Karachi is one of the great food cities. Where to go if you want to try everything.

The mind comes awake moments off a plane in Karachi, Pakistan.

The city spills traffic and people from every endless direction, alleys and side streets. Cars carve new paths, turning a two-lane road into four lanes and then five. Women ride side-saddle on the back of motorcycles and a baby sits on the gas tank, leaning against his father’s chest. Buildings are covered in decades of electric wires and curling sheets of corrugated steel. And every once in a while, through the mess you see a piece of stonework and know there’s a beautiful old building under the chaos.

Overhead, hundreds of birds circle. They are kites, birds as big as hawks, swooping down to eat pieces of meat fed to them by residents. It’s a ritual - charity meat for the birds - and pieces of beef are sold on the street for the purpose. It creates a ceiling of birds in the city, filling in the spaces between the buildings and the sky.

On the ground, people greet each other in Urdu. As-Salam-u-Alaikum. Peace be with you.

Urdu is relatively new, developed in the 12th century, as a kind of trading language to communicate in this crossroads of the world. Iran to the west. Afghanistan just over the border. Uzbekistan to the north. China to the east.

You taste it in the food and hear it in the words - shapes of Sanskrit, Turkish and Arabic.

My first real introduction to Pakistan, like so many people, was in the weeks after 9/11 when the New York Times sent Rick Bragg there. He wrote a NYT Magazine cover piece under the headline, “Why They Hate Us.” That was more than 20 years ago and a huge generation has grown up since then. According to a United Nations report, 64 percent of the country is younger than 30.

We came here for so many reasons, but mostly to understand a part of the world that I only know from headlines.

From the air, Karachi was the color of sandcastles and seemed to sprawl in every direction from the water.

Fifteen million people live in Karachi, goods flowing in and out of its busy deep-sea port.

We started there, at the port.

Karachi is one of the great food cities of the world, organized in a series of food streets.

“We live to eat,” said journalist Naimat Khan as he walked us down Seafood Street in our first moments in the city.

Lights hung over the street. Carts were full of rows of fresh caught fish. A man stood over a pot of peppery soup, cracking crab claws and to add meat to the bowl we ordered.

Smoke rose from the grills as they prepared our prawns, snapper and flounder.

Nearby, a stand sold makti chai, hot milk tea served in clay pots.

Pakistanis eat with their hands. I watched the way Naimat took two fingers and pulled a piece of spiced, grilled fish off the bone and folded into a piece of hot, blistered bread.

This was only our first stop on a long night of eating.

As we left the seafood street, we walked by a row of buses, elaborately decorated. These folk art buses and trucks would become a familiar site on the highways as we traveled - painted with religious and political images and shoutouts to favorite cricket players.

We posed with the buses and a driver happily let us jump on board to look around and take more photos.

Then it was time for more food. We headed to famous Burns Road, a long street of restaurants and food stalls.

We tried Mazaidar chicken haleem, cooked down overnight into a kind of stew and one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten.

We tried chicken biryani with hot piles of roti, fry kebab, dahi barray. Sweet and cheesy rabri.

The air was full of spices. Turmeric, cumin, cardamom. Smoke from meat cooked on roaring fires on the street veiled everything as we walked.

We ate for six hours straight.

It was almost midnight when we finally admitted we couldn’t eat anymore and we had an early morning.

We were headed west to Balochistan - a remote, thinly populated part of the country. We wanted to take a train through the famous Bolan Pass and we wanted to learn something about the Baloch people.

I had been reading “The Wandering Falcon” by Jamil Ahmad about the honor bound tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan and I was ready to learn more.

Latest from Post and Courier Travel:

This week, we published an article I wrote about our scouting trip to Cuba. In response, several people signed up for our trip to Cuba in November. The November trip was added because the March trip sold out.

Here’s the story about Cuba:

https://www.postandcourier.com/travel/stories/cuba-el-vedado-old-havana-travel/article_23a1a452-cf70-11ee-b3a7-373dc9abc817.html

If you’re inspired to go in November, add your name to the list here:

https://www.postandcourier.com/travel/cuban-mosaic-a-cultural-celebration/article_40e1df3a-57ef-11ee-9086-6fb5641db978.html

Also - we are making plans for our trip to Morocco in October. This is a chance to see the country from the mountains to the desert.

Here are the details:

https://www.postandcourier.com/travel/sights-and-sounds-of-morocco/article_acbd65da-413d-11ee-b928-9fc16fe881ee.html

And we are starting to think about where we will go in 2025. Is there a place you’ve always wanted go? Something you’ve always wanted to experience? This would be a chance to tick something off your bucket list and share the adventure with others. Drop me a note with your ideas.