Sean Rocha

A journey through the Khyber Pass in 1930

This remarkable silent film shows a journey in 1930 from Lahore, then part of India, through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.  As one might expect for that era, the interstitial cards reference Kipling and oversell the exoticism: “Miles of camels, majestic, tail to nose, nose to tail, bearing salt, cotton, and sugar from India along the road to distant Samarkand…”  But, in fact, as the footage documents they came across just such a camel caravan, one of many delights to be found in this film.  It comes (via The Internet Archive) from the collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 6th, 2011 at 12:58 pm. It is filed under That is Genius and tagged with film, India, South Asia, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.