The road between Kabul and Jalalabad descends some 1,800 metres in under 100 km, cutting through the Kabul Gorge — a dramatic canyon where the Kabul River has carved through the Hindu Kush foothills. The road has always been strategically vital, as the main route connecting Afghanistan's capital to Pakistan and the Khyber Pass. During the British Empire's Afghan wars, control of this road determined the outcome of campaigns.
The drive, when conditions allow, is spectacular in a raw, unnerving way: sheer cliffs, hairpin bends above the river, and the sudden transition from the cold Kabul plateau to the subtropical warmth of the Jalalabad basin. The 19th-century overlanders who traveled this route on the Hippie Trail in the 1970s wrote about it extensively. It remains one of the most geographically dramatic approaches to any city in Central Asia.