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Slide ShowsSlide show 1. Great Pamir 2002
The Expedition A Journey to the Source of the Oxus is an opportunity to travel to the source of this river in the Great Pamirs. Very few Europeans have ever seen it.Slide show 2. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush: The Panjshir Valley, the Emerald Mines and the Lapis
The Panjshir has been most people's introduction to Afghanistan. When Afghanistan was on the tourist trail, its nearness to Kabul combined with its astonishing natural beauty, made it most people's first destination in the country.Slide show 3. The Road to Oxiana
The provincial towns here are comparatively unspoiled by the twentieth century. There are few cars. Most transport is by horse or donkey. In these places I have felt that I was in touch with the world of Kipling’s India.Slide show 4. Small Pamir 2004
Slide show 7. Khyber Pass and Kabul
Slide show 8. Nimla Gardens
These pictures are not very high quality, in part because they were taken at dusk, but I thought it worth posting them as they show the excellent state of preservation of the last surviving Mughal garden in Afghanistan. It is a two-hour drive from Jalalabad.It was restored in 1990 by a team led by Anthony Fitzherbert and just needs the water to return to the central canal – its absence a visible reminder of the four-year drought that has ravaged Afghanistan. Notice in the pictures of the wall of the waterfall, a series of niches. At night, hundreds candles were placed in these niches, their light shining through the falling water. The cypresses give the garden an Italian feel but dominating the skyline, at dusk like slightly purple thunderheads, are the massive mountains called Tora Bora. A fairy lives up one of the trees by the ramp in the middle of the canal, and if you are able to walk blindfolded in a straight line for a certain distance there, she will grant your wish.