Pakistan heritage in 10 days

Book this one for January. That's the argument in a sentence: it's at its best in exactly the months the northern valleys are shut, and almost nobody plans it, because every Pakistan itinerary online points at the mountains.

There are no mountains in this trip, on purpose. No pass to wait on, no northern flight to gamble your dates against, no altitude day. You get four UNESCO World Heritage sites, the best eating in the country, and a plains winter that's mild by day and cold before sunrise. You also get two days of driving in the middle that will grind at you. We'll say where.

Days 1–3 — Lahore

Day 1: fly into Allama Iqbal and do nothing else with it. Lahore rewards being awake for it, and your first evening is never when you are.

Day 2: the Fort early, before the light flattens. The Fort and the Shalimar Gardens are one UNESCO inscription between them, a technicality until you see how differently the two have been kept. Badshahi Mosque, across the Hazuri Bagh, isn't listed at all, and it's the better building. Take Jahangir's tomb at Shahdara late, for what the last hour does to the brickwork.

Day 3: nothing but eating and walking, and it's the best day of the trip. In at Delhi Gate, along the restored spine to Wazir Khan Mosque, whose tilework is what people come to Lahore for without knowing that's what they came for. Then keep going badly, on purpose. Kashmiri Bazaar, Anarkali, wherever the queue is.

What people get wrong is booking a guide for the morning and a restaurant for the evening, then treating the middle of the day as a gap to fill. The middle of the day is the day. Eat five small things, not one large one.

Day 4 — Rohtas Fort

Out and back, which means a fourth night in the same Lahore hotel. Say yes.

Rohtas isn't beautiful, and after three days of Mughal courtyards that comes as a relief. Sixteenth-century garrison fort, enormous, half-ruined, a village living inside the walls, most of it yours alone. Climb at the Sohail Gate end and look at what Sher Shah Suri threw up to hold ground his dynasty then lost.

This is the day people cut, and if something has to go, it's the correct thing to lose. Flying into Islamabad instead? Swap it for Taxila, a fifth inscription and a museum day rather than a ruins day, then take Rohtas on the road south.

Day 5 — Lahore to Multan

Rail or motorway. Rail is the better call, and the only leg where we'd say so without hesitating: the main line runs the length of the country and sets you down in the middle of Multan rather than on the edge of it.

Multan is shrines. Shah Rukn-e-Alam stands on the old fort mound where half the city can see it, Bahauddin Zakariya beside it. The kashi-kari is why you came: blue and white and turquoise over brick, replaced panel by panel as it fails. Get there for the last of the light and stay into the evening.

Day 6 — Multan to Sukkur

Here's where it hurts. There's no short version of this, and you lose the day to it whichever way you go. Both cities have airports and domestic schedules that change without warning, so check what's flying the week you travel rather than trusting anything written a year ahead, this page included.

Sukkur is a working river town, not a sight. Sleep there, or push on to Larkana and start tomorrow closer to the ruins.

Day 7 — Mohenjo-daro, then Sehwan

Give Mohenjo-daro longer than you've allowed. A whole city on a grid, bricked and drained, while most of the world wasn't. Everyone photographs the Great Bath and the stupa mound. You'll remember the streets.

Then south to Sehwan Sharif, which takes the afternoon and eats into the evening. The shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar is nothing like the hush of Rohtas or Makli. Loud, packed, going at full volume most nights. Dress conservatively, leave your shoes where you're told, and keep the camera out of people's faces.

This is the hardest day on the route. Two major sites and a long drive between them. Any slack in your plan, spend it here rather than on Karachi.

Day 8 — down to Karachi

The last of the driving, along the Indus, flat the whole way. Nothing worth stopping for. You'll reach Karachi with the afternoon gone and the city at its least mobile. Plan nothing but dinner, and make the dinner count.

Day 9 — Chaukhandi, Makli and Thatta

The best single day in Sindh. Chaukhandi comes first on the road out: yellow sandstone tombs carved like textiles, stacked into stepped pyramids, on the UNESCO tentative list rather than the list proper. That's a distinction nobody standing there cares about. Don't linger.

Makli is the point. A necropolis on a ridge above Thatta that neither photographs nor summarises, some tombs stone and carved to the edge of absurdity, others brick and tile and closer to Multan than to anything in sight. You will not see all of it. Pick the southern end and walk. Shah Jahan Mosque in Thatta is a short hop on. Keenjhar Lake is the fourth thing you could bolt on, and the one to drop; it's a lake, and the day already went to tombs.

Day 10 — Karachi, and out

One clean day in a city that wants three. That's the compromise this route makes, and you should make it knowingly. Mohatta Palace first, for the building and for whatever's hanging in it that month. Then the colonial core around I. I. Chundrigar Road and Empress Market: Victorian stone in a Sindhi climate, still working, mostly unloved. Finish at the sea. Eat properly before the airport, because Karachi's food is the only real argument against Lahore's.

What we'd drop for a week

Cut days 6 and 7. Fly Lahore to Karachi, keep Multan only if you can fly it, and hand the saved days to Karachi and the Thatta run. You lose Mohenjo-daro, which hurts, and two days of driving that would have hurt more. The other honest week is the reverse: Lahore, Rohtas, Multan and home, nothing rushed.

When to go, and what goes wrong

November to February, and February if you get to choose. Multan and interior Sindh in May aren't a challenge to rise to. They're a mistake. This is the straight inverse of the northern ten days, which needs the summer this route can't use.

The winter drawback is fog. Punjab gets it thick from late December, it delays trains, and it shuts the motorway with very little notice. Build the slack into days 5 and 6 instead of hoping.

Interior Sindh gets asked about more than anywhere else here. Is Pakistan safe has our real answer rather than a reassurance, and what a trip costs covers the south alongside the north. If you want mountains too, the 14-day route runs it the other way round: north first, Lahore bolted on the end.