By the track bloomed wild flowers, violets and narcissus, shedding their fresh delicate perfume.

The song of birds and hum of insects filled the air, bright butterflies flashed across our path, while the soft distant notes of a cuckoo recalled shady country lanes and the sunlit hay-fields of an English summer.

It was like coming from the grave, after the sterile deserts and bleak desolate plains of Northern Persia.
There is a small square building at the northern end of the Kotal Doktar, a mud hut, in which are stationed a guard of soldiers to be of assistance in the event of robbery of caravans or travellers.

Such cases are not infrequent.

Upon our approach, three men armed with flint-locks and long iron pikes accosted us.