Native Jetty Bridge Karachi: History and Port Grand Connection

The Native Jetty Bridge in Karachi is the old colonial-era bridge over Chinna Creek that once carried the road from the city to the port at Keamari. It is also known as the Napier Mole Bridge, after Sir Charles Napier, the British general who governed Sindh. Today most visitors meet it without realising: the old bridge is the site of the Port Grand food and entertainment complex, and a Hindu temple sits beneath it.

This guide explains where the bridge came from, why the Jinnah Bridge replaced it, what it has become, and what a visitor can realistically do there.

What is the Native Jetty Bridge?

The bridge is one of the oldest in Karachi, and the oldest of the city's pre-partition bridges according to a Dawn feature on the subject, in which the architect Arif Hasan explains its purpose: it connected the harbour with the main city, so that the Keamari area was joined to the town. Like other colonial bridges in Karachi, it was a practical engineering structure by the Royal Engineers, with simple balustrades and parapets.

The name matters because two things are easily confused. The Napier Mole was a long raised causeway and road, roughly three miles in length, completed in the mid-1850s to link the old town with the deep-water channel near Keamari. Later iron bridges crossed the water along that route. Sources differ on exact dates, so treat any single year you read as approximate.

A short history

Britain took Sindh in 1843 and spent the following years turning Karachi into a trading port. The modern port began to take shape in 1854, when the main navigation channel was dredged and a causeway was built to link the harbour with the city. That causeway was named after Napier.

Wikipedia gives the construction of the mole bridge as 1861 to 1864, at a cost of Rs 643,440. Other accounts describe an iron Napier Mole Bridge of about 1,200 feet built in 1865. The figures do not agree, which is common for 19th-century works that were upgraded in stages, so this guide does not pick one.

What is clear is the role: this was the land link between the city and the port. A railway line also runs beside it: the Chinna Creek rail bridge, about 379 metres long, connects Karachi City station with Keamari.

Why the Jinnah Bridge replaced it

As traffic grew, the old two-lane bridge could not cope. Wikipedia records that the Napier Mole Bridge was known by that name until 1982, and that the circular Jinnah Bridge flyover was built between 1993 and 1997 between Kharadar and Keamari. It is about 1,262 metres long and is the south-western end of Mohammad Ali Jinnah Road.

The old bridge was not demolished. Instead the area around it was developed as Port Grand, with the flyover passing nearby. So when someone in Karachi says "Native Jetty" they usually mean the Keamari end of this crossing, and the flyover is what they drive over.

Port Grand: what the old bridge became

Port Grand was inaugurated on 28 May 2011 as a joint project between the Karachi Port Trust and a private company, Grand Leisure Corporation. It occupies the old bridge and the waterfront beside it, with roughly 200,000 square feet of space, a number of restaurants and food stalls, and boat rides on Chinna Creek. Listings for 2025 and 2026 show it open in the evenings, with hours varying between weekdays and weekends.

Port Grand has an entry ticket, and the price has changed several times. We keep the current details in our guide to Port Grand tickets and timings, so that this page does not go out of date. If you only want the bridge as history, the evening visit is the practical way to see it, since the complex is the main public access to the site.

The temple beneath the bridge

Underneath the bridge stands the Shri Laxmi Narayan Mandir, which sources describe as about 200 years old and the only temple on the banks of a creek in Karachi. Hindu worshippers come for rituals by the water. It is an active place of worship, not a heritage exhibit, so go quietly. Our separate guide to the Laxmi Narayan Mandir covers its history and etiquette, and our list of Hindu temples in Karachi puts it alongside the others.

How to visit

The bridge is in the old port district, a short drive from Saddar and the colonial centre. A sensible way to build it into a day:

1. Spend the morning in the old city: the Karachi Port Trust building and the other colonial sites on our heritage walk.
2. Rest during the afternoon heat, which is hard on walkers for much of the year.
3. Reach the bridge area around dusk and have dinner at Port Grand.

Ride-hailing is usually simpler than driving and parking, and an evening arrival avoids the working-day rush. Keep valuables out of sight as in any busy part of the city.

Is it worth a visit?

For history, treat the bridge as context rather than a monument: Port Grand now occupies it, so it is less a preserved structure than a place where the layers of the port show: old causeway, flyover, railway line, temple and working harbour in one view. Readers interested in colonial engineering will get more from the Port Trust building and Frere Hall than from the bridge alone.

For an evening out it is a reasonable choice, especially with family, because it combines food, open air and the harbour. If you want a quieter waterfront, the Karachi fish harbour shows a different working side of the port, and our Karachi places guide lists other options.

For wider planning, start with our destinations page.

Frequently asked questions