From the Dorah to the Khawak pass (or group of passes, for it is seldom that one line of approach only is to be found across the Hindu Kush), which is between 11,000 and 12,000 ft. in altitude, the water-divide overlooks Kafiristan and Badakshan. Here its exact position is matter of conjecture. It lies amidst a wild, inaccessible region of snowbound crests, and is certainly nowhere less than 15,000 ft. above sea-level. There is a tradition that Timur attempted the passage of the Hindu Kush by one of the unmapped passes hereabouts, and that, having failed, he left a record of his failure engraved on a rock in the pass. Passes. The Khawak, at the head of the Panjshir tributary of the Kabul river, leading straight from Badakshan to Charikar and the city of Kabul, is now an excellent kafila route, the road having been engineered under the amir Abdur Rahman's direction, and it is said to be available for traffic throughout the year. From the Khawak to the head of the Ghorband (a river of the Hindu Kush which, rising to the north-west of Kabul, flows north-east to meet the Panjshir near Charikar, whence they run united into the plains of Kohistan) the Hindu Kush is intersected by passes at intervals, all of which were surveyed, and several utilized, during the return of the Russo-Afghan boundary commission from the Oxus to Kabul in 1886. Those utilized were the Kaoshan (the "Hindu Kush" pass _par excellence_), 14,340 ft.; the Chahardar (13,900 ft.), which is a link in one of the amir of Afghanistan's high roads to Turkestan; and the Shibar (9800 ft.), which is merely a diversion into the upper Ghorband of that group of passes between Bamian and the Kabul plains which are represented by the Irak, Hajigak, Unai, &c. About this point it is geographically correct to place the southern extremity of the Hindu Kush, for here commences the Koh-i-Baba system into which the Hindu Kush is merged. General conformation.