Jalalabad

Jalalabad lies at only five hundred and seventy-five metres where the Kabul river comes out of its gorge onto a warm plain, which made it the winter capital under Timur Shah and later Habibullah and Amanullah and still makes it where Kabul goes when Kabul freezes. Orange and lemon groves and sugar cane fill the irrigated land around it. The road up the Kabul gorge to the capital is one of the more alarming drives in the country, cut into cliffs above the water. Amir Habibullah Khan is buried in a garden in the middle of town. Torkham and the Pakistani border are about seventy kilometres east-southeast.