Go before eight. The marble is still cold, the pigeons own the courtyard, and nobody's asking you for a photo fee yet. Sit on the east steps and watch the whole thing turn gold. This is the only alarm clock you'll thank.

Slow-cooked trotters in a broth that's been going since before you were born. Order the paye, tear the naan, don't ask what's in it. A bowl costs less than your airport coffee and will ruin breakfast forever.

No route here. Point yourself down the narrowest lane and follow the sound of hammering copper. The Walled City rewards the lost — every wrong turn is a courtyard, a shrine, or a man who wants to show you his rooftop.

Battered river fish, fried in a wok the size of a satellite dish, dusted with chaat masala. Eat it standing, off newspaper, with a lime. Grease on the fingers is the receipt.

The most beautiful tilework in the subcontinent and half the tourists of anywhere that'll tell you so. Climb the minaret before the last call to prayer. The city flattens out beneath you in fresco blues and burnt orange.

Rooftop tables, the Badshahi lit up like a stage set, and more butter than any doctor would sign off on. Touristy, yes. Worth it, also yes. Order the mutton karahi and let the view do the talking.

The café where Pakistan's poets argued the country into being. The tea is average. The ghosts are not. Sit under the old photographs, order a doodh patti, and pretend you have something profound to write.

One of the oldest surviving bazaars on earth, and it does not care that you know it. Fabric by the kilometre, spice you'll smell for three flights, and haggling that's a sport, not a chore. Start at half. Smile the whole time.

Chicken karahi cooked in its own fat and butter over a roaring flame, no water, no shortcuts. This is the dish every other karahi is measured against. Bring friends or the portions will bring you to your knees.

Second-hand paperbacks stacked to the ceiling, Partition-era maps, calligraphy nobody's translated in decades. You won't read half of it. Buy something anyway — it's the cheapest souvenir with a soul.

Come Thursday night when the qawwals set up and the whole shrine breathes as one. You don't have to believe anything. Sit at the back, take your shoes off, let the harmonium do what it does. Nobody leaves the same.

Slow-stewed beef shank in a chilli-oil broth that's been simmering for twelve hours. This is a two-in-the-morning dish they happen to serve at nine. Order it, add the ginger, keep the naan coming.

Mughal geometry, 410 fountains, and a stillness the rest of the city never allows. Get there at opening, before the school groups. Walk the terraces top to bottom and let your pulse come down for departure.

The Sunday breakfast that runs every day: puffed fried bread, chickpea curry, and a sweet semolina halwa that has no business being this good at nine in the morning. The last big meal before the airport. Make it count.

Hand-stitched khussa shoes and tailors who'll turn a shirt around by afternoon. This is where you spend the last of the small notes. Bargain gently — you're leaving, they're not.

Leave earlier than you think. Traffic on the way out is its own final boss. You'll land somewhere else already planning the next 72 hours back.