ABSTRACT
The drive from Peshawar, Pakistan, to Kabul, Afghanistan, was remarkable for many things: the dry heat, the 10-hour trip across rutted, rock-strewn remnants of highway, the rusted tanks and bombed villages, and the dust that enveloped us through the open windows as our Toyota Corolla taxi maneuvered and bounced, at a remarkably high rate of speed, through what was left of the roads. This was just the beginning. Even across this brief 140-mile (220-km) stretch of eastern Afghanistan the natural beauty of the country is clear-the blue-green rivers and lakes, undulating valleys with fields of rounded stones, flat mesa plateaus, sandstone hills with natural caves, steep shale peaks turned sideways by glaciers, and jagged mountains.
