Buddhism spread quickly south from Buddha’s birthplace in Nepal across the flat Gangetic plain to Sri Lanka. But it took a millennium to reach China and instead of crossing the Himalayas to get there it followed a parabolic curve one and a half thousand kilometres east, five hundred kilometres north and two and a half thousand kilometres east again.60 The religion eventually stretched to Mongolia and Japan, but in Afghanistan Buddhism filled only a narrow belt that left pagans in the valleys to the east and west in Kailash and in Ghor.
