Afghanistan: Hair-raising Ride Through the Khyber Pass to Kabul

See our Afghanistan Photo Gallery

Afghanistan January 2005: The ride from the Pakistani border to Kabul was most memorable. It is only about a 220 KM stretch (135 miles), but the road is very bad or non-existent in many places. So, it took about 6.5 hours. The driver I hired to take me was a complete maniac. Picture a race along a dirt and rock road. That is quite often what the drive is like. Everyone tries to cut off the other; there are really no lanes. All vehicles are constantly weaving back and forth, dodging the countless holes, huge bumps and big rocks in the road. It is a free for all with only two pedal speeds: All the way to the floor and slamming on the brakes. It was hilarious and a bit unnerving.

I originally was going to fly into Kabul from Peshawar, the major city of the notorious semi-autonomous and lawless Northwest Territories of Pakistan. While in Peshawar, I stayed at a guesthouse run by a young Afghani named Alam. Originally from Kabul, Alam is a strong and jovial 30 year old of Pathan descent. He had friends who had made the trip from Peshawar, through the Khyber Pass to Kabul, and convinced me that it was "reasonably" safe to do the trip by land.

Of course, a land trip to Kabul would be a much more interesting trip than flying. Going through the Khyber Pass, the first leg of the journey, takes a person along a romantic, and at times, tragic, historical route followed by Persian Emperor Darius the Great, Alexander the Great, and many others during the Dark and Middle Ages, including Genghis Khan, Tamerlane and the British.

In order to go through the Khyber Pass to the Pakistani-Afghan border, a foreigner needs to get a permit from the Pakistani military. One also needs to pay a small fee for an armed soldier to accompany him for protection through the Pass and to the border.

I felt reasonably confident that with or without the armed protection, I would have been fine. While in Peshawar, I had picked up some clothing that matched what men traditionally wore in the region, a hand-made wool shawl and a pancake-like wool cap. During my 3 week trip in Pakistan, I had allowed my hair to grow longer and had not shaved. So, my new shawl and cap, along with the normal male Pakistani dress of a salwar kameez that I wore (a loose fitting trousers and long sleeved upper tunic), made me look like a Pathan from Northern Afghanistan. However, unlike dashing adventurers of old times, I was more like Elmer Fudd, as the shawl kept falling off the first few days I wore it.

The drive through the Khyber Pass was quite scenic. Some places along the route offered grand views of rugged mountain peaks stretching into the distance. We also passed markers and monuments of several prominent historical points. The going was slow though. My taxi, filled with myself, the driver, Alam and the Pakistani soldier, was stuck behind large, slow moving, garishly painted Pakistani trucks. These chugged along, barely making it up the steep hills at times, and spewing out thick, black exhaust.

The Pakistani border is a dusty place with a high chicken wire fence marking the boundary, and a simple opening with a couple of armed guards to pass through into Afghanistan. I did the exit procedures surprisingly quickly and went to the fence opening. Here the Afghani guesthouse manager, Alam, got permission from the border guard to cross the border for a moment, promising to return shortly. He was going to find a taxi driver with a good reliable car for me to make the trip to Kabul.

Returning shortly, Alam pointed to a car a bit off into the dusty distance. Alam told me with evident confidence that he had found a reliable car and driver. He further explained that the driver he found was of the same tribe as his. I could trust him as the driver swore on his honor to protect me with his life. So, I grabbed my bags and walked over to the distant car (actually, the only one in the area).

My driver, named Jacob, did not speak a word of English. He was a short and lean guy, in a dusty dirty shirt with a few holes. Jacob presented his car as being in top shape, although it looked ready for the junkyard. This was not unusual as most vehicles in this region are of varying degrees of hideous beat up disrepair, and very, very dirty. His "top shape" car was a small and very old faded tan Toyota. The tires were bald?all 4, the windshield was cracked, a wire hanger stuck up out of a broken radio antenna perch, and it was completely caked in dirt.

Seeing my doubt, Jacob gave me a big smile, with a couple of teeth missing, and a thumbs up. Still in doubt, I put my luggage into his dusty and dank smelling trunk. However before I could get comfortable in the front seat, Jacob motioned me to the back. Mystified I got out to get into the back seat. But no, that is not what he meant. Making a shoving motion, he was indicating that I had to push start the car! I now realized why he had parked so far away from the border. He was at the top of a shallow hill and wanted the momentum going down to help start the car. So, I pushed the car a few moments, jumped in after it started, and off we went.

Jacob ambled along a dirt road to this very big mud field, ringed by falling down huts. The circular mud field was filled with myriads of very dirty looking people and a bedlam of cars, trucks, buses, etc. Apparently this was the auto-fixing area next to the border for the guys like my driver. I sat there in this "no man's land", as apparently this area was between border checkpoints, for about 45 minutes. Jacob had to have his car's starter fixed. Since we had arrived at the border late for the start of this trip, around 12:45 pm, I was beginning to feel some stress as our precious daylight time slipped rapidly away. Not a soul spoke English. And I was stuck with this guy whose car was broken down.

There is a very practical reason the drive from the border to Kabul is a road race: It is a race against time as it is quite dangerous to be out after 5 p.m. when it gets dark. Road bandits and Taliban can make it literally deadly after sundown, especially for a Western Foreigner. We had 6 hours of our 6.5 hour journey to go, and it was 1:45 pm when we finally actually got started. The countryside we passed through had all the normal pleasant sites and features of your carefree afternoon drive: Wanted posters of Bid Laden and other Al Qaeda and Taliban fellows, military and police convoys, signs warning you to not pick up various items that were pictured, like mines, artillery shells and bullets; we passed a bombed out tank, military outposts and forts, and even a US Military patrol.

The US military patrol we passed, compared to their Afghani counterparts, appeared to be straight out of a Hollywood Action Adventure show. Their two vehicles, one armored and the other a rugged truck, were very clean andBIG. The soldiers were allbuffed, wearing stylish designer looking camouflage suites, sharp berets or widebrimmed soft hats and sporting longish, smart haircuts. They all carried reallylarge automaticguns. I was glad they were on our side.

The scenery was stark. Rocks everywhere and more rocks, as far as the eye can see, for huge stretches. Most annoying, there was lots of dust. So much dust your nose blows out dirt after a while.In the background, on both sides of theroad were high, rugged and parched looking dry mountains. Here and there you would see different peoplesin the distance--herding their goats or gathering firewood. Quite often they were dressed very colorfully. I assume they were nomadic peoples. Some appeared to live in large mud compounds andothers in houses made from sticks and mud. I was not sure how they findanything to eat though as there was literally nothing but rocks, dust, and some sand for variety,everywhere most of the way.

We passed through Jalalabad, the only major city en-route. It was not exciting to look at. The city was mostly ramshackle old buildings and choking traffic with every type of transport like in Pakistan: Cars, horse drawn carriages and rickshaws, hand rickshaws, bikes, motorbikes, jeepneys, buses and trucks of every shape and size all garishly painted with bright designs.

The road race against time is also a grand road race against other drivers. The Afghanis are very competitive in this manner. More than once, we would be flying along the dirt and rock "road" trying to pass another junkheap also gunning it along, and a big truck would appear charging head-on from the opposite direction. Like a game of chicken, neither driver would give way till the last possible instant. At times we got so close that I saw the face of the approaching truck driver, always impassive, as he had the goliath vehicle.

We had one big hiccup along the way, a flat tire. After changing to an even balder spare tire, we still had to get the broken tire repaired, or we'd really be up a creek if another tire went flat. So, despite the approaching darkness and a long stretch till the safety of Kabul, we stopped at a small hut along the way. Here, the lone mechanic apparently did a brisk business patching bald tires for the many drivers who inevitably had flats. It added to the excitement knowing that the delays ensured that we could be bandit bait, traveling for at least a few hours in darkness, till arriving in Kabul.

We made it to Kabul two hours after darkness, at 7 pm, intact.