This is a great value-for money option for serious travellers. A single deluxe room should cost 1,300 Pakistani rupees (about USD 18) per night. Each room has modern TV's, clean bathrooms, comfortable warm beds and hot water. If you want ritzy appointments, go to the Pearl Continental down the road. This hotel is frequented by the occaisonal jourrnalist travelling into or out of Afghanistan and select foreigners working in various vague activities. Nonetheless, you will probably be the only foreigner staying at the hotel. The food in the restaurant is awesome, and the breakfast buffet is out of this world. No problems with the food here, it won't make you sick.

Aesthetically, the hotel is unprepossessing from the outside but rather grand on the inside. The central part of the hotel features an enormous, half-lit atrium with vines descending from the interior terraces. The restaurant, in which the above-mentioned food is so great, is a bit dingy and depressing so feel free to take your meals in the atrium area.

Location is good. Markets are just around the corner, the railway station is just down the road, the old town can be reached for 30 rupees in a qingqi (pronounced ching chee, the small mechanised rickshaw taxis favoured by locals) or one can even walk.

If you wish to get into Afghanistan, ask at the front desk and someone will eventually help you. It should cost you between 2,000 and 3,800 rupees to get to the border, and this includes an armed guard from the Pakistan military. After that you're on your own.