M`Nair's previous explorations, and to determine the conformation of the Hindu Kush.
On the west, Badakshan is bounded by a line which crosses the Turkestan plains southwards from the junction of the Kunduz and Oxus rivers till it touches the eastern waterdivide of the Tashkurghan river (here called the Koh-i-Chungar), and then runs south-east, crossing the Sarkhab affluent of the Khanabad (Kunduz), till it strikes the Hindu Kush.
The chief peaks in the province are Kaisargarh (11,300 ft.) and Pir Ghol (11,580 ft.) in Waziristan; Shekh Budin (4516 ft.), in the small range; Sikaram (15,621 ft.) in the Safed Koh; Istragh (18,900 ft.), Kachin (22,641 ft.) and Tirach Mir (25,426 ft.), in the Hindu Kush on the northern border of the Chitral agency; while the Kagan peaks in Hazara district run from 10,000 ft.
Geographically the Safed Koh is not an isolated range, for there is no break in the continuity of water divide which connects it with the great Shandur offshoot of the Hindu Kush except the narrow trough of the Kabul river, which cuts a deep waterway across where it makes its way from Dakka into the Peshawar plains.
The extent of Asoka's dominion included all India from the thirteenth degree of latitude up to the Himalayas, Nepal, Kashmir, the Swat valley, Afghanistan as far as the Hindu Kush, Sind and Baluchistan.