I enter a tiny, hexagonal room at the base of one of the remaining stone towers of the Kabuli Gate. Most of the space is taken up by the impressive bulk of Abdul Wahid, proprietor of the Khyber Dentist Clinic.
Stone walls keep the clinic pleasantly cool, but it's impossible to keep out the roar of Peshawar's mighty traffic. An unbroken succession of private buses, turning out of the junction with Hospital Street, hoot furiously at each other while their conductors shout for business, yelling their destinations, selling tickets on the move and, when full, slapping the sides of their vehicles with cacophonous panache.
I've spent a lifetime in dental treatment of one kind or another, so I'm quite interested to see how Mr Wahid works. I squeeze into his chair, taking care not to dislodge the ominously placed green plastic bucket beside it. As I settle back I find myself staring at a wall decorated with a pair of dentures and a copy of the Koran. <more>
Micheal Palin's (who was in Monty Python dochaknow) is simply brilliant in this travel show. I can not imagine chosing anyone better to travel around the world. It has a this odd mixture of great locations and physical humour but more than anything else its the little moments that really dig in deep inside you. Like when he's crossing the Sahara its not the desert and the camels you remember but an odd conversation he has with one of the bedouins where niether can understand what the other is saying. The bediuon seemingly is teaching Micheal to say something bad in his language (which is often the case in learning any new language) and it ends up being this real bonding experience between the two.
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