, take the train between the southern and central cities if you've got the day for it, use a coach inside Punjab, and hire a car with a driver everywhere else.

Domestic flights

PIA has by far the widest domestic network, somewhere around twenty destinations, and it's the only carrier reaching Gilgit and Chitral. Airblue flies Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Multan and Skardu. AirSial works out of Sialkot and adds Peshawar, Sukkur and Skardu. Fly Jinnah is Karachi-based, covering Islamabad, Lahore, Multan, Peshawar, Quetta and Sialkot. SereneAir lost its operating certificate in October 2025 over a lack of serviceable aircraft and got it back that November, but it isn't flying. Leave it out of your planning.

The Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad triangle is the dense part: several carriers, several departures a day, and a missed flight costs you an afternoon rather than a day. Peshawar, Quetta, Multan and Sukkur are the thinner tier. Real routes, fewer carriers, much less slack when something goes wrong.

The north is a different category. Gilgit is PIA only, on an ATR 42, into a runway that isn't aligned with the valley it sits in. The approach needs good visibility and the aircraft carry enough fuel to turn back to Islamabad, which they do. Skardu takes larger aircraft and cancels less. Skardu and Gilgit flights is the one page here we'd insist you read before booking anything northbound.

Trains

Pakistan Railways is the best thing on this page. The spine is ML-1, Karachi to Peshawar through Lahore and Rawalpindi, 1,872 km and 184 stations, carrying most of the network's passengers and freight. The other main lines matter less to you: Kotri to Attock, Rohri to Chaman, Quetta to Taftan, and a Taxila to Khunjerab line that so far exists on paper.

The named services on the spine are the ones to know. Khyber Mail runs the full Karachi to Peshawar length and is the famous one. Tezgam does Karachi to Rawalpindi. Karachi Express and Shalimar Express are the Karachi to Lahore pair. Karakoram Express runs modern Chinese-built coaches and, despite the name, goes nowhere near the Karakoram. Jaffar Express is the Quetta to Peshawar service. Read the box below before you consider that one.

Classes catch people out, because the names don't mean what they look like. AC Sleeper is berths in compartments of two to four, and it's the best thing on the train. AC Business is a six-berth compartment, so more bodies in the same space. AC Parlour is air-conditioned day seating, right for a daylight run and wrong overnight. AC Standard is open-plan air-conditioned berths. Economy and Second Class have no air conditioning at all, which in a Sindh summer isn't a detail.

Booking is the awkward part. There's an official online system with SMS confirmation, but it wants a Pakistani national ID number and payment from a Pakistani-issued card, which shuts most foreign visitors out. In practice you're buying at a station counter or going through an agent. Trains run late often enough that you should treat delay as the normal outcome on the long runs. Keep the following day soft, and never connect a train to a flight on the same date.

Intercity coaches

Daewoo Express is the benchmark. Running since 1998, roughly four hundred vehicles, over sixty destinations across Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with hubs at Lahore, Rawalpindi, Karachi, Peshawar, Multan and Faisalabad. Volvo, Hyundai and Yutong coaches, air conditioned, proper terminals, an actual departure time. Its own pitch is that it competes with the airlines and the railway, which is about right.

Faisal Movers is the other name, and for a traveller it may be the more useful of the two. It lists over a hundred and fifty destinations, sells a business tier and an economy tier, and it reaches Skardu, Hunza and Swat, which the pure motorway operators mostly don't.

Understand the gap between that and a local bus. A booked seat with a named operator, a terminal and a printed ticket is a different object from a bus flagged down at a roadside. The local bus will eventually get you there. It also leaves when it's full rather than when it says, stops whenever anyone waves, and has no luggage arrangement worth the name.

A coach beats both a train and a plane on the Punjab city pairs, and Lahore to Islamabad is the clearest case: departures all day, centre to centre, no airport at either end. Where the coach loses is length. Karachi to Islamabad by bus is endurance you can buy your way out of.

The motorway network

Five motorways form an almost continuous run down the country. M-1 links Peshawar to Islamabad. M-2 runs Islamabad to Lahore and was the first, open since 1997. M-3 goes Lahore to Abdul Hakeem, M-4 Pindi Bhattian to Multan, M-5 Multan to Sukkur. String them together and you can drive Peshawar to Sukkur on motorway most of the way.

Tolls run on M-TAG, an RFID tag debited from a prepaid account as you pass the plaza. Limits are 120 for cars and light vehicles, 110 for buses and heavy ones. The National Highways and Motorway Police patrol with speed cameras and answer on 130. Service areas turn up at intervals with fuel, food and toilets, and they're genuinely fine.

None of which prepares you for the north. Official advice notes that road quality off the major motorways is variable, that northern routes are frequently inaccessible in bad weather, and that landslides block them. Motorway driving in Punjab and mountain driving in Gilgit-Baltistan aren't the same activity. Read the Karakoram Highway and passes and roads before committing to anything above Mansehra.

Cars, drivers and self-drive

Hire a car with a driver. It's the normal answer here, it's what most visitors end up doing, and we'd take it every time.

An international licence gets you less than people assume. UK advice is that you must carry a 1968 International Driving Permit alongside your own licence. That makes you legal. It doesn't help you read a Lahore roundabout, and it does nothing at a checkpoint where the conversation isn't in English.

The honest position on self-driving: on the motorway you'd cope. Off it, official advice calls driving standards erratic, particularly at night, and in the mountains you're on single-track shelf road with a drop on one side, cargo trucks coming the other way and no margin. A driver costs less than you'd guess and knows the checkpoints.

Getting around a city

The ride-hailing market turned over recently, so older advice is simply wrong. Uber left Pakistan in April 2024 and Careem ended its ride-hailing service on 18 July 2025. What's left is inDrive, where you negotiate the fare with the driver, and Yango, which operates in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad. Bykea does motorbike taxis, faster through traffic and not for everyone. All of it is a big-city thing. Don't expect an app to find you a car in Gilgit. For rickshaws, settle the fare before you get in, every time, including with a driver you used yesterday.

Note the official position, because it contradicts what most visitors actually do. UK advice is to avoid street taxis and e-hailing apps and to use licensed companies called directly, and it advises against public transport generally, metro bus systems included. We've used the apps in the big cities without incident. You should still know what the advice says and make your own call.

Mass transit is better than its reputation. Lahore has run a metrobus since 2013, Rawalpindi and Islamabad share the longest system in the country from 2015, and Multan and Peshawar have their own from 2016 and 2020. Karachi Breeze opened in 2021. Lahore also has the Orange Line, twenty-six stations over 27.1 km since 2020, the only rail rapid transit anywhere in Pakistan. On a weekday it beats a car across the city, and it isn't close.

SIM, data and money

Register your phone. Pakistan's telecom authority runs a free temporary device registration for visitors, valid up to 120 days from arrival and renewable each trip, applied for through its online device registration portal. Skip it and your handset stops working on a Pakistani network once the grace period runs out. Do it on arrival, not on day five in a valley with no signal to do it from.

Buy the SIM at the airport or an operator's own shop, and bring your passport. Expect biometric verification at the counter, and leave time for it on the day you land. Coverage is decent in the cities and the main northern valleys, and it goes as soon as you turn off one.

Carry cash. City ATMs take Visa and Mastercard, American Express and Discover much less reliably, machines thin out in small towns, and card acceptance outside good hotels and city restaurants is patchy. Draw money in Islamabad, Gilgit or Skardu before heading up a side valley, not after.

On foreign cards for domestic bookings, the answer is partly. The rail site will reject a non-Pakistani card outright. Domestic airlines and hotels take one sometimes. So carry cash and a backup card, line up an agent who can book on your behalf, and do that well before the morning you need a seat.

Related

Getting to Pakistan · Islamabad to Skardu · Skardu and Gilgit flights · Passes and roads