The Karachi Walla

The Karachi Walla was out in the city taking a tour around. Sevakunj Hostel has been a personal favorite and we make a stop there to peep inside from the locked gate. Abandoned and forgotten now, it bustled with activity in its heydays when resident local and foreign students studying in NED city campus walked […]

[Originally published on Dawn.com] Karachi is not a tourist city anymore. Its streets today are not filled with tourists; there are no hop-on-hop-off buses running its length. The facades of the famous buildings are not lit up at night. Nonetheless, the city is bustling with economic activity. There is a boom in construction, with malls […]

Originally published on Dawn.com Photos By The Karachi Walla and Text by Yumna Rafi and The Karachi Walla Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought” these words befit Saddar, which was once a favourite haunt for Karachi’s bookworms, yet its current state exudes a profound sense of […]

The article was originally published on Dawn.com She had a name befitting of a Mughal princess. A young photographer, she had arrived in the city on a yearlong assignment. She wrote to me saying that she wanted to see colonial Karachi and was interested in joining me on my trips to the city. I was […]

Railways play hardly any role in a Karachi Walla’s life therefore I was amused to see life coming to stand still when an engine lazily announced its presence at a crossing behind Jackson Market. I had been driving through the area aimlessly. A local told me that I would have to wait at least half […]