Khyber Pass

The Wars of Afghanistan

by Peter Tomsen  · 30 May 2011  · 1,118pp  · 309,029 words

—and Roxane, Alexander’s wife’s name, for daughters. Along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier, some Pashtun tribes—such as the Afridi, residing near the famed Khyber Pass—claim Greek ancestry. The Nuristanis, in Konar, who provided three hundred cavalry to Alexander’s army,5 explain that their race’s light complexion and

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Ali died in February 1879. In May, the British forced his son, Yaqub Khan, to sign the Treaty of Gandamak, surrendering to the British the Khyber Pass, the Pashtun tribal areas east of the Khyber (in present-day Pakistan), plus the region north of the Bolan Pass (also in present-day Pakistan

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from the Afridi tribe, was the first to go, its deserters joining hundreds of Pashtuns on both sides of the border attempting to capture the Khyber Pass. Further west, Waziri and Mahsud tribal militia in the Kurram and North and South Waziristan went over to the invading Afghans. The British struck back

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quarter. Three British bombers struck the invading tribal forces at the strategic Khyber gateway to Afghanistan. British infantry advanced from Peshawar intending to clear the Khyber Pass and move on to Jalalabad. Nadir Khan, meanwhile, crossed the border to the west with fourteen regiments and assorted Afghan tribal allies. Thousands of fierce

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. Jalalabad was readily accessible from Mujahidin bases in Pakistan approximately 30 miles away. It was situated on a major road artery connecting Peshawar through the Khyber Pass to Kabul and was closer to Pakistan than to Kabul. It lay in the heart of mainly Ghilzai-populated eastern Afghanistan, surrounded by commanders affiliated

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rapid movement of military reinforcements north of the Indus to confront tribal uprisings led by mad mullahs and phantom Russian armies closing in on the Khyber Pass. The journey to Peshawar covered 120 miles. Outside Islamabad, we found the roadway thoroughly cluttered with people and animals. There were not many women to

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the Kohat Pass, which opens to the tribal agencies to the west, including wild and woolly North and South Waziristan. The most famous is the Khyber Pass, only 10 miles northwest of Peshawar on the Grand Trunk Road, a few miles from the Durand Line and 35 miles from Jalalabad. The Malakand

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parties. Qadir was quartermaster for Khalis’s commanders in Nangarhar, supervising a large arms depot in Landi Kotal, located in Afridi territory just below the Khyber Pass in the Khyber Agency. The oldest Arsala brother, Deen Mohammad, Khalis’s deputy, shared Khalis’s Islamist outlook. He ran the party office in Peshawar

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under the stars and firing at regime outposts. Khalis’s commanders hosted Arab revolutionaries. One commander, Engineer Mahmood26 in the Shinwari country east of the Khyber Pass, turned about twenty regime defectors over to his Arab allies for execution during the Battle of Jalalabad. Afghans in the area reported that Mahmood had

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. Some were probably exaggerated, but others were not. Mujahidin observers at the Torkham border post counted over four hundred trucks with rockets moving through the Khyber Pass toward Kabul. General Tanai now commanded Hekmatyar’s Lashkar-i Issar battalions. My Mujahidin sources told me that ISI colonel Afzal Janjua had predicted that

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.25 The Tunisians flew to Islamabad from London on July 25,2001. They remained there for several days, then entered Afghanistan by car through the Khyber Pass. They traveled for three weeks in Taliban-controlled areas and spent time in Kabul. It was probably there, in an al-Qaeda laboratory, that the

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. They coordinated with a smaller group of al-Qaeda-influenced Pakistani extremists holed up in the Bajaur tribal agency on the other side of the Khyber Pass. They exported their defiance of Musharraf to the other five tribal agencies and into adjacent “settled areas” around Peshawar. Soon, a new, militant generation of

Railways & the Raj: How the Age of Steam Transformed India

by Christian Wolmar  · 3 Oct 2018  · 375pp  · 109,675 words

(SSPL /Getty Images) Bengal–Nagpur Railway worksite, 1890 (DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University) Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis / Getty Images) Khyber Pass Railway (Peter Jordan /Alamy Stock Photo) Rawalpindi station, 1910 (Mary Evans /Grenville Collins Postcard Collection) Cotton bales being loaded at Akola station in Maharastra, c

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would be another burst of construction in these lines during the boom time of the Indian railways in the 1920s, including the conquest of the Khyber Pass (see Chapter 8). Meanwhile, more useful railways were still being built. One successful line was the Bengal & North Western, created in 1881, which was the

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extensive network connecting Delhi with Amritsar, as well as Lahore and Karachi (which are both now in Pakistan), and later, in the 1920s, with the Khyber Pass. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a new category of railways emerged: lines up to hill towns used by the British to escape the

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of defence, with the renewal of the construction of military railways. The most ambitious railway built during this period was the famous line up the Khyber Pass. Russia was, again, the main potential casus belli, despite the fact that its ignominious defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 demonstrated all

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particularly combative generals had wanted railways constructed up all of them. The most obvious gap in the potential defences against a hostile Afghanistan was the Khyber Pass, which was the most direct trade route between India and central Asia via Kabul, and was in fact part of the old Silk Road. As

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border and the hope among the more optimistic hawks was that, this time, a railway could be built right into Afghanistan. A survey of the Khyber Pass in 1890 had concluded that it was impassable, but in 1901 the North Western Railway, which was a state-owned company created in 1886 by

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armed locals in traditional garb did not go down too well with the posh punters who had paid top dollar to ride on the famous Khyber Pass and were reported to be rather taken aback by their presence.) The line closed in 1932 when a section of track was washed away, but

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and commissioned a survey into its viability, but nothing is likely to come of this initiative while the political instability in the region continues. The Khyber Pass may have been the most expensive of these military railways on the North-West Frontier, but the accolade of the least used goes to the

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, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17 Kharagpur workshop, West Bengal ref1, ref2, ref3 Khosla, G. S. ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 Khyber Pass ref1, ref2, ref3 Khyber Railway ref1 Kipling, Rudyard ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Kolkata ref1, ref2, ref3 Konkan Railway ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

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’. An obsession with protecting the North-West Frontier (now in Pakistan) with Afghanistan from invasion led to the construction of several ‘strategic’ railways, including the Khyber Pass Railway which opened in 1925. They proved to be hopeless commercially and were little used since no invasion attempt was ever made, except by the

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of terrible massacres. Indian State Railways, the nationalized railway system between the wars, produced stunning posters to advertise services, including, remarkably, for the little-used Khyber Pass Railway. Indian Railways, created after Independence, brought together virtually all the nation’s lines and remains a nationalized concern today. These evocative pictures, taken by

The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia

by Peter Hopkirk  · 2 Jan 1991  · 580pp  · 194,144 words

there were two obvious points, Kinneir noted, at which he might try to cross the Indus. Were he to approach India via Kabul and the Khyber Pass, as a number of earlier invaders had, then he would most likely choose Attock. Here, he reported, the Indus was ‘of great breadth, black, rapid

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to the Oxus, up which they could be ferried as far as Balkh, in northern Afghanistan. After crossing Afghanistan, they could approach India via the Khyber Pass. This, it will be recalled, was the route which Peter the Great had hoped to use to make contact with India’s Mogul rulers – a

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travelling through Kashmir and the Punjab (taking care to steer well north of Ranjit Singh’s capital, Lahore), they crossed the Indus and entered the Khyber Pass. Beyond it lay Afghanistan, and beyond that Bokhara. ·8· Death on the Oxus To take an ill-armed caravan laden with precious goods, and rumoured

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names in a cave in charcoal, and a century and a half later Moorcroft’s was still there. Finally, nearly eight months after entering the Khyber Pass, and after overcoming a wearying succession of obstacles, they reached the banks of the Oxus, becoming the first Englishmen ever to set foot there. Considering

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eastern shore of the Caspian to Khiva, whence it would sail up the Oxus to Balkh. From there it would march via Kabul to the Khyber Pass. By appending a mass of persuasive detail, Evans managed to make it sound all too easy – especially to those, like himself, who were ignorant of

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Balkh, and then crossing the Hindu Kush, as Alexander the Great had done, to Kabul. From there the army would march via Jalalabad and the Khyber Pass to Peshawar, and finally cross the Indus at Attock. The initial seizure of Khiva, he reasoned, might best be undertaken from Orenburg rather than from

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property of strangers, one could not afford to be off one’s guard for a second. They had been warned that if they attempted the Khyber Pass they would be unlikely to get through alive, so instead they crossed the mountains by a longer and more tortuous route. After passing safely through

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was not the Sikhs who were the worry, but the unruly Afghans. After all, only seventy-five years earlier they had poured down through the Khyber Pass and sacked Delhi, riding home triumphantly with all the treasures they could carry. Thanking Dost Mohammed for his offer, Burnes pointed out that his government

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the fifty-mile-long Bolan Pass in the spring of 1839. Its shortest route by far would have been across the Punjab and up the Khyber Pass, but at the last minute Ranjit Singh had objected. The approach therefore had to be made through Sind and the more southerly of the two

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seizing the women, it was whispered, they proposed to slaughter all the men except one. He was to be taken to the entrance to the Khyber Pass, where he would be left, after his arms and legs had been hacked off, with a note pinned to him warning the British never again

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, which lay more than eighty miles across the snow-covered mountains to the east. From there it would leave Afghanistan and enter India by the Khyber Pass. Leading the march was an advance guard of 600 red-coated troops of the 44th Regiment of Foot and 100 cavalry. Next came the British

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Jalalabad and Kandahar, and to try to free the British hostages held by Akbar. The new Governor-General now took command. On March 31 the Khyber Pass was forced by Major-General George Pollock, using the tactics of the Afghans themselves, and at a cost of only fourteen British lives. As Pollock

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units marched away from Kabul. Once again they set out along the skeleton-strewn trail, the via dolorosa of the previous winter, leading towards the Khyber Pass, and home. Her honour nominally satisfied, Britain was content to leave Afghan politics to the Afghans – for the time being anyway. The First Afghan War

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Russian, Persian and Afghan troops, would be launched from either Kabul or Kandahar. His own preference was for the former, since this led via the Khyber Pass to Lahore and Delhi, whose large native populations might be expected to throw in their lot with their ‘liberators’. In the event, the general’s

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replaced Yermolov and continued Russia’s ruthless drive southwards British troops entering the Bolan pass in 1839 on the way to Kabul. The Bolan and Khyber passes, it was feared, could also bring Russian troops into India The British advance into Afghanistan in 1839. Ghazni, the last enemy stronghold before Kabul, falls

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in fairness be said, that in Mongol times the destructive hordes had poured into Russia, causing them to be likened by Russian strategists to the Khyber Pass. However, that was not the Hi valley’s only significance. It was also rich in minerals, as Kaufman’s geologists were well aware, while for

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Nikolai Stolietov, to Kabul to try to obtain Afghan co-operation against the British. Ideally Kabul would be the springboard for the attack, with the Khyber Pass as the principal point of entry. Ahead of the invasion force, which it was hoped would consist of both Russian and Afghan troops, would go

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asking for a safe conduct for it from the frontier. The letter remained unanswered. Chamberlain was now ordered to proceed to the entrance to the Khyber Pass. From there Major Cavagnari rode forward with a small escort to the nearest Afghan post and demanded leave to enter the country. However, he was

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swiftly, as the hastily assembled, 35,000-strong British force crossed the frontier into Afghanistan at three points. Its first objectives were to seize the Khyber Pass, Jalalabad and Kandahar, and after some brief but fierce engagements these were achieved. On learning of the British incursion, the Emir had hastily turned to

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the stationing of British missions at Kabul and elsewhere, and the ceding to Britain of certain territories lying close to the Indian frontier, including the Khyber Pass. In fact, the invasion had more or less come to a halt, for the British commanders were finding the going difficult, what with fierce resistance

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cavalrymen, all from the Corps of Guides. Commanding them was Lieutenant Walter Hamilton, who had won a Victoria Cross during the recent battle for the Khyber Pass, while Cavagnari’s own staff consisted of two other Europeans, a secretary and an Indian Army medical officer. After an uneventful journey the mission reached

The Great Railway Bazaar

by Paul Theroux  · 1 Jan 1975  · 383pp  · 118,458 words

Paris 2. The Direct-Orient Express 3. The Van Golu ('Lake Van') Express 4. The Teheran Express 5. The Night Mail to Meshed 6. The Khyber Pass Local 7. The Khyber Mail to Lahore Junction 8. The Frontier Mail 9. The Kalka Mail for Simla 10. The Rajdhani ('Capital') Express to Bombay

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every train that chugged into view from Victoria Station in London to Tokyo Central; to take the branch line to Simla, the spur through the Khyber Pass, and the chord line that links Indian Railways with those in Ceylon; the Mandalay Express, the Malaysian Golden Arrow, the locals in Vietnam, and the

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London, is the end of the line: between this easternmost station of Iranian National Railways and the little Pakistani station at Landi Kotal in the Khyber Pass, lies Afghanistan, a country without a single inch of railway track. After an hour in Meshed I was anxious to leave. It was Ramadhan, the

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, dismembering and skinning the poor beast. I had no wish to stay longer in Kabul. I took a bus east, to the top of the Khyber Pass. I had a train to catch there, at Landi Kotal, for Peshawar; and I dreaded missing it, because there is only one train a week

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, a Sunday local called the '132-Down'. Chapter Six THE KHYBER PASS LOCAL THE KHYBER PASS on the Afghanistan side of the frontier is rockier, higher, and more dramatic than on the Pakistan side, but at Tor Kham - the border

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visit to the bazaar in Peshawar. It is an outing for them, this day in town, so the platform at Landi Kotal station in the Khyber Pass is mobbed with excited tribesmen tramping up and down in their bare feet, waiting for the train to start. I found a seat in the

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than Kabul had been, but so much green shade made it seem cool. Behind us the sun had dropped low, and the peaks of the Khyber Pass were mauve in a lilac haze so lovely it looked scented. Mr Haq said he had business here - 'I have to solve my great worry

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of world interest.' Peshawar is a pretty town. I would gladly move there, settle down on a verandah, and grow old watching sunsets in the Khyber Pass. Peshawar's widely spaced mansions, all excellent examples of Anglo-Muslim Gothic, are spread along broad sleepy roads under cool trees: just the place to

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Transindochinois line to Hanoi, the Russians had brought the Trans-Siberian almost to Vladivostok, the British had laid track to the very end of the Khyber Pass, and it was assumed that Burmese railways would extend in one direction to the Assam-Bengal line and in the other to the railways of

The 9/11 Wars

by Jason Burke  · 1 Sep 2011  · 885pp  · 271,563 words

and then swung north, following much of the length of the 1,600-mile-long frontier and finally reaching Peshawar, at the foot of the Khyber Pass and just 25 miles from the Afghan border and 120 miles from his destination, Jalalabad, after three days of solid travelling. The already substantial population

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the numerous arms factories and dealers. When Zaheer cited his father’s name to one merchant in the town of Landi Kotal, high in the Khyber Pass, the man simply opened his warehouse doors and handed over 450 Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, light machine guns and ammunition. After receiving an admonitory

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call from his father, Zaheer led his men at night across a smugglers’ track from the top of the Khyber Pass and on to the main road leading from the official border crossing to Jalalabad, 10 miles inside Afghanistan. The march took until dawn. When the

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, the new conflict they triggered only aggravated and accelerated existing trends. In 2001, the memory of the earlier wars was certainly very present. In the Khyber Pass a month after the bombing of Afghanistan had started, young men from the local Afridi tribe were very clear about what the coming conflict meant

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the presence of Uzbek and other central Asian militants in local villages but which degenerated into a straight struggle for power and resources. In the Khyber Pass, three different factions, divided by sub-tribe and religious observance, patched together different alliances, fought each other and the government and engaged in kidnap and

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1,000 people had been killed and many more injured. At the midpoint of this 1,500-mile-long arc of violence was the historic Khyber Pass, leading from Peshawar across the mountains to Afghanistan and eventually on to Jalalabad and the road to Kabul. Through December 2008, the various factions of

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lack of faith of the urbanized communities and elites of Pakistan would have been entirely familiar to their grandfathers and great grandfathers. 8. Author interview, Khyber Pass, Afghanistan, November 2001. 9. Ahmed was on a visit largely aimed at convincing American counterparts and policy-makers that their view of the Taliban was

On the Road to Kandahar: Travels Through Conflict in the Islamic World

by Jason Burke  · 21 May 2025  · 323pp  · 108,377 words

him. The first place to look was Jalalabad, the eastern Afghan city that was only a day’s drive from Peshawar, through the Khyber Pass. * * * You cannot see the Khyber Pass from Peshawar. At the western end of the rich and fertile plain around the city there is a long, blank wall of hills

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the army checkpoints by joining the crowds of labourers and shop workers heading back from the city to their homes high in hills around the Khyber Pass for a meeting with al-Qaeda. It was 4 October 2001 and I had been in Pakistan for three weeks. I had returned to the

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spreading the anti-Western sentiments already widespread in the Islamic world. The question I should have been asking the teacher in the qala in the Khyber Pass, I realized, was not ‘What does bin Laden want?’ but ‘Is bin Laden’s judgement of his audience right?’ Will those to whom he is

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, it was the noise of three coaches, each of which was full of reporters. While I had been waiting in the compound high in the Khyber Pass, other opposition commanders had taken control of Jalalabad and then, to prove it was theirs, organized a series of buses to bring the press in

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studying modern Muslim radicalism, completely incomprehensible. Of course I knew the arguments, the ones that I had heard on the Gaza Strip and in the Khyber Pass and dozens of times since, and I knew the twisted logic which might have convinced someone that a city’s transport network was a legitimate

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Islamabad, Pakistan Israel Istanbul, Turkey Jalalabad, Afghanistan Jerusalem, Israel Jordan Kabul, Afghanistan Kabylie, Algeria Kandahar, Afghanistan Karakoram mountains Karbala, Iraq Kashmir Khazer, Iraq Khost, Afghanistan Khyber Pass, Pakistan Kirkuk, Iraq Kohat, Pakistan Kurdistan (Iraq) Kuwait Lahore, Pakistan Lake Dal, India Lake Dokan, Iraq Landi Kotal, Pakistan Lesser Zab river, Iraq London, United

The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East

by Robert Fisk  · 2 Jan 2005  · 1,800pp  · 596,972 words

Pakistan, India, China and the Soviet Union. The border between British India and Afghanistan was finally laid across the tribal lands in 1893, from the Khyber Pass, south-west to the desert town of Chaman (now in Pakistan), a dustbowl frontier post at the base of a great desert of sand and

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those I trust. Reporters who panic don’t get second chances. Conor O’Clery of the Irish Times had talked his way up from the Khyber Pass through Jalalabad. He was already in the old telecommunications office down town, watching with an evil glint in his eye as the operator soldered the

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was two degrees below zero but they had come out to watch the Soviet army convoy hum past on the great road east to the Khyber Pass. The Russian crews, their fur hats pulled down low over their foreheads, glanced down at the Afghans and smiled occasionally as their carriers splashed through

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, the sun had burned the snow off the astonishingly light green mountain grass and we could see for up to 50 kilometres east to the Khyber Pass, to the suburbs of Jalalabad, bathed in mists. For the descent to the Valley of the Indus was like walking from a snowstorm into a

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’s bus all the way to Peshawar in Pakistan, I might be able to turn round and drive back across the Afghan border on the Khyber Pass before the Kabul government stopped issuing visas to British journalists. There was more chance that officials at a land frontier post would let me back

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American “asset” in the war against communism. But in Ali’s wooden bus, it seemed like freedom. And as we descended the splendour of the Khyber Pass, there around me were the relics of the old British regiments who had fought on this ground for more than a century and a half

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. “Well done Fella,” he wrote. I could not sleep. Next morning, I indulged my innocence by riding the old British steam train back up the Khyber Pass, to take one last look at Afghanistan before I returned to Beirut. Engine-driver Mohamed Selim Khan, a brisk and moustachioed Pathan with a topi

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2011

by Steve Coll  · 23 Feb 2004  · 956pp  · 288,981 words

swept Washington, arousing support for a new phase of close alliance between the United States and Pakistan. Together they would challenge the Soviets across the Khyber Pass, much as the British had challenged czarist Russia on the same Afghan ground a century before. Yet for the American staff left behind to work

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to the west and north, and India to the east. To avoid this, Zia felt he needed to carry the Afghan jihad well across the Khyber Pass, to keep the Soviets back on their heels. A war fought on Islamic principles could also help Zia shore up a political base at home

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had become enthralled by the mujahedin. Through a strange group of fervently anticommunist Texas socialites, Wilson traveled often to meet Zia and to visit the Khyber Pass overlooking Afghanistan. He had few Afghan contacts and knew very little about Afghan history or culture. He saw the mujahedin through the prism of his

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public reputation as a warrior among Arab jihadists. When Winston Churchill recounted an 1897 battle he fought with the British army not far from the Khyber Pass, he remarked that there was no more thrilling sensation than being shot at and missed. Bin Laden apparently had a similar experience. After Jaji he

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Hill who began to challenge the CIA-ISI combine. These young policy makers, many of whom had traveled at one point or another to the Khyber Pass and stared across the ridges for a few hours with mujahedin commanders, feared that a CIA pullback from Afghanistan would sell out the Afghan rebel

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chief, proposed to rattle Najibullah by launching an ambitious rebel attack against the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, just a few hours’ drive across the Khyber Pass from Peshawar. Once the mujahedin captured Jalalabad, Gul said, they could install a new government on Afghan soil and begin to move on Kabul. The

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on the street, his patrician face banged up and bruised, and helped him to a relative’s house. The next day Hamid Karzai crossed the Khyber Pass into exile in Pakistan. He would not return to Kabul for more than seven years.12 He joined his father in Quetta during the spring

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of trade between Europe and Asia.” Like every young student on the subcontinent, she had grown up with history texts that chronicled invasions across the Khyber Pass. These ancient conquests had been inspired by lucrative trade routes that ran from Central Asia to Delhi. “So I thought, ‘Okay, control of the trade

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imperial history and managed Afghanistan more or less as Kipling recommended. They raised Pashtun tribes against their Russian adversaries and kept their distance behind the Khyber Pass. Later, between 1988 and 1992, presented with a chance to do the hard neo-imperial work of constructing a postwar, national, sustainable Afghan politics, Langley

Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of Al Qa'ida Since 9/11: The Pursuit of Al Qa'ida Since 9/11

by Seth G. Jones  · 29 Apr 2012  · 649pp  · 172,080 words

sign outside that read PESHAWAR INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. At one end of the airport a railroad line cut diagonally across the runway, a relic of the Khyber Pass Railway, the colonial-era route that zigzagged through the rugged snowcapped mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The three men had departed the day before

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begun to deteriorate.18 At age seventeen he moved back to the United States to join his biological mother, who ran a bar called the Khyber Pass in Philadelphia. In 1985, Headley’s mother put him in charge of the bar, an odd place for a Muslim to work. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Headley

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Province, 57, 77, 91, 106, 118 Khufu, 261 Khyam, Omar, 184, 194–95, 199, 200–201 MI5’s monitoring of, 195 training of, 200 Khyber Pass, 88 Khyber Pass Railway, 311 King Abdul Aziz University, 44 King’s Cross Station, 208 Kingston, Winston, 304 Kini, Talha al-, see Muhammad, Binyam Ahmed Kitab al-Siyar

The Beach

by Alex Garland  · 1 Jan 1996

path, I'd say that accounted for at least three-quarters of the camp. It was used commonly enough to have acquired a nickname — the Khyber Pass — and the regular tramping of our feet kept the weeds under control. It took me half an hour to find my way to the pool

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with. "Don't be silly, Richard," Sal said, detaching herself from Bugs' embrace. "Where have you come from?" "I went for a walk down the Khyber Pass and found a bunch of papaya trees, then ended up here." "Papayas? How many?" "Oh, loads." "You should tell Jean, Richard. He's always interested

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his breath sharply. "Most of the camp are sick. The bathroom hut is clogged with vomit, and you don't want to go near the Khyber Pass." "What about you?" I asked. "You seem OK." "Five or six of us are all right. I've got a few pains, but it looks

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her usual spot outside the longhouse entrance, which, if you wanted to get to the beach, was unavoidable without an exhaustingly roundabout route via the Khyber Pass. But to my relief she'd moved by the time I left the hospital tent. I assumed she'd gone to the centre of the

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were a few signs of stirring: a spot of movement in one of the tents or someone padding their way across the clearing to the Khyber Pass. That morning the camp was as still and quiet and cool as it could ever be. It made everything more exciting. While I talked with

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to his hair. Then I tripped over a guy line from one of the tents and went flying, and Karl made a beeline for the Khyber Pass. I scrambled up. Several people were standing directly in his way. "Catch him!" I shouted. "Jesse, Greg, for fuck's sake! Bring him down!" But

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longhouse without being seen. Is It Safe? I thought of the caves after I'd checked around the waterfall and the far end of the Khyber Pass. If I'd been thinking more clearly, I would have checked the caves first. Not that it would have made much difference. The boat had

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was complete, the stews were bubbling, the chickens were ready to barbecue, and the vegetable peelings, feathers and fish guts had been taken down the Khyber Pass and thrown away. So Sal, sensing a lull, suggested a huge game of football down on the beach. "Let's work up an appetite!" she

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back to Christo. I stuck around for a minute or so, then backed out of the tent. Outside, I saw Keaty scurrying off towards the Khyber Pass with an armful of something soggy and unrecognizable in his arms. When he came back I asked him what he was doing. "I took the

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