KARACHI: A German woman who has cycled through more than a dozen countries hailed Karachi, Pakistan’s southern port city, for its liveliness before departing for Lahore in Punjab province.
After learning about her Turkish ancestry, Madeline Hoffmann, 33, set off on a cycling trip from Sydney to Turkey in August of last year. She said that her parents had split up when she was born and that she did not discover her father’s ethnicity until she was 26 years old.
Hoffmann, who was born and raised in Germany, just relocated to Sydney, Australia. She travelled through 12 countries in under four and a half months to get in Turkey in January of this year, when she met her father and paternal relatives.
She stayed there for seven weeks before continuing her journey through Middle Eastern states, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. More recently, she flew from Dubai to Karachi with her bicycle, making Pakistan the 18th country on her travel list.
“I really love the vibrancy of [Karachi],” she was quoted as saying in Arab News in a conversation. “I really liked the historical buildings that still stand. It gives the city a kind of mix between the old and the new. There’s food and people everywhere. I had some local food like Aalu Paratha, Halwa Puri, and had a lot of chai. It’s amazing to discover the culture.”
She said that she spent the last seven months traveling through several Muslim states and found their hospitality “really great.”
“My time in Saudi Arabia was really wonderful,” she continued. “Saudi Arabia now has a special place in my heart because of the people. The people are very hospitable. I loved cycling through the vast landscapes of Saudi Arabia.”
The German bicycle adventurer left for a 1,200-kilometer ride to Lahore from Karachi on Thursday. She plans to cross the Wagah Border to India before traveling to Nepal and covering the mountainous Annapurna Circuit.
