The Khyber Pass, linking Kabul and Peshawar, was for centuries a trade and invasion route to India from Central Asia. Now the pass is crossed by a modern road, a caravan trail and a railway – although the coming of modernity has not lessened the tribesmen’s fierceness, or their hospitality.
As the morning will just break in Rawalpindi and the high notes of bugles sound distantly from the cantonment, your driver, will call for the journey to Peshawar and Khyber Pass. Along the Great Trunk Road the countryside will already awake as the sun flushes up over the eastern hills and set the sharp edges of the mountains glowing. Cyclists in old army raincoats, their mouth covered with tartan scarves to keep out the noxious morning air will come riding in straggling companies from the outlying villages. Double-decker buses, superannuated from the street of English towns, will trundle past the barracks.
Trousered hill-women will walk by the roadside, carrying on their head long, swaying bundles of canes. And ox-wagons, loaded high and wide with straw, would goaded slowly forward by men so voluminously wrapped in brown blankets that only their eyes could be seen. Time and again they would block the road, and your driver would mutter angrily to himself.
As the sun will rise higher, the brook and ponds will steam like hot springs under its rays, the apricot haze will lift from the snow peak to the north, and the white farms will glisten like teeth on the distance hillsides. You will pass the ruins of Taxila, and more mysterious mounds which stands isolated, waiting for the day when archeologists will begin a thorough survey of the classic invasion route into India and at last unravel the mysteries of Alexander the Great’s cities beyond the Hindu Kush.
And then for many miles you will drive over sun-brown melancholy upland with grey villages desolate under the high clear sky. Each village with its cemetery among the winter-bare fields, with jagged slabs of rock at the heads of the rough mounds of earth, and on isolated hillocks coloured flags will hang limply over the tombs of the pir, the Sufi saints whom the Moslems of the hills worship as their ancestors worshipped the spirit of the earth.
Are you interested to know more about the taxi ride to the Khyber Pass?
Let us hear from you at +91 33 4046 4646
Cockpit of Asia
This tour enters into Pakistan then crosses into Afghanistan either by the Khyber Pass or when it is closed by flight to Kabul from either Peshawar or Islamabad.
Day 1 Depart London for Islamabad
Day 2 Arrival Islamabad AM, transfer by road via Taxila to Peshawar
Day 3 Peshawar AM walking tour old city
Day 4 Drive over Khyber Pass to Jalalabad (Afghanistan) to Kabul (or flight if Pass shut)
Day 5 Kabul
Day 6 Kabul city excursions
Day 7 Drive to Bamiyan Valley
Day 8 Bamiyan - explorations
Day 9 Bamiyan excursion to Bandi-i-Mir Lakes
Day 10 Drive to Kunduz via Salang Tunnel with excursion to the Panshir Valley en route
Day 11 Kunduz
Day 12 Drive via Samangan Monastery to Mazar e Sherif
Day 13 Mazar e Sherif - excursion to Balkh
Day 14/15/16/17 Drive to Maimana/Bala Murgharb/Qalat Nau/Herat (special note - sometimes we have to alter our whole section here for various reasons, road conditions, security problems and may have to take a flight.)
Day 18 Herat - AM city walking tour
Day 19 Herat - PM excursion to Gazegarh
Day 20 Drive to Afghan Border and travel to Torbat e Jam. Excursion to Kahf and Taybad
Day 21 Further excursions, drive to Mashad
Day 22 AM departure by air to Tehran. Afternoon city sights and/or departure to London etc
Day 23 Rest of day sightseeing and/or departure to London
For assisted tour booking and customization according to your requirement, please call: +91 33 4046 4646
Price on request
Inclusions
Services of Hinterland travel tour guide, ground transport
Local payment - this will cover local accommodation
Exclusions
International flights, insurance, visas, main meals, site entrance fees, taxes, taxi's, airport transfers, any single supplements
As suggested and to be customized as per request
Terms & Conditions Apllied
Any client taking this option can obviously travel where they wish and stay as long as they wish
The schedule is an outline only. Time will be lost in places and/or gained in others. The transport will be a selection of hired local transport of various sorts and accommodation outside of the major cities will often be Tea houses (chai khanas). The journey is rough at times, the food, at times, a little miserable. The day to day company, both local and your travelling companions, often superb. There is a feast of carpets to look over, many tribal trinkets to examine, all in all an unforgettable experience.
For assisted tour booking and customization according to your requirement, please call: +91 33 4046 4646
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