A Mind-Expanding Experience in Herat

The bus had returned from town and people then started to flow in when they smelt the smell and heard the noise. Soon there were about twelve or more people on the two beds and some twenty in the room. Most people got fairly high, and Brian, although claiming not to have smoked, laughed at all the unfunniest jokes more than anyone else. They occasionally seemed funny to me. I didn't talk much but I checked my pulse at three different times 120, 100, 80 as the effect wore off. It increased one's powers of concentration on the given object for a time, but interest soon falls off and one is distracted by the loudest sound or visual effect.

The conservation comes and goes like waves on the seashore, with everyone making comments at once about a subject that suddenly appeals, then total silence. Leon and Tom were playing the guitar most of the time. One's senses are not seriously impaired, and hearing and vision seem to become more acute. It occurred to me that making love under the influence of hash would be most enjoyable. Smoking hash is a very interesting experience, but not one I'd go very far to repeat, certainly where the laws are stronger and the hash more expensive I wouldn't bother. Retired to bed about 12:30.

Felt a little tired on waking, at whatever terrible hour it was, about 8:00. The bus left for town at 8:30. Here we had breakfast 25A in the Behzad Hotel. A very good way to start the day. Then we looked in some junk shops and so on, at guns and hookers, and other assorted stuff. Nothing took our fancy and we drifted back to the tourist office, where we found we could hire bicycles for 10A/hour. Herat is the third largest city in Afghanistan, with a population approaching 600,000. In 1969 there were less than 100,000.

Brian had disappeared to get a map of Herat when I returned, so after waiting around like an idiot for about 10 minutes I took myself off to see the "citadel" and the mosque. The original citadel is thought to have been built by Alexander the Great sometime after 330BC. Indeed, Alexander named the town Alexandria in Aria. Amazingly the second photo of the citadel was taken by Yves Picq also in 1969. The tiles round the outside of the mosque are amazing. I went inside to an inner courtyard, no one seemed to mind. Here there was a line of soldiers, and it looked like some official function, so I thought it better not to intrude.

I ran back to the main street, bought food for the journey, found the bus wouldn't be leaving for a few minutes so went and ordered tea. It didn't arrive, so I climbed onto the bus and off we went. The countryside here is fantastic, snow by the side of the road in places, and unbelievable mountains. It became apparent that travelling by bus was going to have the disadvantage of not leaving a lot of time for seeing places. We simply had to do the best we could, and not hang around waiting.