Bottle Neck Pass..Ali Masjid

The Khyber Pass is a place of succession brown grey cliffs, slender low-lying valleys and small plans with Safed Koh Range. Inside of the Khyber Pass is the Torkham plain and on its highest point is situated the Shahgai fort, form where Khyber River flows slowly towards Jamrud. In between them, a bottle neck narrowest gorge came where in earlier centuries the Buddhists at Ali Masjid - a bottle neck in the line of advance-where in earlier centuries the Buddhists stopped for water and left their traces behind. It is amazing to note that all the three traditions the Buddhist, the Persian, and Muslim have their features carved in the region.

Ali Masjid and the army fort is a marker of history at the highest point of Khyber Pass. It is located 10 miles east of Landi Kotal city (West of Peshawar), 15km from Jamrud at the narrowest point of the pass and its height is 3,174 feet. A mosque has been a memorial of Hazrat Ali according to local tradition he visited this place. There is a small cemetery filled with the graves of British soldiers who martyred in the second Afghan War. Before the pass was widened to 3m, it has been said that it’s been too narrow even for the two fully-laden camels to pass each other.

The Battle of Ali Masjid served as the opening for Second Anglo-Afghan War between British and Afghan forces in 1878.Apprently it has been told that the afghan got offended with the entrance of British envoy to the country, British used that excuse to attack the fortress of Ali Masjid. John Burke in 1878, taken images of interior of the Ali Masjid Fort that showed a length of wall covered in niches with Buddha images.

A drive to the Khyber Pass road takes you back in history. On the flight to Peshawar, you can see the Afghani villages which are omit a sobering site, open a moon like environment and vast emptiness beyond border.