Nowshera
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Nowshera

Nowshera

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa garrison town on the Kabul River, shaped by cantonment history and Sufi shrines

Nowshera is a garrison town on the Kabul river in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, about 40 km east of Peshawar. It was established by the British in the 19th century as a cantonment along the strategic road to the Khyber Pass, and it still functions primarily as the headquarters of a Pakistan Army division. For most travellers it is a place passed through on the N-5 highway between Peshawar and Islamabad rather than a destination in its own right.

If you do stop, the surrounding countryside holds a few points of interest: the shrine of Kaka Sahib at nearby Ziarat Kaka Sahib, venerated by Pashtun Sufis and the focus of the annual Charaghan illumination festival during the month of Rajab, and the village of Kheshgi, with its old Mughal-era shrines. The Gandharan Buddhist ruins of Takht-i-Bahi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, lie about an hour's drive north near Mardan.

Guide

Day Trips

The most rewarding day trips from Nowshera are to two sites in neighbouring districts. Takht-i-Bahi, about an hour's drive northwest near Mardan, is a 1st-century Gandharan Buddhist monastery built across three hilltop terraces — one of the finest surviving Buddhist sites in Pakistan and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1980. The cells of the monks, the stupa court, and the assembly hall are all clearly readable on the ground.

Peshawar, 40 km west, offers the Qissa Khwani bazaar, the Mahabat Khan mosque, and the Peshawar Museum's outstanding Gandharan collection — easily worth a full day. In the other direction, Attock Fort sits 60 km east at the dramatic confluence of the Kabul and Indus rivers, though access is restricted as it is still in military use.

Guide

Things to Do

Nowshera is fundamentally a garrison town rather than a tourist destination — most travellers will see it from the window of a Peshawar-bound train or coach. If you do stop, the surrounding district has a small cluster of Sufi shrines, a riverside cantonment with British-era architecture, and the celebrated Gandharan Buddhist site of Takht-i-Bahi an hour's drive north.