In The Khyber
Technically sold as a "Small Series" photography by Randolph Holmes, this candid shot combines sheep, probably a mosque entrance, telegraph and telephone lines.
Technically sold as a "Small Series" photography by Randolph Holmes, this candid shot combines sheep, probably a mosque entrance, telegraph and telephone lines.
A lone cart contemplates entering the Khyber Pass on this early color postcard; nearly as daunting is the white space awaiting the sender's message.
Postcards of camels transporting goods were common from the Northwest Frontier Province [now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa], as in this postcard by Holmes, and Sindh, this one probably an amateur real photo postcard from 1929.
Camp Ali Musjid is atop the hill on the left, a key base for the Second Afghan War in 1878-79 between the Raj and Afghanistan; this postcard shows the British encampments on the same border with Afghanistan forty years later in the Third Afghan War.
A rare visit by the Prince of Wales to the edges of Empire; note the car in the foreground and mid-ground. Edward VIII later gained notoriety for abdicating in 1936 after choosing to marry a divorced America woman, Wallis Simpson.
A postcard probably taken during the 3rd Afghan War in 1919 on the border between British India and Afghanistan; the battery was not far from camp shown in the background.
This image probably dates from the 1890s and was made by William Darcia Holmes, the father of Randolph Holmes who published these postcards from their Peshawar studio.
Most postcards of the Khyber Pass show the decline of the roadway towards the Afghan border at Torkham, where the Frontier of India [now Pakistan] sign stood.
Occasionally, nomads — those most fleeting of human subjects and least sedentary inhabitants of our planet—were caught on a postcard.
Nestle, founded in 1867, claims on its website that its relationship with India started in 1912. Cards like this from approximately 1900 are evidence that the roots of this relationship extend back earlier.