Global Wanderer

14/4/25 – 15/4/25

After arriving at Pirwadhai, in Rawalpindi – after our ridiculous journey from Gilgit-Baltistan, we had a short walk to the top of the street to find buses going to Peshawar. Luckily, the drive between the two cities is both relatively short, and relatively popular, and so in no time we had located a proper bus, leaving in 20 minutes, with seats for a few dollars. For some odd reason, we were then shepherded off the bus, along with everybody else, and placed on a DIFFERENT bus – no problem though, because that bus immediately started moving before the last person had even had a chance to sit down!

The road between Islamabad and Peshawar is a pretty solidly-built highway, nothing like the roads up to Gilgit, which meant I had a chance to rest my head for a little bit – handy after the complete lack of sleep the previous night! 

Peshawar, capital of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Region of Pakistan, has a bit of a poor reputation as a ‘dangerous’ city – possibly due to the proximity to the Afghan border, the presence of KPK separatists, or the occasional terrorist attack – with even some Pakistanis telling us they’d avoid it (except for one bloke, who said it was a great place to check out, but that Islamabad was full of thieves and was incredibly unsafe – go figure!). The City of Flowers, as it is known, turned out to be one of the friendliest places in Pakistan, which is saying something given hospitality in this country is incredible. 

The impressive Peshawar Musuem

After getting off the bus, we took an InDrive to our accommodation for the night- VIP House. It’s a really plush hotel, breakfast included, with a twin room coming in at $45USD a night – after our last few days out in rural Pakistan, we were in desperate need of a proper hot shower, and VIP House did not disappoint in that regard!

They even had the South African T20 league on TV – what more can you ask for!

It was still morning-time when we arrived, and so we decided to tick off the first and most important reason for our trip to Peshawar – a visit to the Afghan consulate to apply for our Afghanistan visas! Since their 2021 takeover of the country, the Taliban have contended with a network of embassies and consulates accredited to the previous government. Initially, they were accepting visas issued by any Afghan embassy or consulate, but as time went on and more Taliban-nominated diplomatic staff were accredited by host countries, the rules were tightened, and now there are just a handful of locations issuing visas (including Peshawar, Termez, Islamabad, and Dubai, to name a few). Whilst the flag of the Islamic Republic flies over most embassies, the Peshawar consulate, located in a confusingly secure compound in the city centre, is adorned with the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate flag, showing how diplomatic allegiances have changed in Afghanistan’s closest neighbour. 

We’d ordered an InDrive to the consulate, and at every single checkpoint (at the entrances to the secured diplomatic area), we were denied entry and told to use the next entry along. Eventually, we had exhausted every potential entry point, and told the driver to let us out – we’d chance our luck walking through. We were required to present our passports, and confusingly, copies of our Pakistani eVisas- which caused me some issues, as I didn’t bring a printed copy with me, and I didn’t have an easily available copy on my phone. It took several concerning minutes for me to log in to the Pakistani online visa system and find the confirmation of my eVisa, but eventually, we were successfully through the checkpoint and free to proceed to the Afghan Consulate. 

After some slight confusion about what line we were supposed to be in (lots of Pakistanis had queued up to drop their passports off for their visas), we discovered we had to actually enter through a door further down the street. Our pre-filled electronic forms, requested by the consulate, were not being accepted by the consulate for some strange reason, and so the staff there completed new ones for us on the spot. We were also required to provide two passport photos each, which we’d been told by a fellow traveller a week earlier was not necessary – goes to show how quickly the rules can change! Luckily, the staff at the consulate found someone to take our photos, have them edited for a white background, and printed off, for a fee of 150PKR each ($0.53USD). Eventually, we had some success, as our forms were printed off, our photos returned, and we were sent down to the queue outside, which at this point had dwindled to just a handful of Pakistanis. We reached the small hole in the wall at the end of the queue, where a hatch was opened, and an old Taliban guy poked his head out – ‘hundred dollars,’ he said, collecting our application forms, passports, and USD. The hatch then closed, and we took a seat (rows of folding plastic chairs like the ones you see at a stadium, are arranged outside opposite the hatch). We waited about 40 minutes in total, before the hatch opened a final time, and a different man pointed at us and waved our passports in the air. Inside were freshly-minted Afghan visas – achievement complete!

With that particularly important step in the process complete, we set out to explore some of Peshawar!

Like many big cities in the subcontinent, Peshawar has a booming city centre, full of rickshaws, market stands, and the sights and sounds that you’ll find familiar if you’ve visited India or Pakistan before. There are a series of gates that signal entrance into the centre of the city, so we made our way between them, taking in the fun, but chaotic environment around us as we went. 

One of Peshawar’s central market streets

Gate signalling entrance to the city centre

We were stopped several times on the street by people asking where we were from, wanting to have a chat. The funniest was a guy on the back of his friend’s motorbike, who basically jumped off mid-ride to come and talk to us, take a selfie, and apologise forty times for the lack of a juice stand in the vicinity that he could buy us a drink from. As I’ve said already, hospitality in Pakistan is incredible. 

We spied a small stand that appeared to be making some kind of kebab – meat and salad stuffed into a thick, pancake-looking wrap. Not sure what exactly it WAS, but I can confirm that it was incredibly tasty. 

The funniest encounter of the day, however, occurred as we were walking out of the centre, towards a main road, where we were called into a small health/supplements store by the owner. After a quick chat about where we were from, he asked if he could film something for his business – we obliged, and next minute, we were being filmed whilst he spruiked his shop, and asked us to tell the audience how good the city was. Later that evening, we searched up the store on TikTok and discovered the owner was actually quite a prominent user with hundreds of thousands of views – we might end up Pakistani TikTok stars!

Some more pictures from the centre of Peshawar

As it was starting to get dark, we hopped into an InDrive, and drove back to VIP House, stopping to stock up on supplies for the next day’s mission to Torkham! 

Peshawar was definitely interesting, even for our short visit – if I’m ever back though, there’s certainly a few other things I’d love to check out! The next day, however, would take us across the Pakistani/Afghanistan border, and onwards to Kabul!