Mohenjo-daro
UNESCO World Heritage Site (1980) Archaeological Ruins At Moenjodaro; The Largest City Of The Indus Valley Civilisation · Larkana, Sindh
Mohenjo-daro was the largest city of the Indus Valley civilisation, built around 2500 BCE and home to tens of thousands of people when most of the world had no cities at all. It was planned: a grid of streets, houses of fired brick with their own bathrooms, and covered drains running under the lanes, something much of the world would not have again for thousands of years. The name means Mound of the Dead in Sindhi, and the city was forgotten until archaeologists dug into it in the 1920s. Visitors walk the raised Citadel with the Great Bath, a waterproofed brick tank thought to be for ritual bathing, and the Buddhist stupa built on top of the mound some two thousand years later, then cross to the Lower City and its streets. The famous finds are elsewhere: the Priest-King is in Karachi and the Dancing Girl in New Delhi. The ruins are fragile - groundwater salt is eating the bricks and the 2022 floods caused damage - and most excavation has stopped to protect them. Come in winter; summer here is among the hottest places on earth.
Mohenjo-daro archaeological site, near Dokri, Larkana District, Larkana, Sindh, Pakistan
Open daily in daylight hours, with a site museum; hours shift with the season, so confirm locally. There is a ticket, with a much higher foreigners' rate than the local one. The site is about 30 kilometres from Larkana and roughly two hours by road from Sukkur, which has the nearest regular airport; flights to the small Moenjodaro airport are irregular. Karachi is a long day's drive away. Foreign visitors in interior Sindh are sometimes given a police escort, which should be accepted.