As some of you might know, for the last few weeks, I’ve been a tourist in my hometown, Karachi. Naturally, I was really excited to hear about the Super Savari Express, Karachi’s first guided tour! They refer to themselves as a “social movement, encouraging Pakistanis to own their cities [and] take pride in this ownership,” and I can’t understate the importance of that idea.

Super Savari Express guides “tourists” (by and large Pakistanis) around sights in Pakistan using local transportation, also known as our beautiful buses covered in traditional truck art, as pictured below.

Atif bin Arif, managing director of Super Savari Express, is quoted to have said about his clientele, “These are the same people who fly to the Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel, even though we have beautiful churches here; or go to India to see temples, when we have Hindu temples here.” I think this is basically the coolest thing ever because I have actually traveled to the Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel and to India to see a temple without checking these monuments out in my own hometown. Our city has a myriad of different things to offer; we need not even look anywhere else.

Although I haven’t been on the tour yet, it is said to highlight Karachi’s “mosaic of cultures, ethnicities and religions” with stops at Parsi and Hindu temples, mosques of minority Muslim groups and a cathedral. It also stops at Empress Market, a place close to where I went to school for three years, but never really looked at.

As in most journeys around Karachi, safety is a concern. As such, the bus is secured by six armed guards. Aside from this, danger or threats may not be as imminent as we think. Given that the tour attracts wealthy clientele who tend to live in Clifton or Defense when they leave those areas, they may be “more worried than they should be” said blogger Farooq Soomro.

On an even more exciting note, Super Savari Express has now launched the Super Poké Express, which “will take passengers to pokéstops [...], gyms, [...] and locations where Pokémon are known to” appear. Could this be the best marketing ever? As of a fortnight ago, “Pokémon GO attracted just under 21 million daily active users,” and a few of them definitely want to level up by touring Karachi.

Super Savari Express is “an organization obsessively in love with our nation,” and I, for one, can’t wait to join them in “reclaiming the nation one city and one Pokémon at a time”!