Kandahar

City in southern Afghanistan. A stop on the convoy route in Dervla Murphy’s Full Tilt.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Full Tilt	Dervla Murphy	journey waypoint	Arrives after a 22-hour convoy-bus ride; one key for twenty rooms leaves her with strangers.

Full Tilt — Dervla Murphy (1965)

Source: Full Tilt - Ireland to India With a Bicycle · Original · Readwise highlight

I came straight to the hotel, got my sore bones into bed and slept till 2 p.m. This hotel is a filthy building, but again my bed is clean and the only furniture in the room, apart from bed and chair, is a fine solid writing desk which compensates for a lot.

• Role: journey waypoint
• In the book: She arrives by convoy bus after a 22-hour, 420-mile journey, sleeps, then tours a city she finds attractive but full of Americans and flies. The hotel’s single key for twenty rooms leaves her sharing a room with two bearded strangers by dawn.
• Why it matters: The first large Afghan city on the southern route, where she sees American aid at work and begins to compare Afghans favourably with Persians.