No ordinary trip: Visiting Afghanistan

Although Bamiyan is one of the safest places in Afghanistan, I was careful to wrap up, covering my arms and legs and twisting a scarf around my head. I picked my way down the hill and through the dusty pathways of the village, drawing few stares and the occasional smile.

The towering niches, although empty, are more impressive close up. It's still possible to see the outline of the statues, and some parts remain, as if in bas relief, although most is in rubble.

UNESCO and Afghan archaeologists have spent years collecting and cataloguing fragments of the statues and stabilizing the cliff side.

For $3 — plus a negotiable "tax" — it's possible to explore the caves. I'm escorted by an earnest young Afghan archaeological student to the smaller statue, Buddha's wife.

As we approach a locked wooden door in the base of the cliff, my guide begs off, saying he wants to attend a party, and leaves me with a set of heavy keys, a yellow hard hat and a warning that "some parts are still unstable."

I inch my way up a narrow, dark and crumbling staircase that branches out on several levels into empty caves, some of which bear a hint of the elaborate paintings and frescoes that once decorated the now-musty interior.

The walls crumble beneath my touch. I step gingerly on the decaying floor, acutely aware that mobile phone reception is sketchy here and shouts for help would be futile. When at last I reach the top, I sit for a while in a Buddha-shaped cave where the devout once came to pray, looking out over green fields of wheat and potatoes to the snowy mountains of the Hindu Kush.

Most people leave after seeing the Buddhas, but there are other sites worth seeing, including the lakes of Band-i-Amir, five pools of sapphire blue set amid desert canyons, and the ruins of the Red City and the City of Screams, which were built in the 12th century and razed by Genghis Khan a century later.

If you go Afghanistan: Travel warning from the U.S. Department of State Kabul Travel Agencies: Great Game Travel. Afghan Logistics and Tours. Lonely Planet: "Afghanistan" guide by Paul Clammer (August, $25.99). Tips from travelers for offbeat places.

The Red City, or Shahr-i-Zohak, sprawls out over three levels atop a red cliff mountain at the entrance to the Bamiyan valley. Sultani, my driver, used to play there as a boy, and practically skips his way to the top following our mandatory military guide, as I scramble up the path behind, clinging to parts of the citadel's fortifications and keeping an eye out for red-painted rocks, an indication of land mines.

Both Shahr-i-Zohak and Shahr-i-Gholghola, the City of Screams, were heavily mined during decades of war, although most have been cleared.

For my last adventure in Bamiyan, we head to Dragon's Valley, a mountain ridge in a valley of undulating anonymous gray sand dunes. Legend has it that a dragon terrorized locals, demanding each day a young girl and the occasional camel to eat. Until that is, Islam's dragon slayer Hazrat Ali split the beast in two with his sword leaving a fissure 3 feet wide at some points, and sparking a mass conversion to Islam.

The ribbed mountain does look like a dragon's scaly back. Inside the chasm you can hear the dragon's mournful rumbling — bubbling spring water streaming like tears from the dragon's eyes.

Over the next few days I pack in a day trip to the Panjshir Valley, visiting the marble and stone tomb of Ahmad Shah Masood, a resistance hero who was assassinated by al-Qaeda a few days before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The tomb is perched high on a hill with a commanding view of the valley he defended from Soviet troops.

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I'm picked up early the next day by Great Game Travel company for a daylong tour of Kabul, the capital, that jumps between the 5th century city wall to 16th century Babur Gardens to the buzzing Kabul market. Here fighting cocks are sold for $100 each, and women in sky-blue burqas teeter on high heels as they jostle to buy tea and spices.

Standing on a hill looking over the city, our guide Ghulam Sakhi Danishjo points out the Kabul stadium where the Taliban once carried out public executions.

What happens there now? "Oh," said Sakhi, "now, they just play soccer."

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