Pakistan Map

About Pakistan

Pakistan runs about 1,500 km from the Arabian Sea coast near Karachi to the glaciers of the Karakoram on the Chinese border. It borders Iran to the south-west, Afghanistan to the west and north-west, China to the north-east and India to the east. With about 255 million people (UN World Population Prospects, 2025 estimate; the 2023 national census counted 241.5 million), it is the world's fifth most populous country and has the second-largest Muslim population after Indonesia.

The area of 881,912 km² shown here is the figure Pakistan uses for all territory it administers. It includes Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, which are part of the wider Kashmir region. India claims these areas as part of its Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, while Pakistan regards the whole of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir as disputed territory whose status is still to be settled. The two sides are separated by the Line of Control. Without those two areas, the four provinces and the capital territory cover about 796,000 km². China administers the Shaksgam Valley, which Pakistan ceded to it in a 1963 boundary agreement that India does not accept.

Provinces and regions

Pakistan has four provinces. Punjab, the most populous, is the farming heartland of the Indus plains and home to Lahore, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi. Sindh covers the lower Indus and the delta and includes Karachi. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa takes in the north-western valleys and the former tribal areas along the Afghan border, with Peshawar as its capital. Balochistan, the largest by area (about 44 percent of the country), is a dry plateau of mountains and desert, rich in minerals but thinly populated, with the deep-sea port of Gwadar on its coast. The Islamabad Capital Territory is federal, and Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir have their own administrations.

From K2 to the Indus delta

Three of the world's great mountain ranges meet in the north. The Karakoram contains K2 (8,611 m), the world's second-highest mountain, on the border with China, together with the Baltoro and Biafo glaciers, which are among the longest outside the polar regions. Nanga Parbat (8,126 m), the western anchor of the Himalaya, rises above the Indus, and the Hindu Kush borders the Chitral valley. Pakistan has five of the world's fourteen peaks over 8,000 m.

The Indus, about 3,180 km long, rises in Tibet, cuts through Ladakh and Gilgit-Baltistan and then flows the length of the country to the Arabian Sea. Its eastern tributaries, the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi and Sutlej, give Punjab ("five waters") its name. The water is shared with India under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, which India said in April 2025 it was holding "in abeyance". Pakistan rejects that position. Tarbela on the Indus is one of the largest earth-filled dams in the world. East of the river lie the Cholistan and Thar deserts; to the west, the Sulaiman and Kirthar ranges separate the plains from the Balochistan plateau. Historic routes such as the Khyber Pass and the Bolan Pass cross these mountains into Afghanistan.

Heat, monsoon and when to visit

Much of the plains are extremely hot in May and June. Jacobabad in Sindh is regularly among the hottest cities on Earth, often topping 50°C. The monsoon brings most of the rain from July to September, mainly to Punjab, northern Sindh and the foothills. In 2022 record monsoon floods put roughly a third of the country under water. Winters are mild in Karachi and Lahore but bitter in the mountains. For the cities, November to March is the most comfortable time. The northern valleys of Hunza, Skardu and Swat are best from May to October, when the Karakoram Highway and the trekking routes are open.

Major Cities

City population figures below are from the 2023 census and use different boundaries (city, district or wider division), as noted.

• Karachi - Pakistan's largest city and main port, with roughly 20 million people across its districts. It is the country's financial centre and was the capital until 1959.
• Lahore - Capital of Punjab, with about 13 million people in Lahore district, home to the Badshahi Mosque, the Lahore Fort and the Shalimar Gardens of the Mughal era.
• Faisalabad - A textile city of about 3.7 million in the canal-irrigated plains of central Punjab, originally laid out by the British as Lyallpur.
• Rawalpindi - The army's headquarters city and the older twin of Islamabad, with about 3.4 million people in the city.
• Islamabad - The planned capital, built in the 1960s below the Margalla Hills. The capital territory had about 2.4 million people in 2023.
• Peshawar - One of South Asia's oldest cities, 50 km from the Khyber Pass, and the main gateway to Afghanistan.

History and regional ties

The Indus Valley Civilization built cities at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa around 2500 BCE. Later the region was part of the Gandhara Buddhist world centred on Taxila, and then of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire. Pakistan was created on 14 August 1947 at the partition of British India, in two wings separated by India. East Pakistan broke away in 1971 to become Bangladesh. Pakistan and India have fought several wars, mainly over Kashmir. The most recent heavy fighting, in May 2025, followed a militant attack at Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir and ended with a ceasefire on 10 May. Tensions have also run high on the Afghan border, with clashes in October 2025 and February 2026.

China is Pakistan's closest economic partner. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) links Gwadar with Xinjiang by road via the Karakoram Highway, which crosses the Khunjerab Pass at 4,693 m and is one of the highest paved international roads in the world. Pakistan is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and SAARC.

Interesting Facts

• Pakistan has six UNESCO World Heritage sites: Mohenjo-daro, Taxila, the Buddhist ruins of Takht-i-Bahi, Lahore Fort and the Shalimar Gardens, the Makli necropolis at Thatta, and Rohtas Fort.
• The Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, completed in 1673 under Emperor Aurangzeb, has a courtyard designed to hold tens of thousands of worshippers.
• Urdu is the national language, but it is the mother tongue of fewer than one in ten Pakistanis. Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Saraiki and Balochi are far more common at home.