History and People
While Pakistan as a country is relatively new, the Indus River region is known as a cradle of civilization. Archaeologists have found fossils of Homo sapiens in the area which date back 50,000 years. An urban society known as the Indus Civilization developed around 3,000 BC and flourished for a period of about fifteen hundred years. One of the reasons for the rise and the prosperity of the Indus Civilization was its situation right along a natural trade route between central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. While this position encouraged the rise of an urban trading society, it also encouraged wave after wave of invasion, making Pakistan's history a mind-boggling tapestry of successive conquests.
The first of these incursions was that of the Aryans, who arrived from Central Asia around 1,700 BC, displacing the Indus Civilization and bringing Hinduism to the region. Twelve hundred years later, the Aryans yielded in turn to the armies of Cyrus the Great, and the Indus region became a part of his Achaemenid Persian empire. The next conqueror to arrive was Alexander the Great, who passed through the Khyber Pass in 326 BC, built a fleet of ships, and sailed down the Indus to conquer what is now the Punjab state. It was in the Punjab that Alexander's soldiers refused to go any further east, prompting an enormously difficult march homeward through the harsh desert regions of Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and Iran.
Alexander's successors, the Seleucids, survived for about a century, until they capitulated to Ashoka, emperor of the great Mauryan empire of India. It was Ashoka who, in an act of remorse for the suffering caused by his many conquests, brought Buddhism to Pakistan (and to much of Asia). The Mauryans were then succeeded by the Bactrians, the Saka (Scythian nomads), the Parthians, and, in the 2nd century AD, by the Kushans. Kanishka, the greatest of the Kushan kings, ruled from Peshawar over an empire that stretched across much of India. As the Kushan empire declined, various Hindu kingdoms based in India asserted their power, dividing up the territory between them. Islam was introduced in the 8th century and quickly spread throughout the region. The Turkish rulers of Afghanistan invaded Pakistan as they began their conquest of India. Pakistan then passed under the control of the Muslim sultans of Delhi.
Early in the 16th century, Pakistan became part of the Mughal Empire. Under the emperors Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan, art and architecture flourished. By the early 19th century, the Sikhs had consolidated their power and declared Lahore their capital. Within a few decades, however, the Sikhs were defeated in battle by the English, and Pakistan became part of the British Raj. When India prepared for independence from the British in the 1940s, Muslim Indians pushed for their own independent state, and the republic of Pakistan came into being on August 14, 1947 as a Muslim homeland. Unfortunately, the birth of both Pakistan and India was marked by massive bloodshed, when violence broke out between Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus migrating from one country to the other. About 500,000 people were believed to have massacred in total,out of which the most effected were the region of Punjab on both sides,where majority of the slaughtered ones in riots were muslims and sikhs.
Pakistan's population of 128 million is one of the fastest-growing in Asia. The three largest ethnic groups are the Punjabis, an Indo-Aryan people who dominate political and business life,and generally are feudal landlords ,the Pashtuns, who work mainly as herders and farmers and the Sindhis who are generally in farming and agriculture and a stronghold of conservative,feudal community structure exists here.
The other significant ethnic group is Balochis,living in the Balochistan province of Pakistan.The Balochs are tribesmen and their society is of nomadic tradition.
The northern areas are home to many distinct ethnic groups, whose eclectic heritage is the result of intermarriage between local peoples and invaders from elsewhere in Europe and Asia. The official language is Urdu, and English is used extensively in official matters as well as in business.

Top Things to See and Do
Please just make a simple list separated by commas here - more info in the Travel Guide.

Neighboring countries: Afghanistan, China, India, Iran


Ministery of Foreign Affairs - Pakistan

www.mofa.gov.pk Ministry of Tourism Pakistan


www.pakistan.gov.pk

Hotels in Islamabad, Pakistan www.nicepakistan.com/hotels.htm

Pakistan Railway
www.pakrail.com

Pakistan International Airlines

www.piac.com.pk
Pakistan Embassies Abroad
www.travel-culture.com/pakistan_embassies.shtml Foreign Embassies in Pakistan
www.embassiesabroad.com/embassies-in/Pakistan

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Visiting Pakistan on Motorcycle
Hi friends, we are three bikers from Bangalore, India. We are starting off on a South Asia motorcycle tour on December 3, 2006 and will be in Pakistan from December 30-January 7. We plan to visit Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Sialkot and meet and interact with people. Please visit our website www.borderlessbikers.com and support us. We would be happy if travellers from this community would host us for couple of days.