Business travel policy for Pakistan trips: the ground transport rules

A workable business travel policy for Pakistan needs five ground transport rules that most corporate templates leave out: every airport arrival is pre-booked with a named driver before the flight departs; street taxis and app-hailed rides are not approved for staff; intercity journeys run on the motorway network in daylight unless someone senior signs off an exception; any place the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) advises against travelling to is out of scope for ordinary business trips; and vehicle class is set by trip type rather than by job grade. Below is the reasoning behind each rule, plus clause wording a UK company can adapt.

The reason the rules look like this is simple. The FCDO’s own safety and security advice for Pakistan tells British travellers to avoid street taxis, e-taxis and online apps, and to use only reputable, licensed companies where you call for a car and the operator contacts the driver. It also describes local driving standards as erratic, especially at night. A policy that simply says “use a reputable taxi” leaves the traveller to interpret that in an arrivals hall after a night flight. A good policy makes the decision before the trip.

Why generic templates fail on a Pakistan trip

Most company travel policies for employees travelling abroad were written around flights, hotels and per diems. Ground transport gets one line, usually something like “use licensed taxis or public transport where safe”. That works in Frankfurt. It does not work in a country where the official UK advice lists whole provinces as no-go areas, advises against using the railway network, and tells you to vary routes and timings if you make regular journeys.

A Pakistan trip exposes three specific gaps:

• The arrival gap. A traveller who has not arranged a car before departure makes the transport decision after a long-haul flight, tired, often without a working local SIM, in what the FCDO warns can be a crowded airport.
• The geography gap. Travel advice for Pakistan is set at district and highway level, not country level. A single road can pass from an area with no special advice into one where the FCDO advises against all travel. Policies need a map-level rule, not a country-level rating.
• The duty-of-care gap. In the UK, the Health and Safety Executive says employers must manage health and safety risks to workers who drive or ride for work, and frames the assessment around the journey, the driver and the vehicle. When staff are driven by a third party abroad, a careful employer applies the same three questions to the provider it chooses. Choosing the provider and setting the rules is how it shows its thinking.

The decision summary: what your business travel policy for Pakistan should require

The classes named above match the categories on our vehicle classes page, which lists typical models in each class so approvers can see what “executive sedan” means in Pakistan rather than guessing. The mapping is a suggested starting point, not a legal standard; adjust it to your own risk appetite and budget.

Journeys that must be pre-booked

If your policy only enforces one rule, make it this one. Pre-booking removes the most exposed decision in the whole trip.

Airport arrivals

Require the booking, driver name, vehicle registration and a working contact number to be in the traveller’s hands before they board. That means the traveller, their manager and whoever runs travel operations all know who is waiting. At Islamabad International Airport, which opened in May 2018 about 25km south-west of the city centre and links directly to the Lahore and Peshawar motorways according to its Wikipedia entry, a pre-arranged pickup also avoids a long cross-terminal walk looking for an unfamiliar ride in a car park.

Build three details into the booking request as standard:

1. The flight number, so the pickup follows the actual landing time rather than the schedule.
2. A meeting point agreed in writing, and a fallback if the phone does not connect.
3. A named contact at the traveller’s own company who can be called if the driver is not there within an agreed window.

Our Pakistan airport transfers service takes flight details at the enquiry stage for exactly this reason. Quotes and vehicle allocation are confirmed per request, so the policy should require the traveller to hold a confirmation, not just a submitted form.

Airport departures

Departures are less exposed but easier to get wrong on timing. The FCDO notes that Pakistani airports can be crowded and that baggage may go through screening and checks, so it tells travellers to allow enough time for check-in and security. A policy line such as “pickup time is set by the provider after reviewing the flight time and route, and the traveller does not shorten it” stops the familiar last-minute squeeze.

Intercity legs

Any journey between cities should be booked in advance as a car with driver, with the route and expected departure time written into the booking. That turns a vague “go to Lahore on Tuesday” into something a manager can check against the travel advice and the daylight rule below. Our business travel car service page covers how multi-day and multi-stop programmes are requested.

Where the FCDO advice sets hard limits

This is the section of a Pakistan travel policy template that needs the most care, because the lines are specific and they change. At the time of writing, the FCDO travel advice for Pakistan (last updated 22 September 2026) advises against all travel to:

• the whole of Balochistan province;
• within 10 miles of the Afghanistan border, and within 10 miles of the Line of Control;
• a long list of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts, including Peshawar city and district, Swat, Upper and Lower Dir, Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Khyber, Kurram, Charsadda, Buner and the Waziristan districts;
• the Karakoram Highway between Mansehra and Chilas, via Battagram, Besham, Dasu and Sazin to the N15 junction;
• the N45 from north of the Mardan ring road to the edge of Chitral city, including the Kalash valleys.

It advises against all but essential travel to Azad Jammu and Kashmir, all of Sindh north of and including Nawabshah, Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts of Malakand, Mardan, Nowshera, Shangla and Swabi, and within 5 miles of the India border (the FCDO carves out the Wagah ceremony route and the Kartarpur Corridor, but notes both are currently closed for crossings).

Read that list as a transport manager rather than a tourist and some practical consequences jump out:

• Islamabad to Peshawar is not a routine leg. West of the Indus, the M-1 passes Swabi (all-but-essential list) and Charsadda (all-travel list) before ending at Peshawar, which is also on the all-travel list. A policy should treat Peshawar as off-limits for standard trips.
• Karachi to the interior of Sindh needs a check. Karachi and Hyderabad sit south of Nawabshah; anything north of it falls under the all-but-essential advice.
• Northern leisure add-ons are the classic trap. A visitor with a free weekend who fancies Swat or the drive up the KKH is heading into all-travel areas. The policy should say plainly that weekend and leisure extensions follow the same rules as the working trip.

The FCDO also warns that travel insurance can be invalidated by travelling against its advice, and says permission from local or federal authorities is needed to travel in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and several districts of Azad Kashmir. Check your corporate insurer’s wording before anyone approves an exception. Because the lists move, the policy should require the approver to re-read the live FCDO page within a set period before departure, not rely on a copy pasted into the policy months earlier.

Other governments publish their own advice. If you employ US or other nationals, the policy should also point to their government’s advisory; the US State Department maintains a Pakistan travel advisory that names Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa among areas not to travel to. Where two advisories differ, apply the stricter one.

Night travel, motorways and national highways

Once the geography is settled, the next biggest variable is the road itself, and the hour you drive on it.

Why the motorway is the default

The FCDO’s own line is blunt: outside the major motorways, road quality is variable and conditions can be poor. The M-2 between Rawalpindi and Lahore is 375km of six-lane motorway, opened in November 1997 and tolled through the M-tag system introduced in 2021, according to its Wikipedia entry. The National Highways & Motorway Police, the force for these roads, runs a travel advisory service for motorists that is worth checking on the day.

The N-5 runs 1,819km from Karachi to Torkham through Hyderabad, Sukkur, Multan, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar, and parts of it were built on the old Grand Trunk Road. It is a national highway through towns and cities rather than a controlled-access motorway, so a visiting employee meets more junctions and more mixed traffic. Our guide to motorway tolls and drive times on the M-1, M-2 and M-4 sets out the main corridors if you need planning figures for approvals.

The daylight rule

The FCDO describes local driving standards as erratic, especially at night, and warns that driving can be unpredictable at dusk as people head home. The HSE, writing for UK employers, notes that sleep-related incidents are most likely between 2am and 6am and between 2pm and 4pm, and points to the Highway Code recommendation of a 15-minute break every two hours in its guidance on planning and managing journeys. Put those together and a sensible default follows:

• Intercity journeys start and finish in daylight.
• Journeys over roughly two hours include a planned stop, usually at a motorway service area.
• If a flight or meeting runs late, the traveller stays overnight rather than setting off in the dark. HSE guidance suggests considering an overnight stay rather than asking fatigued people to travel home.
• Weather closures are respected. The FCDO notes the monsoon usually runs from late June to early October, with flooding and landslides damaging roads. If a section is closed, the journey waits; nobody is rerouted onto a smaller road to save the meeting.

Airport transfers are the obvious exception to the daylight rule, since flights land when they land. Handle that by making the arrival transfer a short, direct, pre-booked leg to the hotel, with any onward intercity drive moved to the next morning.

Setting an approved vehicle class for staff travel

Tying vehicle class to seniority is how most policies do it, and it produces odd results: a junior engineer carrying test kit ends up in the smallest car, while a director travelling alone gets a seven-seat SUV. Set the approved vehicle class for staff travel by trip type and load instead.

Two further rules are worth writing down. First, air conditioning is mandatory in every class: summer heat on the Punjab plains makes it a safety item, not a comfort. Second, specify that the vehicle is provided with a driver. The FCDO notes that anyone planning to drive in Pakistan must carry both the 1968 international driving permit, which can only be bought in the UK, and their UK licence. Self-drive is possible with the right papers, but a policy for visiting staff should treat self-drive as an exception, because it moves the driving risk and the local knowledge gap directly onto your employee.

Who approves exceptions, and how quickly

An exception route that takes three days will simply be ignored. Keep it to three tiers, with named roles rather than names:

1. Line manager approves anything inside the standard rules: pre-booked cars, motorway legs in daylight, the vehicle class in the table.
2. Travel risk owner (often in HR, security or operations) approves night intercity driving, national-highway routes, any trip into an all-but-essential area, and any self-drive. Their approval should be written and should reference the live FCDO page.
3. Executive or board-level sponsor, with specialist security advice is the only route into an area where the FCDO advises against all travel. For most companies the honest answer at this tier will be no, and the policy should say so rather than imply a routine path exists.

Sample clause wording for a UK company policy

The wording below is an example to adapt, not legal advice. Have your own HR, legal and insurance advisers review it before it goes into a live policy.

Ground transport in Pakistan. All airport arrivals and departures in Pakistan must be pre-booked with an approved provider before the outbound flight departs. The traveller must hold the driver’s name, vehicle details and a contact number before boarding.

Employees must not use street taxis, e-taxis or app-based ride services while travelling on company business in Pakistan, in line with UK FCDO advice.

Intercity journeys must be made by pre-booked car with driver, using the motorway network where a motorway route exists, and must start and finish in daylight. Journeys on national highways, or after dark, require approval from the Travel Risk Owner.

Employees must not travel to any area where the FCDO advises against all travel. Travel to areas where the FCDO advises against all but essential travel requires a written risk assessment and Travel Risk Owner approval. Approvers must check the current FCDO advice no more than 72 hours before departure.

These rules apply equally to any personal or leisure days added to a business trip.

What the traveller needs before they go

A policy is only as good as the checklist that goes with it. A one-page pre-trip sheet should include:

• visa confirmed through the official Pakistan online visa portal, and a passport valid for at least six months from the date of the visa application, as the FCDO entry requirements state;
• a reminder to get the passport stamped on entry, since the FCDO warns that leaving can be difficult without it;
• arrival transfer confirmation with driver details;
• hotel address written in a form a driver can use, with a nearby landmark;
• the travel risk owner’s out-of-hours number;
• a note of which areas the trip must not enter, taken from the live FCDO page.

Choosing and checking a provider

The provider is where the policy becomes real. Ask any candidate for written answers on how drivers are vetted, how vehicles are maintained, what happens if a driver is delayed at an arrival, how the traveller reaches a human at night, and how invoices are issued for your finance team. Match their answers to the HSE’s journey, driver and vehicle framing and keep the answers on file.

For the Pakistan leg, you can start a request through the iDrive journey request page; each request is reviewed and priced individually, and a vehicle is confirmed only once the booking has been accepted. If your staff also want a simpler, family-style guide to their Karachi arrival, our sister service Pakistan Taxi, part of the same iDrive network, has a practical note on arriving in Karachi for a hotel stay or business visit. For companies whose people also travel to the Gulf, our sister company Saudi Cab Co publishes the equivalent picture for business travel ground transport in Saudi Arabia, which helps keep a regional policy consistent.

Questions people ask

Can staff use ride-hailing apps in Pakistan on company business?

The FCDO advises British travellers to avoid street taxis, e-taxis and online taxi apps and to use reputable, licensed companies where you call for a car. Most employers mirror that advice in policy and require pre-booked cars with drivers instead.

Is it acceptable to drive between Islamabad and Lahore at night?

The M-2 is a six-lane motorway, but the FCDO describes local driving as erratic, especially at night. A cautious policy makes night intercity driving an exception that needs senior approval, with an overnight stay as the default.

Does a UK company’s duty of care apply when staff are driven abroad?

HSE guidance frames work-related road risk around the journey, the driver and the vehicle. Applying the same questions when you choose and brief an overseas provider is a sensible way to show you have managed the risk. Take your own legal advice on the exact scope.