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Islamabad

Islamabad is a city built from vision: a modernist capital risen from the Pothwar Plateau in the 1960s, with wide boulevards, geometric parks, and the raw Margalla Hills rising dramatically at its back. It feels unlike other Pakistani cities—cleaner, quieter, more spacious—a place where you breathe easier and think clearer. The Faisal Mosque, one of the world's largest, commands the skyline with its white marble and soaring prayer hall. Walk the tree-lined streets, hike into the forested foothills, sip chai at a rooftop café with the city sprawled below, and discover why this unlikely capital has become a refuge for travelers seeking Pakistan's gentler side.

CountryPakistan
RegionTerritorio de la Capital de Islamabad
LanguageUR
CurrencyPKR
Where it is
Pakistan · Territorio de la Capital de Islamabad

Roughly where Islamabad sits.

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From the magazine

What we wrote about Islamabad

The map tells you where. These pieces tell you when to go, whether the place is for you, and what nobody mentions.

Read the Islamabad guideIslamabad was drawn whole on a plan before a single street existed.
01When to go1
In Islamabad, the monsoon brings half the year's rain in just two months

Of the 1,261 millimetres that fall on Islamabad in an average year, more than 627 arrive in July and August alone, driven by the monsoon moving up from the subcontinent. The rest of the year is by far drier and milder, with an extreme heat peak in May and June the rain has not yet arrived to break.

9 min
02Made for you1
Islamabad for travellers who want real mountains without leaving the capital

Trail 3 starts right across from Sector F-6. Ten minutes on foot from an apartment block and you are already climbing through real forest, the whole city at your feet. Few capitals put a mountain range with serious trails this close to their administrative blocks.

8 min
03Worth knowing1
The tree meant to give Islamabad quick shade became its March problem

When the new capital was built in the 1960s, a fast-growing species was planted en masse so the freshly drawn city would get shade and greenery as quickly as possible. Six decades later, that same paper mulberry sends March pollen counts among the highest ever recorded in any city, and authorities have spent several seasons felling it by the thousand.

7 min
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