Rawalpindi, known affectionately to its residents as "Pindi," is one of the largest cities of northern Punjab in Pakistan, spread across the gently folded hills of the Pothohar Plateau. It is an old market town that grew into a great commercial and administrative hub, and today it sits beside the planned national capital, Islamabad, the two cities almost merging at their edges. For travellers heading north toward the mountains, Pindi has long been the place where the plains give way to the hills, a busy threshold between the Punjab and the highlands beyond.
On the Pothohar Plateau
Rawalpindi lies in northwestern Punjab on the Pothohar Plateau, a rolling upland bounded by the Indus River to the west and the Jhelum River to the east. To the north rise the Margalla Hills and the Kala Chitta Range, while the Salt Range marks the southern edge. The plateau sits at modest elevations, generally between a few hundred and a couple of thousand feet, giving the region a landscape of dry ridges, seasonal streams, and cultivated valleys. The Soan River drains much of the area and passes near the city. This is a distinctive corner of Punjab, drier and hillier than the great river plains to the south.
A City with Deep Roots
The site of Rawalpindi has been inhabited since ancient times, lying within the wider Gandhara region whose Buddhist remains dot the surrounding countryside. The city in something like its present form is usually traced to the late fifteenth century, when a Gakhar chief is said to have refounded the settlement in 1493. For centuries it remained a relatively modest town, changing hands among local powers. By the early nineteenth century it had come under Sikh authority before passing, with the rest of the region, to British control in the mid-nineteenth century.
The Garrison Town
After the British annexation of the Punjab in 1849, Rawalpindi was developed into a major military station, becoming the largest garrison town of the Northern Command. It received municipal status in 1867 and acquired the broad, tree-lined avenues and orderly cantonment that still distinguish parts of the city today. The contrast between the dense, winding lanes of the old town and the open layout of the cantonment remains one of Pindi's defining features, a legacy of its long role as an administrative and military centre.
Raja Bazaar and the Old City
At the heart of historic Rawalpindi lies Raja Bazaar, a sprawling and crowded marketplace that has served as the commercial pulse of the old city for generations. Its narrow streets are packed with shops selling cloth, spices, hardware, jewellery, and household goods, and the surrounding quarters preserve old havelis, temples, and gurdwara buildings that recall the city's mixed pre-Partition population. Walking through the bazaar gives a vivid sense of how Pindi has always been a place of trade, where goods and people from the hills and the plains meet.
Pindi is where the road north begins: the last great bazaar before the climb into the mountains.
Twin City of Islamabad
In the early 1960s, a new planned capital, Islamabad, was laid out on the plateau immediately to the north of Rawalpindi. Pindi itself served as an interim seat of government while the new city was being built. Today the two are jointly known as the "twin cities," and although they are very different in character, the gridded calm of Islamabad against the dense energy of Rawalpindi, they function as a single metropolitan area. Pindi remains by far the older and more populous of the pair, with several million residents.
Gateway to Murree and the North
Rawalpindi has long been the staging point for journeys into the hills. The famous Murree road climbs from the city up to the cool pine-clad hill station of Murree, a popular summer retreat, and continues toward the Galyat resorts and ultimately the high valleys of the far north. For generations, travellers, traders, and holidaymakers have set out from Pindi to escape the heat of the plains, making the city a true gateway between lowland Punjab and the mountains.
The Pothohari Dialect and the Diaspora
The surrounding Pothohar region has its own distinct form of Punjabi, usually called Pothohari, which is closely linked to the wider group of Pahari-Pothwari speech of the northern hills. It differs noticeably from the Punjabi dialects of central Punjab, with its own sounds and vocabulary. The Pothohar area is also one of the great source regions of Punjabi migration: large numbers of families from these hills settled in Britain and other countries during the twentieth century. Their continuing ties of language and kinship have made the region quietly important to the Punjabi diaspora, even as it remains rooted in the plateau around Pindi.