Khyber Knights

CuChullaine O'Reilly

An account of perilous adventure and forbidden romance 
in the depths of mystic Asia!

ISBN 1590480007

Khyber Knights has a direct link to its own page on Barnes & Noble and Amazon.co.uk.  Alternatively, you can order Khyber Knights from your local bookshop.

Few places on Earth were more dangerous in 1983 than Peshawar, Pakistan. With a savage war being waged a few miles away between the Soviet Union and the Afghan mujahideen, Peshawar had become the new Casablanca. When she wasn’t being bombed, her narrow streets hosted a swirling human cocktail of turbaned freedom fighters, tight-lipped foreign mercenaries, naïve foreign aid workers, cruel Pathan warlords, and more spies than ever lurked in Berlin.
Riding through this fiery forge was CuChullaine O’Reilly. The journalist who turned equestrian explorer was already familiar with Peshawar and the surrounding lawless portions of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. A convert to Islam, the wandering horseman was unfazed by religious obstacles, fluent in the patois of the tribesmen, and able to partake of any local offering from luke warm goat fat to sullied ditch water.
Setting off from Peshawar, O’Reilly began an equestrian odyssey into a mediaeval portion of the world devoid of mercy and machinery. His mission was to ride over some of the world’s highest mountain ranges, thread his way through untamed tribes, and miraculously get back to war-torn Peshawar. Yet the adventure he sought demanded a high price. His horse died and was eaten by eager natives. He was kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned in Pakistan’s most infamous prison, and met murderers, bandits, whores, and princes. Yet despite these setbacks, O’Reilly never lost hope that he would complete his mounted exploration of the remote and dangerous heart of Asia.
Lavishly illustrated with dozens of drawings and maps, the resulting book was compiled from the field notes, maps and diaries the author brought back from his travels. It includes an in-depth glossary of native words, and the largest collection of ethnological, historical, political, sexual, and religious information ever gathered about life in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.
“Khyber Knights” is thus a rare talisman against a world grown soft and predictable. Its pages burn with a bawdy portrayal of the darkest secrets of this cruel and beautiful region. It is a tissue of mishaps and romantic adventures, poetic passages and natural beauties, set to the echoing of horses’ hooves.
Told with grit and realism by one of the world’s foremost equestrian explorers, “Khyber Knights” has been penned the way lives are lived, not how books are written. It makes every effort to rip the reader’s nerves to rags with its ruthless devotion to the unvarnished truth about life in the North West Frontier.
You do not read “Khyber Knights”. You survive it!

Advance comments on this Equestrian Travel Classic:

    “I must say you have had some incredible adventures.  I was amazed at your story.  Certainly nothing that ever happened to me on horse­back comes anywhere close to this!”
Douglas Preston – Author of “Cities of Gold”, “The Relic”, and “Talking to the Ground.”

“If it was any more authentic the reader would need a shot of penicillin when he finished the book.”
Sergeant Bo  Melin – French Foreign Legion, 2nd  R.E.P.

“Khyber Knights accurately explains the Pukhtun culture, which few outsiders have been able to grasp.  The story runs fast and tight, leaving the reader hungry for more.  All in all it is a wonderful book!”
Dr. Amjad Hussain – Pakistani explorer and author of “Journey of a Native Son.”

    “After completing a 14,000 mile horse trip through the USA, I thought I’d seen it all when it came to equestrian travel.  When I completed “Khyber Knights” I realized I hadn’t scratched the surface.”
Current long distance American riding champion, D. C. Vision.

    “Asadullah Khan (CuChullaine O’Reilly) has revealed Pakistan’s secrets, as well as her sorrows.”
Professor G. M. Qureshi - Peshawar, Pakistan

  “Your story was impossible to put down!  It makes the things I’ve done on horseback look like kids’ stuff.”
American Equestrian Explorer Emeritus Marshal Ralph Hooker

    “You are the only non-Pakistani I know who has got it right.  I compliment you on your insight and intuition.”
Khalid Hasan, Special Correspondent, Associated Press of Pakistan – Washington DC

 “You have written a masterpiece!  This is the book that will top all other horse travel books.”
Jeremy James – Author of “Saddletramp” and “Vagabond”

“If anybody asks, tell them I read this book straight through – TWICE!”
Dave Yamada – Adventurers Club of America