Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Peshawar, Chitral, Bannu, Swat, Swabi) Dec 20-21, 2021
Includes the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas) (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province)
Primarily Pashtun, the area is very rugged and mountainous yet extremely hospitable.
Peshawar- Capital city of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it is the gateway to the Khyber Pass and is one of the ancient walled cities of Pakistan. It used to be the capital of the Gandhara civilization which stretched to Japan. The city was in ancient times surrounded by high walls with 20 entry gates. Much of the surrounding area is still under the jurisdiction of tribal law. These areas can only be visited with a permit from the relevant authorities.
The Khyber Pass, Afridis. Visit the legendary 1,067m- (3,501ft-) high break in the sheer rock wall separating Afghanistan and Pakistan.
We finally arrived in Peshawar after a grueling 15-hour drive (835 km) from Quetta, Balochistan, arriving at 1 am. We were lucky to find a hotel easily (The Empire 3600 PR with good internet)
PESHAWAR
Gateway to the Khyber Pass and is one of the ancient walled cities of Pakistan. It used to be the capital of the Gandhara civilization which stretched to Japan. The city was in ancient times surrounded by high walls with 20 entry gates. Much of the surrounding area is still under the jurisdiction of tribal law. These areas can only be visited with a permit from the relevant authorities.
PIA Planetarium
The next two are at the University of Peshawar.
SSAQ Qayyum Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Six galleries show from Stone Age through to Buddhist times. The usual. 100 PR
Pashtoon Cultural Museum. The gate and door were open but there was no one here and the lights were off, but I still saw everything in one big room. Mostly ethnographic with the usual and a large selection of jewelry in the centre glass boxes. Free
Peshawar Zoo. This is quite a nice zoo with good enclosures, especially for all the birds. There is a good selection of African animals and some beautiful leopards, Bengal tigers. 40 PR
Qissa Khawani Bazaar. A market, it was difficult to tell where this began and ended as everything in this part of the city is a “market”. I entered at the Google Maps location and saw almost only pots, pans, and dishes (quite a variety) and some luggage. Outside it continued, morphed into food.
Sadik forgot his phone charger at the hotel and this put us into a terrible place in Peshawar with endless small streets. Getting to the bazaar and away from it was a total gridlock of traffic, mostly with tuk-tuks and I finally gave up going to Sethi House Museum.
Mahabat Khan Mosque. Sadik was able to park and I walked through a gold souk to see the mosque. In the marble courtyard outside, a big crowd was starting prayers. The outside is a wonderful white marble with 2 minarets and tiny towers gracing the roofline. Inside it was. A marvel of Islamic design with all the walls, ceiling, and domes painted in elaborate florals, unfortunately, much of it crumbling on the lower walls.
Bala Hisar Fort. This massive double-walled fort in the middle of Peshawar has large round guard towers and massive round cannon decks.
Peshawar Museum.
We finally decided to leave the chaos of Peshawar and head to WHS #701.
This is a very rich agricultural region not appearing to need irrigation. Trees, fields, sugar cane and countless stands of fruit (oranges, apples, bananas, pomegranit) and vegetables line the roads and streets of Peshawar and surroundings.
Buddhist Ruins of Takht-i-Bahi and Neighbouring City Remains at Sahr-i-Bahlol. World Heritage Sites. This Buddhist monastic complex (Throne of Origins) was founded in the early 1st century. Owing to its location on the crest of a high hill, it escaped successive invasions and is still exceptionally well preserved. Nearby are the ruins of Sahr-i-Bahlol, a small fortified city dating from the same period. On various hilltops ranging from 36.6 metres to 152.4 metres in height, typical for Buddhist sites, the complexes cover an area of around 33ha.
The Buddhist monastery was in continual use until the 7th century AD. It is composed of an assemblage of buildings and is the most complete Buddhist monastery in Pakistan. The buildings were constructed of stone in Gandhara patterns (diaper style) using local dressed and semi-dressed stone blocks.
Today the ruins comprise a main stupa court, votive stupas court, a group of three stupas, the monastic quadrangle with meditation cells, conference hall, covered stepped passageways and other secular buildings.
The second component, the Neighbouring City Remains at Sahr-i-Bahlol, is located approximately 5 km away in a fertile plain. The ruins are the remnants of a small ancient fortified town of the Kushan period. The town is set on an elongated mound up to 9 metres high and surrounded by portions of the defensive walls in “diaper” style characteristic of the first two or three centuries A.D. The area covered is 9.7 hectares.
The original sculptures from the site have been removed and are housed in the Peshawar Museum.
The impressive parts of this WHS are 1. The size – ruins ascend 4 adjacent ridges 2. The height of the walls – about 12 m – and these are ruins so the heights were higher and 3. The rock work – gorgeous larger rocks fit between thin rocks forming very smooth walls.
It is about 200 steps (65 m) to the ruins. Only the main ruins and the dormitories on the adjacent ridge can be visited. 500 PR
Shahbazgarhi Rock Edicts Tentative WHS (30/01/2004) are cut into the surface of two large boulders on the side of a small rocky outcrop in the Vale of Peshawar. The record fourteen edicts of the Mauryan emperor, Asoka (r. c. 272-235 BC) and represent the earliest irrefutable evidence of writing in South Asia. Dating to middle of the third century BC, they are written from right to left in the Kharosthi script. The presence of Kharosti suggests that the influence of Achaemenid rule in this region, the province of Gandhara, outlived the short Alexandrian interlude of the fourth century BC. The fourteen major edicts recorded at the site present aspects of Asoka’s dharma or righteous law. The edicts are located beside one of the ancient trade routes connecting the Vale of Peshawar with the valley of Swat, Dir and Chitral to the North and the great city of Taxila to the South East.
After a drive on a rough road along a canal, there was nothing to find here. I put in the GPS coordinates and the location was accurate.
Archaeological Site of Ranigat Tentative WHS (30/01/2004). This famous Buddhist site is located in Tehsil Totalai with remains scattered in the valley along the ridge.
Finding this was a Google Maps disaster. After leaving the Rock Edicts, we drove through continuous towns with major road construction that was very slow going. After turning off that highway, we eventually came to a bridge over a canal that was washed out and impassable. The drive down the canal was on a minimal dirt track on the canal edge until we finally were able to cross onto a rough ‘paved’ road. We turned east winding through a few villages and then hit an awful, almost 4WD single lane narrow country road that paralleled fields. It went on forever and my driver lost it. When about 3 km from the site, it was now dark, it was closed and we abandoned the visit. We returned on successively better roads to the highway and drove to Taxila.