Khyber Connection

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The name Hindu Kush meant "Hindu Killer". To the foreigner who had grown up with the myth that Hell was located far beneath the surface of the earth, the Hindu Kush was proof it could be found at the top of the world as well. The 700-mile-long wall of rock that bordered Afghanistan on the north lay to the west of the impassable Himalayas. The terrain was otherworldly, both in its savage beauty and in its foreboding deadliness, a rockstrewn, broken landscape which looked as if it had been carved out of the earth with Vulcan’s chisel. For six months out of every year a banshee winter wind known as the shamal screamed down ice encrusted slopes that made the Grand Canyon look like a small Arizona drywash. During the summer months the heat defied belief. Here and there could be found a small oasis, lush and verdant, a valley rich with fig palms and walnut groves, but for the most part it was a trackless wasteland of sheer rock which ripped holes in the sky.

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