Karachi. welcome

I arrived in Karachi, one of the biggest cities in Pakistan with over 14million inhabitants and the economical hub ob the country.

Karachi lies in the south of Pakistan on the arabian sea. It feels a bit like an urban octopus that is fetching workers and is always expanding its boundaries (now stretching over 3500 sq km). Karachi is a cosmopolitan city where different ethnicities and religious groups live (not always) peaceful next to each other. There is a big Hindu, Christian and a Zoroastrian community to be found and I lived with some great open minded and well (better than me) educated christians for some days.

My first impressions of Pakistan?

I saw a lot of motor-rikshas, colourful busses and heavy loaded motor bikes in a crazy traffic that seemed to have no system (worse for me as they drive here left side, a british-colonial left over).

Modern clean shopping malls with fancy clothes co-exist with street bazars, where you can see the animals before they're being slaughtered.

I visited the tomb of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of the pakistani state, who lies in white marble silence in the middle of the rumoring city.

The camels on the beach, which carried local tourists around on the fine and silvery sand amazed me

aswell as the sight of pakistani women bathing in full clothes (yes, we're not in bikini-showing europe anymore, swimming goes in full shalwar kamize for women. Just some westerners seem to have hired the right for jumping around in minimal clothing on the French beach, which is a beach just accesible for foreigners or for high society members (as there has been a scandal recently about a ministers daughter bathing in a bikini on the french beach).

Another thing that amazed me were the first unsecure spoken sentences in Urdu that I exchanged with a local family...

And then, after some days, which were like a rush of colours, smells and tastes to my head, I left the city, but for sure to come back there.