The road from Jacobabad to Sibi and on through the Bolan Pass until it reaches Quetta passes through the inhospitable Kacchi desert and the Brahui mountain range. The Bolan Pass was the original access into India, until superseded by the Khyber Pass, and provided a trade route to Central Asian merchants and Afghani traders.
The British were forced to use the Bolan Pass when the Army of the Indus, prevented by Ranjit Singh from traversing the Punjab, assembled at Rohri/Sukkur and then marched north-westwards through the Pass until it reached Quetta on 20 April
1839.
An exuberant description of Quetta as it appeared to a footsore member of the Army of the Indus Capt. Richard Kennedy gives an idea of early Quetta. He described it as 'a small place of poor appearance, and its population ground to the dust by the exactions of its government, and the free-trading character of its neighbours. Until our tents arrived and were pitching, we rested in a noble orchard. Fine standards of the size of forest-trees, apple, pear, peach, apricot, and plum, were surmounted and overhung with gigantic vines, which wreathing round the trunks, and extending to the remotest branches, festooned from tree to tree in a wild luxuriance of growth such as I have never dreamt of seeing in fruit-trees and the vine it was the first month in spring, and they were covered with blossoms which perfumed the air, and presented a picture of horticultural beauty surpassing description.'
Nature, bountiful yet capricious, exacted a toll from Quetta for such generosity when, on 31 May 1935, the city suffered and survived a devastating earthquake which killed 23,000 inhabitants and demolished a number of its old buildings