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The Classic 1930s Account of Afghan Travel

Forbes was justly famous for her travels in perilous portions of the world. In fact the intrepid Englishwoman had been making a habit of visiting remote, and absurdly dangerous, places for years. During the 1920s she rode a camel across the Libyan deserts in search of a lost city, ventured to dozens of other forbidden places and written a long list of bestsellers. Afghanistan had been invaded many times. Alexander the Great had marched his Greeks through her mountains. Genghis Khan and his hordes had cantered through her streets. More recently the mighty British Raj had flown warplanes over the isolated hermit kingdom. Yet none of these military men ever disarmed the Afghans as effortlessly as Rosita Forbes. She started in Peshawar, that charming, mostly lawless city that sits like a pigeon egg at the base of the nearby Khyber Pass. Forbes of course had to venture into the city's old bazaars, investigating rumours of "the secrets of Peshawar that all men know." Yet her desire lay beyond the cultured sin of this infamous border town. So it was that in 1935 the intrepid traveller hired a driver and car, threw her bags in the back, pulled on her gloves, set her stylish hat firmly in place, and climbed aboard, bound for Kabul, Mazar-I-Sharif, and ultimately faraway Samarkand. What followed was one of the most delightful journeys of the adventure-filled 1930s, for nothing escaped Forbes' observant eye. She spoke to nomads, dined with royalty, and uncovered enough stories to fill two books. Luckily her photographs and the best stories are still gathered here, in "Forbidden Road." The delightful book is still fresh, still charming, just like its beautiful adventuress of an author.