by Martin Field

Mango juice in Peshawar
In 1971, I travelled the hippie trail over land (and sea) from London to Melbourne and stayed a little while in Afghanistan, which was as peaceful as you’d like. We left Kabul late one afternoon in our clapped out bus, heading to Pakistan via the Khyber Pass. Somewhere in the Pass we stopped at a lawless village where fierce-looking Pathans wandered round with rifles and bandoliers. Most things banned in the rest of the world were on sale there. Cheap.

We headed onwards to Peshawar and stopped in the dark by the steamy roadside to camp. Out of the night came an armed local with whom we shared a smoke or two. He looked up suddenly and disappeared into the scrub. Next thing up drives a Pakistani army Jeep with a lieutenant and a couple of off-siders. They told us it was unsafe to camp there ‘Too many bandits.’

Too tired to move on we insisted on staying so they went off and came back later with six more soldiers (and a welcome jerry can of drinking water) and spent the night with us. In the morning, they accompanied us to the next village and took us to the well where they’d got our water. It was full of scum and algal bloom…

I didn’t fancy another glass of sludge so from one of the many stalls along the road I bought what I thought was a bottle of soft drink – it was icy cold mango juice – the quintessence of fresh mango to my dry and bacterially laden tongue. This heavenly mango juice sustained me on my trip through Pakistan. After all these years, I can almost taste it now.

PS I met one of my fellow travellers in Melbourne years later. He too had drunk the scummy water that night and still had an immovable colony of dysenteric amoeba residing in his guts to prove it.