{"book":"adl0957","page":34,"text":"19\n\nwhich has been frequently trodden and which is even now the most important trade route of the country, is the Khyber, from the name of the last defile through which the Kabul-Peshawar route passes. It goes along the Khyber Pass (3,370 ft.) to Jalalabad (1,950 ft.) and thence via Lataband Pass (8,000 ft.) or Tang-i-Gharu Gorge to Kabul (6,000 ft.), the capital of Afghanistan. The distance between Kabul and Peshawar is 180 miles.\n\nThe second route leads via Peiwar Kotal to the Kurram valley, joining the Jaji country with Parachinar and Thal. In the Second Afghan War (1878–80) this route was most frequently used by the British invading troops. It is not motorable. The distance between Kabul and Parachinar via Peiwar and Shuttargardan Passes is about 100 miles.\n\nThe third is the Tochi Pass, linking Ghazni with the Indus basin. It too, is, not motorable. It was frequently used by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (998–1030 A.D.) during his Indian invasions.\n\nThe fourth is the Gomal Pass. This route is also very important historically. The Gomal and Tochi have been used for hundreds of years by the great clans of warrior-merchants, the Ghilzais, Powindahs, and Kharotis who move their caravans down these passes each year to pass their winter in the warm plains below. They generally leave their women-folk, children and old men somewhere near the border, while the young men take their camels and merchandise to trade in the Punjab and Central India. Their wares consist mostly of carpets, felt-rugs, dried fruits, wool and lamb skins. On their return journey to Afghanistan, they take up textiles, tea, sugar and hardware.\n\nThis route starts from Dera Ismail Khan and goes along the Gomal Pass (7,500 ft.) to Ghazni (7,280 ft.) in Eastern","chars":1746,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00034.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/34","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/34","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."}}