Northern Pakistan - Takht I Bahi, Churchill’s Piquet and the Malakand Pass.

Northern Pakistan is a land of superlatives.  

The area abounds in Buddhist temples and stupas to remind you of the rich heritage that stretched north to Afghanistan and the now tragically destroyed Bamyan Buddhas.

Takht I Bahi started out as a Zoroastrian temple before it began its long history as a Buddhist monastery. Its magnificent hilltop location protected it from the ravages of wars and invaders that have swept by through the ages. 

As the finest and most complete Buddhist monastery in Pakistan, it was listed a UNESCO world heritage site in 1990.  



Takht I Bahi

 



On the road to the Malakand pass

I first travelled through Malakand and the Malakand pass in the 1990’s. The Chitral relief force passed this way in April 1895 leading to the formation of the Malakand field force.

The Pathan tribes and the British go back a long way.  Serving in the Malakand field force a  young Winston Churchill gave his name to a fort still perched high on the side of the Swat valley.



Lower Swat valley



Churchill's Piquet - high above the valley



The Malakand pass today

Upper Swat has been compared to Switzerland for its panoramic landscapes, but any further comparison would be greatly misleading.  As a land of high adventure this really is the genuine article.


Upper Swat

Travels in the Celestial Mountains - Kyrgyzstan

The Tien Shan Mountains are aptly named.

The range links the Pamirs in Tajikistan, The Hindu Kush in Pakistan and The Alti Mountains of Mongolia. More importantly it cuts Krygyzstan in half .

The Tien Shan Range

In the early 1990's only a difficult route through the centre of the Kyrgyzstan from Osh to Bishkek existed.  In the harsh winter of 1994 when I set up and managed Save the Children Fund's first Central Asia Programme it was easier to travel from the south to Bishkek via Tashkent in Uzbekistan then onto Chimkent in Kazakhstan and finally back into Kyrgyzstan; effectively circumventing the range.

Travel across the Tien Shan from Osh to Bishkek is one of life's great experiences.  Villagers rarely saw outsiders let alone foreigners and the welcome was always overwhelming.

SCF's first programme in Central Asia

Often the villages were completely cut off by snow in winter and eventually we borrowed helicopters to move supplies.

Travel in the Tien Shan by horse was possible but only from late spring onwards.

The range reaches to Lake Issyk Kul near  Bishkek.  Set at 1,600 m above sea level, the lake  is one of the highest mountain lakes in the world.

Issyk Kul

The Taliban and the Great Comet - Kabul

I returned to Afghanistan in 1997 to assess the viability of an agricultural rehabilitation programme on the Shamoli Plain north of Kabul. This was before the Taliban laid waste to this fertile plain and its people.

Until then the Taliban had been on a roll. They had taken Kabul the previous autumn when Ahmad Shah Massoud made a tactical withdrawal and they had been pushing into areas beyond their traditional tribal influence.

Kabul was what you would expect of a city that had been repeatedly shelled by various factions and a real shock to those who could remember its attractions in better times. Many of the buildings had hidden mines and throughout the day you could hear regular explosions, intended or otherwise.  It was also April and freezing cold.

I made a visit to the city administration by way of introduction and received the usual warmth of Afghan hospitality. Pictures were brought out to show close shaven men in smart suits, before the new regime had required a change to traditional dress and long beards.

For those out of favour with the new order, the stadium would now double as a place of execution and amputation in between football matches. Checkpoints were established by religious police around town to check on among other things the length of beards.

Before I left Kabul I visited two disused embassies. The Russian Embassy had been comprehensively trashed, whilst the remains of the American Embassy had become a meeting place for some of the NGO workers in town.

Outside the remains of a heavily mined Embassy

That was the  night I was to spend on the roof of the remains of the embassy in sub zero temperatures watching the traverse of the Hale-Bopp comet across a crystal clear unpolluted night sky.