ਕਰਤਾਰਪੁਰਕਰਤਾਰਪੁਰ

Kartarpur is a small border town in Shakargarh tehsil of Narowal district, Punjab, Pakistan, standing on the west bank of the Ravi River about 102 kilometres from Lahore. Guru Nanak founded the settlement, lived his last eighteen years here and died here in 1539. Its Gurdwara Darbar Sahib is among the holiest sites in Sikhism.

Where is Kartarpur?

Kartarpur stands in the flat farmland of the Ravi plain at about 155 metres above sea level, in Shakargarh tehsil in the north east of Narowal district. The Ravi flows beside it, and across the river in Indian Punjab lies Dera Baba Nanak, the town in Gurdaspur district that grew up around Guru Nanak's family home. The international border runs only a few kilometres away, which is why the white dome of the gurdwara can be seen from Indian soil on a clear day. Lahore, the provincial capital, is about 102 kilometres to the south west by road. The name Kartarpur means the Creator's town, a name that sums up what its founder intended it to be. It should not be confused with the villages of the same name in Indian Punjab: this Kartarpur is the one Guru Nanak himself founded.

History: the first Sikh commune

Sources differ on the founding year: some give 1504, others about 1520, when Guru Nanak settled here after his long teaching journeys, the udasis. What is not in doubt is the shape of the life he built. He settled with his family, farmed the land granted beside the Ravi, and gathered the first settled Sikh community, a commune where work, worship and the shared kitchen were one daily discipline. Mornings began with prayer, days were given to honest work in the fields, and evenings brought the sangat together for kirtan and langar, the meal where all sit in one row as equals. The three teachings Kartarpur made practical are still named for it: Kirat Karo, earn honestly; Naam Japo, remember God; Vand Chhako, share what you have with others.

Guru Nanak died at Kartarpur on 22 September 1539. Tradition and early accounts tell that Hindus and Muslims both claimed him as their own, and that the two communities raised memorials side by side, divided by a common wall. The shifting Ravi later washed those first memorials away, and his son Sri Chand is said to have carried the ashes across the river to the bank where Dera Baba Nanak now stands. Guru Angad, the second Guru, moved the young community's centre to Khadur, but Kartarpur kept its place as the founder's own town. In 1947 the Radcliffe Line placed Shakargarh tehsil, and Kartarpur with it, in Pakistan, while Gurdaspur district across the river went to India. The shrine then stood closed or restricted for long periods; Pakistan repaired it from 2000 and formally reopened it in 2004.

What is Kartarpur known for?

Kartarpur is known above all as the place where Sikhism began as a settled way of life. Talwandi, now Nankana Sahib, was Guru Nanak's birthplace and Sultanpur Lodhi was where his teaching first flowered, but Kartarpur is where he lived it in full: householder, farmer and teacher in one small town for eighteen years. For Sikhs it ranks among the holiest places of the faith, the ground of the founder's final home and final rest. Since 2019 it has also become known worldwide for the Kartarpur Corridor, the visa free crossing that lets pilgrims from India walk to the shrine and return the same day.

Gurdwara Darbar Sahib

The present Gurdwara Darbar Sahib was built in 1925 at a cost of Rs 1,35,600 given by Sardar Bhupinder Singh, Maharaja of Patiala. The Government of Pakistan repaired the shrine in 1995 and restored it fully in 2004, and in November 2018 a large expansion added a new courtyard, museum, library, dormitories and locker rooms across about 42 acres, work that has led the complex to be claimed as the largest gurdwara in the world. Inside the calm white complex are the main prayer hall, the sarovar, the langar hall that still serves the founder's shared meal, and a 20 foot well of small red bricks believed to date from Guru Nanak's own lifetime. Pilgrims walk the fields he farmed as much as the halls he inspired, and that farmland setting, green to the horizon, is part of the shrine's character.

The Kartarpur Corridor

For seven decades after Partition, Indian pilgrims could see the shrine but not reach it, except by the long road through Lahore. India and Pakistan signed the corridor agreement on 24 October 2019, and the crossing opened on 9 November 2019, days before the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, with Prime Minister Imran Khan inaugurating on the Pakistan side and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the Indian side. The first party of more than 550 pilgrims crossed that day. The route runs about 4.7 kilometres on the Pakistan side from the border to the shrine, and the Indian passenger terminal was built to handle about 5,000 pilgrims a day. Travel is visa free, but pilgrims carry a valid passport, register online in advance, cross in the morning and return the same day, and the agreement set a service charge of 20 US dollars per pilgrim.

The corridor has not run without interruption. It closed during the Covid 19 pandemic and reopened on 17 November 2021, and in October 2024 the two countries renewed their agreement for a further five years. In May 2025, after the Pahalgam attack and the crisis that followed, Indian authorities suspended corridor services indefinitely from 7 May 2025. Anyone planning a journey should check the current position before travelling, because the crossing depends on relations between the two countries as well as on faith.

Getting there, and Kartarpur today

From within Pakistan, Kartarpur is reached by road from Lahore, Narowal and Shakargarh through the Jassar country. The town once had its own station, Darbar Sahib Kartarpur, on a branch line to Narowal Junction, but the line closed in 2000 and the track and station building fell into disrepair. Indian pilgrims use the corridor from Dera Baba Nanak when it is operating, as described above. Today Kartarpur remains a small Punjabi speaking farming town: wheat and rice fields, a quiet bazaar, and, at its heart, a shrine visited by the world. Its everyday life and its sacred life run side by side, much as they did in the founder's time.