Khyber Pass, the Gateway of Romance

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 310, 22 March 1928, Page 17

Khyber Pass, the Gateway of Romance

Joins Central Asia and Civilization A PLACE OF MEMORIES In this article in the “Daily Mail Sir Percival Phillips, who recently travelled to England with the King of Afghanistan, describes the famous Khyber Pass. JT is no more than a slender, black and white wooden pole, hinged in cement sockets and laid across a dirt road in the bed of a rock-bound valley. It lies there in the wilderness for no apparent reason, alone, save for a little stone bungalow a few yards away on your side, and on the other, still further beyond it, a white, squarefaced building like a Canadian farmhouse. You see it with a feeling of disappointment, and look instinctively for a monument or at least a placard that shall proclaim its fame. For it is the most romantic gateway in the world. It stands on the very edge of India, where she touches the mysterious North, and meets the great high road that comes down from Afghanistan and Central Asia. It is the frontier post that keeps the Khyber Pass. The road it bars is steeped in memories of a bloody past. It has been trodden by armies throughout the ages. Conquering hosts have swept down to the rich plains, and sometimes swept back again broken in defeat. The British soldier—of another generation—has marched through it to fresh glory. Caravans flow forward and back as incessantly as the tides of the sea. Strange adventurers have set forth from it to court fortune in the bleak hills beyond. The Russia that was, dreaming of the conquest of India, thought always of the Khyber. The Russia of to-day, no less bent on her subjugation,' finds the same barrier blocking her schemes for invading the minds of the people. It is as lonely a spot as you can possibly imagine. Utter silence, except for the eerie cries of distant birds. No human habitation save the little bungalow of the British frontier guard, and the unlovely headquarters of the Afghan post office a quarter of a mile away. Perched dizzily on one slope above you are a few native huts, and. far beyond them, on the peak of a crag that seems inaccessible, is a walled fort, the very last British stronghold, that peers down into Afghanistan. It seems to be part of ir. for it is two miles ahead of the barrier, but the frontier crosses the Pass diagonally, and on the right it is thrust ahead of the road.

Like Port Said and Shanghai and Dover, and other halfway houses on the highways of the world, this frontier post called Tor Khan—is a place where one sees curious undercurrents of humanity and hears incredible stories of intrigue and daring. And like these other watch houses of the world’s police, it is a place where the good and bad of the human currents are sifted and divided for the world’s good. But the Scotland Yard detective on Dover Pier has a child’s task compared with that of supervising the traffic in the Khyber. The thousand and one types that make up a caravan, the ingenuity with which the Asiatic of one breed can -make himself look like the specimen of another, even the cunning of certain crafty* Europeans who merge their identity* in that of a fanatic Moslem from Turkestan, are sufficient to tax the skill and experience of a super Holmes. It would seem impossible to a casual visitor to the Pass that any* human be mg could sift the straggling trains or bullocks, camels, and donkey carriers that come down with their motley crew of men, women and children twice a week from Kabul. The travellers look so much alike. The men are all hawk noses and fierce whiskers, and their garments so many unmeaning bundles of dirty clothes. The women are swathed in dusty', rusty

j black draperies. All of them ar* grimy and foul in the extreme, hut somehow the frontier officials do succeed in picking out undesirables and setting their faces toward the north from which they have come. * * * j And here, too, come Europeans of all kinds, an occasional geologist, a stray sculptor now and then (they puzzle the frontier guards), road surveyors, and independent adventurer?, bent on making their fortune at the expense of the King, leave their cards, so to speak, at the barrier beyond the Pass. They depart reluctantly from the last clean bed and the last paved streets of civilisation at Peshawar and pass through Tor Khan toward the doubtful hospitality of their first rest-ing-place at Jellalabad. Come likewise weary diplomats and their more weary wives and children who have travelled halfway round the world, and who have still a journey of more than 200 miles by motor-car before they reach the comparative comforts of Kabul. The sentry at the gate sees many studies in expression. Up-bound travellers of European nationality vanish gloomily into the Afghan end of the valley. Those hastening toward Peshawar wait with cheerful smiles until the barrier is hoisted and they can begin the last lap, an hour and nhalf long, of the journey to # the fringe cf civilisation. Come also occasionally weird human derelicts, once European, with tales of suffering and adventure in the North that Kipling might have imagined. Men sunk to the level of the caravan in which they shelter; so changed by privation and the careless life of the road that they might easily pass one of their countrymen unnoticed. Some such submerged wastrels actually clear Tor Khan and get as far as the Serai at Landi Kotal, where the examining officer sits in judgment. One who came recently was a little Polish shoemaker, a deserter from his country’s army, who made his way through Russia into Turkestan and w> to Kabul. There he spent 14 months in prison. Another was a Czech o-Slovakian named Shimek, whom the Serai gave up to a relentless inquisition. He told a strange story of having come from China. This being manifestly untrue, he confessed he thought such an itinerary would be mere pleasing to the British than the real one. which began at Moscow. Investigation showed that he possessed a really wonderful international record in crime, dating from his post-war discharge from the Austrian army, and including a term of impr sonment u> New York, and another in Russia for stealing gold roubles. These men are in prison in Peshawar as European rogues and vagabonds You cannot play fast and loose with the Khyber.