{"book":"adl0957","page":231,"text":"182\n\nThe main road, leaving the Daroonta bridge to the right,\nenters a spacious sandy plain, south of Laghman, and runs\nroughly parallel to the Kabul River, which flows in the opposite\ndirection. After 25 miles from Daroonta, the road enters a\nnarrow defile, hardly 100 yards wide, enclosed by high and rugged\nrocks. Below, the Kabul River rolls over boulders and huge\nstones, tumbling with thunderous roar. The road for the most\npart in this gorge is cut in the face of the rock, and though com-\nparatively narrow, in some places is well-laid out and is free\nfrom difficult or steep gradients.\n\nAt Sarobi, 42 miles from Jalalabad, where the gorge ends,\nthere is a fine rest house, overlooking the Kabul River. From\nhere the road enters another passage comparatively broader and\nencompassed by low sandy hills. This is the Tezeen gorge,\n(Tezeen Khuwar). Thence is enters a third defile between steep\nand lofty hills, devoid of verdure. This is the Lataband Pass.\nFor the first 26 miles, the road scrambles up a steep ascent, from\n4,500 to 8,200 feet, and then descends deeply into another narrow\ngorge, Mulla Omar, till Butkhak is reached (6,500 ft.). Tractors\nare used to keep the passage free of snow during winter.\n\nA new hydro-electric plant has been installed at Sarobi\nby a German engineering firm. This project, the largest of its\nkind in the country, supplies electricity to the Capital as well as\nto the new textile mills at Gul Bahar.\n\nA new road between Kabul and Sarobi, the Tangi-Gharu\nshort-cut as it is called, is now under construction which well to\nslice some ten miles off the driving distance from Kabul to\nPeshawar. By making use of tunnels and hugging close to the\nKabul River, this road not only shortens the distance, but makes\ndriving safer, especially in winter, by avoiding the Lataband\nPass, which is often blocked with snow during winter.","chars":1866,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00231.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/231","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/231","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}