Karachi کراچی

View of Merewether Clock Town in downtown Karachi, Pakistan | Karachi
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:
Merewether_Clock_Tower,_Karachi#/media/File:Merewether_Clock_Tower_from_above.JPG
Author: Tan Afridi


Karachi (کراچی) is the biggest city in Pakistan. The city district covers 3,527 sq km (1,361 sq mi) and has a population of 13 million people, within a metropolitan area of 24 million people. Karachi is the main port as well as financial centre for Pakistan. It is also the provincial capital of Sindh. The city is the 10th largest urban agglomeration in the world.

Karachi is located in the southern part of Pakistan facing the Arabian Sea. It has been inhabited since ancient times. Even the Greeks know about it, as Alexander the Great camped there in preparation of his invasion of Babylonia. It was known by many different names, among them Krokola, Barbarikon and Devak. The present name originated as Kolachi as used by the fishing tribes living in the area.

By the 18th century, Kolachi has growed into a trading port. The Sindhi people built a fort here to protect their city. The British conquered the city on 1 February 1839, and brought it within the British Indian Empire.

Karachi became the capital of Sindh in the 1840's. Under the British, the port of Karachi was developed to export produce of the Indus River basin. By the time Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was born in the city in 1876, it had become a bustling city. By 1899 it was the biggest exporter of wheat in the East.

Karachi continued to grow into a metropolis with many elegant colonial buildings. When Pakistan gained its independence in 1947, Karachi was chosen to be the capital. Its population experienced another boom with an influx of Muslim refugees from India. The capital was relocated in 1958 to Rawalpindi, and then in 1960 to the purpose-built Islamabad.

Karachi remains today the main financial and industrial nerve center of Pakistan, with the largest proportion of the country's white collar workers as well as the biggest contributor to its GDP.

Visiting Karachi

Visitors to Karachi arrive at the Jinnah International Airport (KHI), which receives flights from Delhi, Dubai, Singapore, London and Toronto, among others.

Places of Interest to visit in Karachi

 Latest updates on Penang Travel Tips

 Discover with Timothy YouTube Channel

 PG Food Channel

 Learn Penang Hokkien YouTube Channel

SojiMart Videos

 Share your travels and/or ask a travel-related question

Join the Penang Travel Tips Facebook Group to share photos, tips and anything related to your travels, or ask travel-related questions.

Map of Roads in Penang

Looking for information on Penang? Use this Map of Roads in Penang to zoom in on information about Penang, brought to you road by road.

Discover with Timothy

Let me take you to explore and discover Penang through my series of walking tours on YouTube. You may use these videos as your virtual tour guide. At the beginning of each video, I provide the starting point coordinates which you may key into your GPS, Google Maps or Waze, to be navigated to where I start the walk, and use the video as your virtual tour guide.

Disclaimer

Please use the information on this page as guidance only. The author endeavours to update the information on this page from time to time, but regrets any inaccuracies if there be any.

Latest from Discover with Timothy: Gurney Bay - what to see and do there

About this website

Hello and thanks for reading this page. My name is Timothy and my hobby is in describing places so that I can share the information with the general public. My website has become the go to site for a lot of people including students, teachers, journalists, etc. whenever they seek information on places, particularly those in Malaysia and Singapore. I have been doing this since 5 January 2003, for over twenty years already. You can read about me at Discover Timothy. By now I have compiled information on thousands of places, mostly in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, and I continue to add more almost every day. My goal is to describe every street in every town in Malaysia and Singapore.

Robbie's Roadmap