{"book":"adl0980","page":62,"text":"The last crags of the lower Hindukush, just above Bamyan.\n\nwest and west there are also summer winds carrying hot air, brown dust and sand in a generally north-to-south direction. This is also called the \"120 days dust storm\".\nIn Afghanistan, spring (March—May) is the rainy season. There are thunderstorms and floods in spring and occasionally in early summer. Other than this period and the winter months, the sky is of the deepest blue colour, and there are sunny days and starry nights everywhere. The Spin Ghar and parts of Hindukush's main range, with their perpetually snow-capped peaks, strike a most beautiful picture against the blue skies and brown or green countryside, according to the different seasons of the year.\nSpring and fall seasons are ideal, when the days and nights are comfortably cool and the atmosphere as a whole is invigorating. The autumn, however, has another advantage: many varieties of fruit, for which Afghanistan is famous, ripen\n\nand abound in markets all over the country.\n\nVEGETATION\nDeodar, common spruce, pine and larch are the conifers which grow in forests at levels from 6,000 to 10,000ft. These forests are located in Paktya and Nangarhar provinces. Other trees in these regions are yew, hazel, juniper, walnut, peach and almond. Species of hawthorn, blackberry, current, gooseberry, honeysuckle and roses are also found here. At lower heights in the north can be found citrous fruits and wild vines. Lower still and down to 3,000ft. there are walnut, oak, alder, ash, poplar, willow, roses, jasmine, acacia, sinjid (Elaeagnus angustifolia), pistachio, apricot, cherry, plum, quince, apple, pear, grapes and many other trees and shrubs. The lowest regions have citrous trees (in Nangarhar), palms, dates, figs and pomegranates.\nThere are many varieties of medicinal herbs, some of which are also exported. Ferula asafetida (of which the gum resin\n\n59","chars":1895,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0980/00062.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":93,"title":"Afghan progress in the fourth year plan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0980/62","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0980/canvas/62","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0980/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0980_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."}}