I had such an amazing time visiting Karachi's Clifton Beach that I thought I would move closer to that area so I could visit it more often. I left my luxury hotel at Avari Towers, in the Saddar district, and headed towards the Arabian Sea.
There are no big hotels next to the beach, but there are guest houses. The best guesthouse that I could find online was called 'Beach Resort' and the rooms looked to be hotel standard. So that's what I booked.
The price of this guest house was also hotel standard at 15,000 PKR ($85 USD) per night, considerably more than a room in an ordinary guest house would be, but if it was as good as it looked then it would be worth it.
In my opinion the room was mostly up to hotel standards.
There were a few annoyances like not having a great place to set up my laptop and some security concerns. For instance, there was no in-room safe and the balcony door couldn't be locked. They also don't accept credit cards so I had to bring a stack of rupee notes.
Otherwise, the room was exactly what you would expect from a decent 4 star hotel. They even have a swimming pool, which isn't a feature that you're going to find at most Karachi guesthouses.
After checking in to the Beach Resort hotel I headed straight for the beach. The part of Clifton Beach where my hotel was is known as 'Sea View Beach' by the locals. It's the same beach as Clifton Beach, but they just call that area Seaview.
It was a lot quieter than the area of the beach I visited last time (Check out my vlog from there if you haven't already: • Making Friends at Kara... ). The sand was also a lot cleaner and less black.
I began having a lovely, peaceful stroll along the beach but two guys on horses quickly spotted me and sprinted towards me. I'd planned on taking a horse or camel ride at the beach at some point so I thought that I may as well go with one of them, so I negotiated a price of 200 rupees.
Unfortunately it turned out to be a huge scam and a whole lot of hassle and stress. I will release the full footage of what happened and how I dealt with the situation as a separate 20 minute video, to warn people of what to expect when dealing with these cheats at this beach.
After that awful scam incident I'd had enough of the beach for one day. I decided to take a rickshaw to the light house market area to pick up my cricket t-shirt. I had left it at the shop for name / number printing.
Unfortunately no rickshaw wanted to take me there. I decided to try Careem instead.
Careem is a ride hailing app, like Uber.
So far it's been useful, as the fare is determined by the app, but drivers always seem to have a difficult time finding me to pick me up. Despite the app using GPS technology, meaning they can see the passenger's exact location, they always feel the need to phone me up to ask me where I am.
I didn't know the exact location of Azeem Sports, where I bought the cricket shirt, so I got dropped off in the general lighthouse market area and went searching for the shop by memory. It took a while but I eventually found it, only to learn the bad news that they'd forgotten to print my shirt. 🤦‍♂️
A fresh glass of grapefruit juice and chat with the locals, then I went through the stress of getting another rickshaw to my next destination.
Again, I had to rely on Careem as I was going to a friend's house and there's no way I could explain to the driver where to go. At least with these apps you can select the exact location on the map and leave it to the driver. This driver didn't have his phone mounted on his dashboard though. He kept it in his pocket and kept asking me for directions. Argh!
I did get to my friend's house, eventually. It took two hours, between the hassle getting a Careem to pick me up and the crazy Friday evening traffic jams in Karachi.
You'll see the full vlog of the awesome family dinner at Zulfi's home in a future episode.
0:00 Intro
0:43 Beach Resort
7:18 Horse Ride Scam
9:13 Ice Cream
15:13 Lighthouse Market
19:58 Grapefruit Juice
📍 Beach Resort, Abdul Sattar Edhi Avenue, Sea View, Karachi 🇵🇰
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