Bolan Pass

The Bolan Pass cuts through the Brahui ranges of Balochistan, in Pakistan, leading from the plain of Kachhi at the edge of the Indus lowlands up to the plateau around Quetta. For thousands of years it has been one of the main routes between the Indus valley and the uplands of Afghanistan and Iran, used by traders, nomads and armies, a narrow gorge following the course of the Bolan river between steep walls of rock.

At the foot of the pass lies Mehrgarh, one of the most important prehistoric sites of South Asia. Excavations there revealed a farming village dating back to around 7000 BCE, with some of the earliest evidence in the region for the cultivation of wheat and barley and the herding of cattle, sheep and goats, a deep background to the later cities of the Indus civilisation.

In the nineteenth century the pass became a route for British armies moving towards Afghanistan, and later a railway was built through it, climbing by tunnels and bridges towards Quetta. Pastoral communities, including Brahui herders, still move their flocks seasonally through the valleys. For travellers today the drama is the landscape: bare, folded rock in bands of grey and ochre, a river glinting below, and the sense of climbing from one world into another.