Islamabad is very probably the cheapest capital city in this guide to hire a motorbike, and it is also the one where the bike is least useful in the first hundred kilometres. Pakistani law keeps motorcycles off every motorway in the country, which means the thirteen-euro-a-day Honda you collect in the morning is legally confined to the old national highways. That is survivable, because the road worth coming for is a national highway. It just means the ride you booked does not really begin at your hotel. It begins about five hundred kilometres north.
The law that redraws your map before you turn a wheel
The prohibition sits in Section 45 of the National Highway Safety Ordinance 2000. It was briefly unsettled: the Islamabad High Court set the ban aside, and for roughly four years larger bikes occupied a grey area. In November 2022 the Supreme Court overturned that ruling and restored the prohibition, holding that keeping motorcycles off motorways was within the law and not a violation of any fundamental right. The one carve-out that had existed, 500cc patrol bikes ridden by the Motorway Police themselves, had already been discontinued on safety grounds and replaced with cars.
For a visitor the consequence is concrete. The M-2 between Islamabad and Lahore is closed to you at any speed, on any capacity of machine, and no rental agreement can change that. Riding to Lahore means the old Grand Trunk Road, which is slower, busier, far more interesting, and considerably more dangerous. Riding north means joining the Karakoram Highway, which is a national highway rather than a motorway and therefore open. Plan the map around that division before you plan anything else.
Thirteen euros a day, and the add-on that costs six times more
The core numbers from current Islamabad listings:
- Honda CG125, 2013, 125cc and 11 horsepower: 13 euros a day on a three-day booking, 38.84 euros in total
- Honda CG125 collected in Rawalpindi instead: from about 12 euros a day
- Suzuki GS 150: from about 14 euros a day
- Mileage: unlimited, with no per-kilometre charge waiting at drop-off
- Included at no cost: helmet, bungee cords, a bike lock
The add-on menu is where the arithmetic gets strange, and it is worth reading before you tick anything. Accident insurance is offered at 86 euros as a one-off, which is more than six days of the bike. Airport delivery is 43 euros and hotel delivery 26 euros, on a machine that costs 13 euros a day to rent. A premium helmet is priced per day at 22 euros, which is to say the helmet can cost more than the motorcycle. Gloves at 9 euros and rain gear at 14 euros are the two that most riders heading north will actually want; a tank bag at 3 euros is close to free.
Prices checked against operator listings in August 2026.
The deposit, the documents, and the CNIC problem
The refundable security deposit on the Islamabad CG125 is 173 euros, payable by credit or debit card or in cash at pickup. Note the ratio: the hold is more than thirteen days of rental on a bike you have probably booked for four. Booking online takes fifteen per cent up front, and free cancellation runs up to seven days before collection.
The documents are where local and visiting riders diverge. A Pakistani renter is asked for an original CNIC, the national identity card, plus a valid licence. A foreign renter cannot produce one, so operators substitute a passport copy and lean harder on the deposit. This is normal and not a red flag, but it does mean two things in practice. First, the shop is carrying more risk on you than on a local customer, so expect the deposit conversation to be firmer and less negotiable. Second, some smaller yards advertising to a domestic audience simply will not rent to a foreigner at all, because their process has no branch for it. Book with an operator that lists internationally, or arrive with a local contact.
Keep the original passport on you at all times and hand over copies, never the document itself. You will be asked for it repeatedly on the road, and being able to reach the operator or your booking confirmation from the roadside is worth arranging a working local data plan for; our rundown of international SIM options covers the trade-offs.
Licence A1 at sixteen, and what that line really means for a visitor
The CG125 listing asks for licence category A1 or equivalent, with a minimum age of sixteen. That is a genuinely low bar by the standards of this guide, and it reflects a domestic market where a 125 is basic family transport rather than a leisure vehicle.
It is not a licence loophole, though, and this is the point where visitors get themselves into trouble across Asia. A national rule that lets residents ride a small-capacity bike on an ordinary car licence is a concession granted to that country own licence holders. It does not extend to a foreign licence simply because you are riding a machine below the same capacity threshold. Ride outside what your own licence actually entitles you to and any cover attached to the rental is worth nothing, whatever the counter staff waved through. Pakistan issues International Driving Permits under the 1949 Geneva Convention format, valid for a year from issue; bring one alongside your national licence and make sure your national entitlement genuinely includes motorcycles.
Five hundred and fifty-six kilometres, and a pass at 4,173 metres
The Karakoram Highway, N-35, runs about 1,300 kilometres from Hasan Abdal in Punjab to the Khunjerab Pass on the Chinese border. Islamabad to Gilgit along it is roughly 556 kilometres. On an 11-horsepower CG125 that is not a two-day ride in any comfortable sense, and the stretch through Kohistan and around Chilas is the least rewarding part of the whole road: hot, heavily trafficked, and prone to landslides in the monsoon.
The alternative that riders actually want is Babusar. The pass sits at 4,173 metres and links the Kaghan valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to Chilas and the KKH in Gilgit-Baltistan. It is also the single hardest constraint on when you can come: Babusar is closed under snow from roughly November to June, typically opening in mid to late May once clearance finishes and closing again in late October or early November. Outside that window the Babusar route is not a difficult ride, it is a shut gate, and the only way north is the full KKH run through Chilas.
A 125 will get over Babusar. Whether it should is a different question, because a naked 114-kilogram commuter carrying a rider, luggage and a week of fuel stops has very little in reserve at four thousand metres.
Checkpoints, photocopies, and the permit rules that changed in 2019
The blanket No Objection Certificate that foreigners once needed to move around Pakistan was abolished in 2019, and large parts of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral were reclassified as non-restricted. Hunza, Skardu, Shigar, Deosai and the KKH itself need no special permit today.
What survives is narrower and worth knowing precisely. Buffer strips remain closed to foreigners: broadly ten miles from the Pakistan-China and Pakistan-Afghanistan borders, and five miles along the Line of Control in Gilgit-Baltistan. Specific high-altitude trekking routes, the Baltoro and the approach to K2 base camp among them, still require a Ministry of Interior NOC and a separate Alpine Club of Pakistan permit. These designations are revised periodically, so treat any list, including this one, as a prompt to confirm rather than a guarantee.
Separately, expect to be logged. Foreigners are registered at checkpoints along the northern highways as a matter of routine. It takes a minute and needs no advance paperwork, but it consumes photocopies, so carry a thick stack of your passport information page and Pakistani visa and keep the original on your person, not in a pannier.
Three situations where hiring in Islamabad is the wrong answer
The first is the obvious one. If your trip is the mountains and you have ten days, riding 556 kilometres of hot, truck-heavy highway to reach them and then repeating it in reverse spends four of those days on the least interesting part of the route. Fly to Gilgit or Skardu and rent locally instead; there is rental inventory in Skardu, and our guide to domestic flights in Pakistan covers the routes and the weather cancellations that make them unreliable. We earn nothing when you book that way, and it is still the better trip.
The second is any itinerary built around Lahore or the southern cities. The motorway network exists precisely to make those journeys fast, and you are barred from it. A bus or a train covers the same ground in less time and without a day on the Grand Trunk Road.
The third is winter. Between November and April the passes are shut, the northern valleys are cold enough to make a naked 125 genuinely unpleasant, and what remains is city riding in Islamabad and Rawalpindi traffic. If a small-capacity bike and warm-weather touring is what you are actually after, the market next door does it better and cheaper year-round, and our notes on motorbike rental in India lay out how that compares.
If you take one thing from this page
Book the bike for the part of the trip where a bike is the right tool, and not a kilometre more. That usually means arriving in the north by air or road, hiring for four or five days between mid-May and late October when Babusar is open, budgeting around 13 euros a day plus a 173-euro hold, and refusing the 86-euro insurance add-on in favour of gloves and rain gear. The motorway ban is not a detail to work around. It is the shape of your whole itinerary, decided before you pay a deposit.
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