The shot everybody wants is the aerial one — a hundred roofs, a thousand kites, the Walled City from fifty feet up. It is also the one most likely to end with a drone confiscated and an FIR, because for most of 2026 flying a drone outdoors anywhere in Punjab has been an offence under Section 144.
So this page is in two halves: what you cannot fly, and how to get a good photograph without it.
The drone position, as it stands
Outdoor drone flying is banned across Punjab under Section 144(6) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. It is not a Basant measure and it is not a Lahore measure — it is a province-wide order on security grounds, first imposed in February 2026 and renewed roughly every thirty days since. The most recent one reported was imposed on 28 October 2026 for thirty days.
Three things follow from the way that order is built:
It expires and comes back. A thirty-day order issued in late October does not cover 12–14 March by itself. By March there will either be another one or there will not, and the honest position today is that nobody can tell you which. Assume there is one, and check with the district administration in the week before.
There is a written-permission route. The Punjab Home Department has established district-level Safe Drone Usage Committees that issue written permissions, and operations authorised by them are exempt. The uses named in the reporting are agricultural, irrigation and research; we found nothing confirming that permits are issued for event or aerial photography. If you need footage badly enough, that committee in your district is the door, and the answer may well be no.
Indoor event coverage is treated differently. Limited use of small drones has been allowed for coverage inside halls and marquees, with the organiser responsible for safe use. A rooftop is not a hall.
Elsewhere, the same instrument is in use: Sindh imposed a province-wide 60-day ban on quadcopters, drone cameras and helicams in 2026, and the twin cities banned drones, phantoms and camcopters for two months in February 2026. There is no city in Pakistan where turning up with a drone on a festival weekend is a quiet decision.
And the physical objection, which stands even with a permit. Basant airspace is full of cotton line, most of it invisible against a bright sky. Line in a rotor is the end of the drone and the start of somebody else's problem on the ground. Lahore also has no-fly areas on the airport approach where kites themselves are banned outright — nine of them in 2026 — and those are precisely the areas where an unauthorised aircraft is least welcome.
What the good Basant photographs are actually of
Here is the thing nobody tells you until you have tried it: kites photograph badly and the roof photographs beautifully.
A kite is a small bright object against a very bright sky. Your phone meters for the sky, the kite becomes a dark speck, and the line — the thing that makes it a kite and not a dot — is a fraction of a pixel wide. Ten shots in and you have ten pictures of grey nothing.
The festival is on the roof. Hands, gloves, the lean back as the line comes tight, somebody's grandfather explaining the wind, a child holding a pinna in both arms, forty people on a neighbouring roof all facing the same way. Shoot the people and the kites arrive in the frame by themselves.
Phone technique, in the order it helps
Tap and lock the exposure on something that is not sky. On most phones, holding your finger on the subject locks exposure. Lock it on a face or a kite in somebody's hands and let the sky blow out. A pale sky is fine. A silhouetted face is not.
Shoot at the end of the afternoon. The single best shot of the day is a backlit kite, where the low sun comes through the paper and the colour lights up from behind. Mid-afternoon overhead sun gives you flat white sky; the last ninety minutes give you glowing paper, long shadows across the roof, and silhouettes of people against an orange haze. If you take one photograph all day, take it then.
Get the line into the shot by shooting along it. Stand behind the flyer's shoulder, low, and frame so the line runs away from the camera into the sky. A line crossing the frame at right angles disappears; a line running away from you reads as a line.
Burst the launch, not the flight. The interesting fifteen seconds is the launch and the first tug. Hold the shutter.
Video for the pech, at the highest frame rate your phone offers. The moment of a cut is fast, and 60 frames a second slowed down is the only way to actually see it. It is also the clip that travels: vertical, fifteen seconds, the shout at the end. The shout is the audio — bo kata carrying across two streets is worth more than any music you could put under it.
Do not use digital zoom. It is a crop with extra steps. Walk, or accept the wide frame — a small kite in a big sky with a roof full of people underneath is the better photograph anyway.
Clean the lens. March in Lahore is dusty and a smeared lens turns a bright sky into fog. Once an hour, on your shirt.
Two rules that are not about pictures
Do not walk backwards with a phone to your eye. This is how people go off roofs. Twelve of the seventeen deaths in District Lahore in 2026 were falls from rooftops. Before you raise the camera, know where the parapet is; if you are moving, look first and shoot second. Anything standable near an edge — a chair, a cooler — is the same hazard, which is why the kit list keeps them back.
Ask before you photograph other people's roofs. Yours overlooks somebody's home, and in that home there are women and children who did not agree to be in your reel. A long lens or a tight crop aimed into a neighbour's courtyard is not festival photography. Wide shots of a skyline full of roofs are fine. Pointing a camera into one is not, and it is the fastest way to turn a friendly street into an unfriendly one.
If you want footage from above anyway
Three legitimate routes, none of them a drone over your own roof:
- A high building you have permission to be on. A twelve-storey rooftop in Johar Town gives you the sweep of roofs without leaving the ground floor of the law. Permission from the building, in advance.
- A ticketed venue's own coverage. The organised festivals produce footage and stills; the ticketed events handle their own media and will usually share it.
- Written permission from the district Safe Drone Usage Committee. Weeks ahead, not days, and expect to explain why photography qualifies.
Frequently asked
Are drones allowed at Basant in Lahore?
No. Outdoor drone flying is banned across Punjab under Section 144(6) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, an order first imposed in February 2026 and renewed about every thirty days since — most recently on 28 October 2026. Written permission from a district Safe Drone Usage Committee is the only exemption route, and the uses named in reporting are agricultural, irrigation and research rather than photography.
Can I fly a drone indoors at a Basant event?
Limited use of small drones has been allowed for event coverage inside halls and marquees, with the organiser responsible for safe use. A rooftop or an open ground is not covered by that allowance.
How do I photograph kites with a phone?
Lock the exposure on something that is not sky, shoot in the last ninety minutes of daylight when backlit paper glows, frame along the line rather than across it, burst the launch, and film pech at the highest frame rate your phone has. Avoid digital zoom and clean the lens.
What is the best time of day to photograph Basant?
Late afternoon into dusk. Overhead sun flattens everything into white sky; low sun lights the kite paper from behind, lengthens the shadows on the roof and turns people into silhouettes against colour.
Can I film my neighbour's rooftop during Basant?
A wide shot of a skyline of rooftops is ordinary festival photography. Aiming a camera or a zoom into a specific household is not — the roofs you overlook belong to homes. Ask, or keep the frame wide.
Kites, dor and everything that goes with them
Kites by the tawa grade, 100% cotton dor on QR-coded pinnay, gloves and tape — all sold singly from Lahore at a published price, delivered by our own rider. See the products and prices.
Selling is paused while our registration is suspended by the Punjab Government — see the notice. The products and prices stay published so you can plan, and we answer questions either way.
- Patang & gudda
- Cotton dor
- Pinnay
- Gloves
- Tape
- Delivery in Lahore
Sources
- The Nation — Ban on outdoor drones imposed for 30 days (28 October 2026)
- Dawn — Ban on outdoor drones in Punjab extended for a month
- The Express Tribune — Punjab govt extends outdoor drone ban
- Pakistan Observer — Want to fly a drone in Punjab? Here's how to get permission
- 24 News — Sindh imposes 60-day ban on drones, quadcopters under Section 144
- 24 News — Flying of drones, phantoms and camcopters banned under Section 144 in twin cities
- Daily Pakistan — Basant 2026: kite flying banned in these areas of Lahore