We left Kabul in the Landrover, heading first for Jalalabad, capitol of the local province. We drove down through the breath-taking Kabul gorge into the hot plains. This was the road along which the doomed British contingent retreated from Kabul, with wives, children and thousands of terrified camp followers, in the depths of Winter 1840. At the Jagdalak Pass they were finally overwhelmed. From the surrounding hillsides the Pathans had poured down a hail of fire while their horsesmen harried the columns struggling through the snow. At night frostbite took its toll of the lightly-clad troops, hundreds of whom never rose again each morning, until all, save six officers, had perished. The six made it on horseback as far as Fattehabad, where they faced another engagement. Only a single wounded surgeon, Dr. Brydon, clinging to his injured pony, reached the gates of Jalalabad.

And afterwards back along this same road, their carts crushing the bleached bones of their comrades, came the avenging British, pillaging, raping and destroying everything in their path.

At Jalalabad we stopped for a break. From the cluster of dingy-looking stalls and stores we selected a chaikhana and drank kahwa (green tea), and reflected upon the bloody deeds carried out in the name of...what? King and country?

Jeremy told me of a famous painting hanging in the Tate Gallery, London, of the wounded surgeon arriving at the gates of Jalalabad. Entitled "The Remnants of an Army", it was by Elizabeth Butler, wife of William Butler, from Bansha, Co. Tipperary, who had served in Madras and written the biography of Charles Napier (and that's the picture on the right).

Just south of here is the Hadda complex, which was an important site on the ancient trade route from India through Central Asia to China, and was excavated back in the twenties.

After that artistic and historical interlude it was back into the Landrover and a thoughtful drive to the border.

We had no trouble at the border--got through surprisingly quickly, and I was carrying Richard's chunk of hash in my shirt pocket! And now I was in Pakistan! Pakistan is a new, artificially developed country--for some historical details, see here. I was hoping we could stop off at Peshawar, another historic city and a powder-keg of local politics. But it seemed more likely that we would end up in Rawalpindi, 189 Km away. Anyway, we pushed forward into the legendary Khyber Pass, which was the gateway to the no less legendary Northwest Frontier Province.

All those tales of derring-do I had read as a schoolboy came back to haunt me here. Through this route so many people had passed throughout history, many to their doom. For a hundred years, from 1839, the British had struggled to control this pass, fearing a threat to India by the Russians. Thousands of lives were lost in the attempt to subdue the warlike Afridi tribesmen. And here I recalled the tales of the Wolf of Kabul (of the Hotspur) and his faithful Tibetan stooge, Chung, with his weapon "Clicki-Ba", cricket bat, who made short shrift of the Pathan baddies.

But back to reality...the Khyber Pass was the most interesting place. It really was the land of the gun. Pashto tribesmen (here called Pathans) were rambling around with dated-looking Lee-Enfield 303's slung over their shoulders. Every man had at least one gun. I even saw some elderly tribesmen cycling home with spears attached to their crossbars.

Everywhere we stopped we were offered a selection of weapons. There were gun factories in the nearby mountains, where the Pathans manufacture replicas of Western guns (see the chap in the picture turning out a nifty automatic). Some travellers we met on the way went to visit the work-shops--there were guides available to show us around. The gun production is all done by hand in small back-rooms, using the most basic of tools. We stopped at one store a little back from the road to view the assortment--everything from catapults to mortars. Occasional gunshots rang out as the weapons were tested. I heard conflicting reports as to their effectiveness--one guy in Kabul said they're inclined to blow up in your hand, another said they're perfect replicas and sell very well in India.

At its narrowest point the pass is controlled by one of the oldest forts, Ali Masjid, built on a high hill rising 500 feet above the floor of the pass. Among those who died attacking the fort here in November 1878, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, was the son of the Knight of Glin, from Co. Limerick, fighting with the 27th Punjabi regiment. He's buried in Peshawar.

Photographs from that war were produced by an Irishman, John Burke. He accompanied one of three British Anglo-Indian army columns. He had come to India as apothecary with the Royal Engineers, and then turned professional photographer, assisting another Irishman, William Baker, late of the 87th Regiment of Foot, the Royal Irish Fusiliers. It was said that their work inspired Rudyard Kipling. Viceroy of India at that time was John Lawrence of Derry, who was succeeded by the Earl of Mayo, who was born in Dublin. The then Governor of the Punjab, Montgomery, also came from Derry.

There was Pakistan military presence everywhere--barracks, officers' hostel, training schools, etc., all along the road from the Khyber Pass.

The sun got hotter as we sped along the busy road. We were now on the Grand Trunk Road, which stretches 1525 miles from the Khyber pass to Calcutta. It runs down to Amritsar, cuts through the heart of Delhi, skirts the Taj Mahal and runs by the Ganges at Benares. And it was my intention to visit all those places. Four great religions--Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism--were born and grew up along this route. Chronologically it traverses thirty-five centuries, during which it has given passage to everyone from Buddha to Kipling:

Ho! Get away, you bullock-man, you've 'eard the bugle blowed
There's a regiment a-coming down the Grand Trunk Road

The air grew hotter and heavier as we emerged from the hills, and in no time my shirt was bathed in sweat. I wanted Jeremy to stop more often but he kept up his punishing pace.

We managed a brief halt at Peshawer, capital of the Northwest Frontier Province. This city is called the "Jewel of the Pathans", but from what we saw of the hustle and bustle it looked very chaotic compared with the relaxed medieval ambience of Afghanistan. Horse-drawn carts competed for the streets with tongas, bicycles, rickshaws and heavy trucks. There were potholes all over the roads, and rickety stalls on the side that looked like they might topple over any minute. Over all was the smoke and smells coming from the many kebab-houses, and there seemed to be a mosque on every corner. There is an old and new city, the latter built by the British as a base for their troops engaged in operations around the Northwest Frontier tribal areas. Here they had their barracks, offices, churches and clubs, far from the madding crowd of the bazaar.

In February 1857 William Burke the photographer, but still a soldier, married 15-year-old Fanny Russell here. Three months later the Mutiny began, which he survived. The following year his regiment was assigned to China, but he bought himself out and set up business here as an estate agent and "photographist". A few years later John Burke married a Margaret Russell here and joined William Baker in the photography business, which became very successful.

I would have liked to explore these same bazaars, famous for their carpets, but Jeremy was driving himself hard, and after stretching our legs we were off again.

We passed Nowshera and Attock (where we crossed the great river Indus, the longest in Asia), and the road to Muree to the north-east (the hill-station where T. E. Lawrence was stationed with the RAF in the twenties), names familiar from the days of the Raj. Attock is the site of a huge fort, built by the Moghul emperor Akbar at the confluence of the Indus and Kabul rivers, to protect the plains of India from invaders from the North, and fought over ever since. But we didn't stop until we arrived at Rawalpindi.

Jeremy pulled in at a likely-looking hotel, turned off the engine, and lay back motionless in his seat. His face was very red and bathed with sweat. He didn't speak, and we had to help him from the car. He was feeling very ill, but just would not give himself a break. The hotel cost 30 rupees for a double room--we weren't going to argue. Another night, another hotel, another country, another language. We got Jeremy into bed and I slept (well!) on the couch, until the early-morning call of "Allah-u-akbar" rang out from the local mosque.

Then you lie there and you wonder where you are (because once you've heard the cry of the Muezzin you know you're a long way from home). And you think about how you got there and what you're going to do when you get up, and where you'd like to be, and with whom, and doing what. Until you start feeling hungry or the staff appears to clean the room.

I rooted around until I found one of Jeremy's guide-books and turned to what it had to say about the latest city in which we found ourselves. Rawalpindi was an important trading centre since 6,000 B.C. and a major stop on the ancient Silk Road. The usual bunch of megalomanic conquerors, Cyrus, Darius, Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan stopped off here with their armies to grab what they could. The British struggled with the Sikhs for supremacy here. It was developed as the primary British military base for the area, and "Pindi" was reputed to be a pleasant spot by the British who were stationed here. The city is now the headquarters of the Pakistan Armed Forces. There's an Old City, the leafy-shaded mall from British times and a modern section with banks, hotels and travel agencies.

Close by was the Pakistan capital of Islamabad (referred to by local citizens as a "suburb of Rawalpindi").

North of the city the great Karakorum Highway, one of the largest public works projects attempted since the construction of the Egyptian pyramids, was still being constructed. The tens of thousands of workers suffered from extreme heat, cold and strong winds. When completed it would stretch 1,284 km from Rawalpindi to Kasgar in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, through the most unstable geologic area in the world.

Friday 12 September, Rawalpindi/Lahore/Indian Border