284.Khyber Pass

I am feeling a little better and begin to observe my fellow passengers for the first time. They seem to be mainly European hippies-- long haired males heading for India’s cheap drugs.


We are approaching a border. We pass many adobe forts, some new some melting back into the soil. The man beside me says that these forts are the homes of various families of smugglers, which have controlled the traffic through here for centuries. They get along with the government but sometimes war against each other. Since nothing at all grows out here in the historic Khyber Pass, crime is the only way to earn a living.


Leaving the mountains, the highway, now paved, enters a wide plain. Walled adobe villages sprout here and there.

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