Kohat is a small city in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, about 60 km south of Peshawar at the foot of the Kohat Pass. It was an important British garrison town during the Raj and still has the feel of a frontier outpost — a working administrative and market centre for the surrounding Pashtun districts, with dusty streets, a brisk bazaar, and little in the way of tourism. Kohat sits at the mouth of the historic Kohat Pass over the Kohat Range, the old trade and military route between the Peshawar valley and the tribal districts of Waziristan; for travellers, this historical position is most of what makes the town interesting.
The Kohat Fort, built by the British in the 1850s and still occupied by the Pakistani Army, dominates the town (though it is not open to visitors). The Tanda Dam, about 12 km from town, is a popular weekend escape for locals and a good spot for a picnic. Shakardara and the nearby villages of the Kohat district preserve some of the old fortified stone houses and watchtowers of the Pashtun hill country. Kohat is best known across Pakistan, however, as the site of the Darra Adam Khel gunmaking village just outside town — for generations the most famous arms bazaar in the country, where local craftsmen have produced copies of nearly every firearm in existence (a trade tightened considerably by the government since the 2000s).
This is not an easy place to travel to. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa requires careful attention to security conditions, and foreigners need permission to travel beyond the main cities; check current travel advisories before planning any trip.