Blessed with stark natural beauty, venerable history and rich and diverse culture,Afghanistan has of late been blinghted with more than its share of troubles. This landlocked country,at the crossroads of Central Asia, has seen armies and empires,merchants and mwndicants, poets and prophets come and go over millennia. Lmages of a war-blighted landscape do not do justice to a country that once hosted Silk Rode caravans and was once the ultimate destination on the hippy trail.

April to june for clement weather-or the 1380s, the artistic zenith of the timurids

Shopping for bargains in the bazaar in Heart,seat of Persian culture

Climbing the Chihil Zina (40 steps) carved into the hillside near Kandahar

Gazing at the dizzyingly high Minaret of jam-what’s it doing in the middle nowhere?

Joining the pilgrims flocking around the blue domes of the She Shrine of Hazrat Ali in

Mazar-e Sharif

Soaking in the deep-blue, mineral-rich waters of the Band-e Amir lakes

Read Robert Byron’s the Road to Oxiana or Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, both all-time travel classics; ldris Shah’s Afghan Caravan-a compendium

Watch Osama, directed by Sidig Barmak, a poignant tale of a young girl forced to assume a male identity to survive, and one of Afghanistan’s first post-Taliban movies

Eat qabli pulao (seasoned rice with mutton, almonds, grated carrots and raisine);

Apricots dride in mountain villages

Drink green tea scented with cardamom

Salam alekum (peach be with you), a ubiquitous greeting and blessing; Borou bekheir

(travel well)

Men wits moustaches and turbans; women in head-to-toe veils; opium poppies; snow-topped mountain vistas; intricate weaves of tribal ruge; horseborne swashbucklers playing polo with a headless goat of a ball; oasis cities looming on horizon

Overwhelming hospitality and spontaneous generosity; historical treasures; skies as perfectly blue as azure tiles; melons and mulberries

A marvelous, crazy country – vast empty deserts, historic old towns and best of all the proud and noble Afghanis. How else can you describe them? They clearly realize that no amount of money or capital possessions could compensate you for the unfortunate handicap of not being born in their country.