Crossing the Wagah Border Between India & Pakistan on Foot

Note: this border crossing was closed soon after a bombing in Pahalgam in April 2025, and it remains so at time of writing. You can still attend the ceremony each evening on both sides of the border, but you won’t be able to cross in either direction. I’ll update this article again when the situation changes.

Thinking about crossing overland from India to Pakistan, or vice versa? Good news: despite ongoing tensions between the two countries, it’s a surprisingly straightforward thing to do. We crossed the border in both directions within the space of a week, and had relatively few hassles doing so.

Despite running for over 2000 miles, the Wagah/Attari border crossing in Punjab is currently the only place you can legally cross between India and Pakistan without flying. The closest city on the Indian side is Amritsar, 30km from the border, while Lahore is about the same distance away on the Pakistani side.

There used to also be a regular train service between Jodhpur and Karachi, but it’s been suspended since 2019 and shows no sign of restarting. A train does still run during major religious pilgrimages, but it’s very much not for foreigners and you won’t be allowed to ride if you’re not a pilgrim.

Here’s everything you’ll need to know for a smooth and successful border crossing!

Before You Get to the Border

Make Sure Your Visa Is Sorted

The biggest hassle with traveling overland between India and Pakistan comes well before you get to the big metal gates that mark the physical border, since getting your head around the visa requirements, applying, paying, and having the right documentation with you can be a hassle.

I’m not going to try and cover every twist and turn of both country’s visa processes, because that way madness lies, but here are a few key things to be aware of:

• Give yourself a couple of weeks to get your visa(s) approved. We were lucky, receiving our India ETA in 24 hours and our Pakistan “Visa Prior to Arrival” almost immediately, but it can take much longer. Those links are to the official sites: don’t use others, as they’re almost always a scam.
• If you’re applying for your Pakistan e-visa while you’re in India, you may need a VPN to do it (I use ProtonVPN). That’s because the Indian government actively blocks connections to many Pakistani websites: if you’re having trouble connecting, try firing up the VPN first.
• If you’re crossing into India at the Wagah border, whether that’s for the first time or returning after a stay in Pakistan, you need to already have a physical visa stamp or sticker for India in your passport. This means that if you’re using an e-Tourist Visa like we were, your first entry on that visa has to be by air, not land. You’ll get a stamp in your passport at the airport, and are then fine to (re)enter India with that until it expires or you’ve used up all your entries.
• Have a physical printout of your visa approval letter if possible. It’s not strictly necessary to enter Pakistan, but it speeds up the process and reduces the risk from flat batteries or lack of phone service (you’ll have little to no coverage at the border).
• You used to need a letter of invitation to go along with your Pakistan visa application, but that’s no longer the case (or at least, we weren’t asked for one when we applied or at the border).

Know Where You’re Going to Stay That Night

You’ll be asked where you’re going in Pakistan or India, and the address of the place you’re going to stay that night. There’s no real verification done as far as I can tell, but just make sure you’ve got the name and address of your hotel/guesthouse/whatever to hand. Again, print out a confirmation if you can.

Give Yourself Plenty of Time

Things don’t always happen quickly in either India or Pakistan, and crossing the border is no exception. It took us over two hours in both directions, plus up to an hour each way getting to/from the nearest city.

That’s not because the crossing was busy: there were maybe 20 people crossing at the same time as us from India into Pakistan, and just one other family when we went the other way. There’s just a lot of waiting around, document inspections, and short-but-mandatory bus rides that soak up the time.

There’s a famous border closing ceremony held every evening, attended by tens of thousands of people, and you need to be across well before it starts. The border is open between 10am and 4pm, so arrive early to ensure you get to the other side in plenty of time, and before it gets too hot.

It’s not unusual for temperatures in Lahore to exceed 40C (104F) in summer, and there’s a 15+ minute walk waiting for you on the other side of the Pakistan immigration office before you get to where the taxis and rickshaws are parked.

Take Your Polio Vaccine Card If You Have One

A recent addition to the border-crossing process on the Indian side is a requirement that anyone who’s crossing into Pakistan and then returning to India needs to have proof they’ve been vaccinated for polio. If you don’t have that proof, you’ll be administered a dose of the oral vaccine then and there!

This is theoretically due to the presence of polio in Pakistan, although in reality the case numbers are so small and in such remote areas that the risk to tourists is essentially zero.

Lauren had managed to find a copy of her polio vaccine record and showed it to the staff member administering the vaccine, who let her through. I’ve been vaccinated, but didn’t have my record with me: in the end it didn’t matter, as I got waved through behind her.

In theory your vaccination record is checked on the way back into India as well, so you can’t just lie and say you’re not returning. If that’s the case, the person doing the checking must have been on their lunch break on the day we returned: there was no sign of a polio checkpoint on the way back.

Have Some US Dollars or Euros On You If Possible

Pakistani rupees are useless in India, and the same is mostly true for Indian rupees in Pakistan (more on that later), which can make paying for a ride from the border into the city more challenging.

We’d heard that unofficial money changers hang around near the immigration office on the Pakistani side, but they were apparently all taking the day off on the day we crossed over from India. Someone did approach us there on the way back, at least, so we could swap Pakistani rupees for Indian ones at a non-terrible rate.

Finding a working ATM that accepts foreign cards in Pakistan also isn’t straightforward. Even in Lahore, we spent a solid couple of hours walking between at least a dozen different banks without success. Tip: Standard Chartered Bank is the way to go, and we were able to get money out at the branch on Mall Road.

If you can, have enough US dollars or Euros on you to pay for your first few hours in Pakistan, including the rickshaw/taxi ride ($20 will easily cover it), and ask your driver to go via a money changer in the city enroute to your hotel.

Failing that, ask to be taken to a branch of Standard Chartered Bank and hope you have the same success with it that we did!

We didn’t have US dollars with us in India, and it was weirdly difficult to find a money changer around the Golden Temple area in Amritsar. There are several basically beside each other on Railway Link Road in Liberty Market, though: they won’t give you Pakistani rupees, but will exchange Indian rupees for USD.

Crossing the Border (Amritsar ➡️ Lahore)

Getting From Amritsar to the Wagah Border

We left our hotel at 9:30am, taking a rickshaw from near the Golden Temple to the money changers on Railway Link Road so we could swap our currency. Sadly it was a public holiday of some sort, and while the offices were open, nobody could change money until 11am because…reasons.

We couldn’t wait that long, so took a punt that we’d be able to find a way to pay for transport on the other side and called an Uber to take us to the border. That was also a bust, as two different drivers balked when they realised we only wanted to go one way: either we paid double to cover the return leg, or they’d cancel the ride.

Canceling the ride it was, then.

Having found a nearby taxi driver who agreed to a somewhat more sensible price (1100 INR/~$13 USD), we were off. It takes about an hour to get from central Amritsar to the border, and we were dropped near a chained gate where border police were letting a few people through at a time.

If you’re on a budget, it’s also possible to catch a bus from Amritsar to the border. Take a rickshaw to the main bus station (~100 INR), and then any bus with Attari on the front. They leave every half-hour, and cost 40 INR each. The journey time from the bus station is a bit under an hour.

You’ll be dropped on the side of the road in Attari, about 3km from the border, where you’ll need to wait approximately 0.5 seconds before a cycle rickshaw driver will offer you a ride. Expect to pay about 40 INR per person for this.

This is a good way to save money if you’re not in too much of a hurry and are traveling light: there isn’t a lot of room on either the buses or the rickshaws for large backpacks and suitcases.

What to Expect at the Border

Given the tense relations between India and Pakistan, and the heavy military presence we’d seen at the border while attending the closing ceremony the day before, we weren’t really sure what to expect as we made our way between the two countries.

What we definitely didn’t expect was friendly people and a pretty relaxed atmosphere, but that’s what we got on both sides of the border. As I said earlier, the process wasn’t particularly fast, but it wasn’t stressful or difficult either. I’ve had a lot more hassle elsewhere in the world.

We had our passports checked and the details noted down at a little booth just on the other side of the gate, and were then pointed in the direction of the main immigration building, labeled “passenger terminal” on the other side of a car park a few minutes’ walk away.

There, we had our bags X-rayed, our passports checked again a couple of times, and a brief interlude in the polio vaccination line, before filling out an exit form, getting stamped out of India, and settling in to wait half an hour for the bus to show up to take us a few hundred metres to the physical border. No, you’re not allowed to walk it.

The bus rolled up, and everyone piled in. Porters loaded all of the suitcases into the luggage hold, but since we only had small backpacks, we just took them with us onto the bus. The ride only took a few minutes, dropping us around the side of the huge stadium used for the closing ceremony each night.

Since we didn’t have to wait for our suitcases, we were first off the bus and, after two more passport checks in the space of about 15 metres, we stepped through the gates and over the line that divides India and Pakistan.

The border guard on the Pakistani side wasn’t small, and neither was his gun, which kept my jokes about the recent performance of his cricket team to a minimum. He was friendly enough, though, asking a few questions about what we planned to do in Pakistan, how long we were staying, what we did for work and how much we earned, before sending us on our way.

The stadium for the border closing ceremony on the Pakistani side was much smaller than the 25,000-seat (no, seriously) version in India, but the hoardings and cranes nearby suggested that wouldn’t be the case for much longer. We walked around the side of it, and into a large, warehouse-type structure that turned out to be the immigration post.

Visa approval scrutinised and passports stamped, our bags were half-heartedly X-rayed, there was one last passport check and Q&A session about where we were going and for how long, and we were ushered out the door.

Just like that, we’d entered Pakistan, about two hours after arriving at the border on the Indian side.

Note: regardless of where you think you might be going in Pakistan, it’s best to answer generically with large cities like Lahore and Karachi, and that you’re either going to return via the Wagah border or fly out of one of those major cities.

Some parts of the country are off-limits to foreigners or require no-objection certificates, especially border areas and the province of Balochistan, and you’re just inviting unnecessary attention by suggesting you’ll go anywhere near them.

Getting From the Wagah Border to Lahore

Entering Pakistan at the Wagah border is pretty anti-climactic: from the immigration post, you basically just come out onto a long, dusty road and start walking. It’s about 1km/15 minutes to a series of security checkpoints, which is the closest point where taxis, rickshaws, and other vehicles can wait.

We walked past a sketchy-looking convenience store close to the border post, but that was it in terms of amenities. Make sure you’ve got some water with you: it gets pretty warm carrying even small backpacks along that stretch of road.

The security checkpoints are really for people and cars heading towards the border, so the guards just glanced at us, welcomed us to Pakistan, and went back to whatever they were doing. Just beyond the barrier arms sat a small group of taxis and rickshaws, and that’s where the bargaining begins.

I was using an Airalo global eSIM on this trip, so although cell signal is spotty at the border itself, I had service once I got a few hundred metres away. With that, I’d tried calling an Uber or Careem, but they don’t work for rides from the border (it’s fine going the other way).

As a result, you’ll be quoted all kinds of prices by the waiting drivers for the 30km trip into Lahore: the going rate for a taxi is around 1500 PKR (~$5), but how close you get to that will depend on the driver and the day.

I was expecting to go via an ATM in the city to get out some money, but in the end the driver said he was happy to accept Indian rupees instead (at a terrible rate, obviously). He’d probably had one too many foreigners struggle to get cash out in the past! You can’t rely on being able to use INR, so definitely have USD/Euro if you can and a backup plan if you can’t, but it worked out for us.

A bit under an hour later, we pulled up outside our accommodation (the Lawrence View Hotel, which we both really liked), and started our time in Lahore!

Crossing the Border (Lahore ➡️ Amritsar)

I’m not going to go into as much detail in this section, as the process was mostly just the reverse of what we’d done going the other way four days earlier.

Getting From Lahore to the Wagah Border

Because there are a few competing rideshare apps in Lahore (we used Uber, Careem, and Yango during our stay), it’s much cheaper to get to the border from there than from Amritsar. Buses apparently also travel the route, but details of where they leave from and when they go are pretty fuzzy. Given the low rideshare prices, that’s where my research ended.

You can expect to pay somewhere in the region of 800 Pakistani rupees for a rickshaw, 1200 rupees for a rideshare car, and 1500 rupees for a normal taxi. We paid a bit extra to detour and wait while we changed the rest of our Pakistani rupees at a Western Union, since you can’t do it once in India.

It wasn’t overly successful, as the guy had no USD and only larger notes of anything else, but it at least got rid of a chunk of our remaining Pakistani rupees. You can’t get Indian rupees at the official money changers in Pakistan.

Again our ride took the better part of an hour, pulling up at the same security checkpoint where we’d taken a taxi from a few days before. The guard inspected the back seats and trunk/boot of the car, vaguely checked our bags, and then separated us (male/female) for a very low-energy body scan with a metal detector.

If tensions between India and Pakistan are high at the time, this is as far as you’ll be able to go in a taxi or rickshaw, and you’ll get to enjoy that same sweaty 15 minute walk to the border that we had on the way in.

Our driver managed to sweet-talk the border guard, though, and was let through to drop us back beside the sketchy convenience store I mentioned earlier, much closer to the immigration office.

I was immediately approached by an only slightly dodgy-looking guy to change what was left of my Pakistani money into Indian rupees. The rate was pretty close to the official one, perhaps because he didn’t think I’d notice that he’d neglected to give me one of the Indian notes.

Sadly for him, I did.

What to Expect at the Border

As I say, the border-crossing process was pretty much the reverse of what we’d experienced a few days earlier. The Pakistani side was very quick, helped by there only being about four other people crossing at the same time. Our bags were scanned, we were asked where we’d gone and how long we’d been in the country, then stamped out with a cheery goodbye.

The soldiers on both sides of the metal gates barely glanced at us, and after a different official a few metres away noted down our visa and passport details, we were sent to wait for the bus in a small office building nearby. After our passports were checked again, of course.

We got to hang out with the flies there for perhaps a little longer than we might have chosen to, but after the bus ride back to the main office, more paper shuffling and noting down of random passport and visa details in lined notebooks, and one final X-ray of our bags, we were sent on our way.

Just like on the way in, the entire process took about two hours.

Getting From the Wagah Border to Amritsar

There were a few taxis waiting in the carpark, but our driver from a few days earlier had insistently given me his WhatsApp number before we left for Pakistan, so I’d arranged a pickup from him for the same price we’d paid to get there.

Raj is a nice guy and we ended up using him to get to Amritsar airport later that night as well: if you want his details, let me know and I’ll pass them on.

If you’d rather take a bus, you can basically use the same approach (rickshaw – bus – rickshaw) that I mention earlier. You might need to leave the border area to find a rickshaw driver, though: I didn’t see any in the carpark, so I’m not sure they wait there.

And there we have it, everything I can think of to help you have a stress-free crossing of the Wagah border! If you’ve got any questions that I haven’t covered, just let me know down below and I’ll try to help if I can.