Journeys in Our Disappearing World
by Gary Mancuso
The Last Places on Earth
Pictures from a short trip I did in war torn Afghanistan in early January 2005. Starting from Peshawar in the Northwest Territories of Pakistan, I did a road trip through the Khyber Pass and on to Kabul. I stayed in Kabul for a week and did a few day trips to some nearby villages. The road trip through the Khyber Pass to Kabul is a race against time. It was not safe at the time to be on the highway after dark. The taxi I hired for the ride had a bit of bad luck on the trip, but we made it to Kabul OK. The photos I took along the way were almost all taken from inside the car while driving at high speed. Many of the latter photos in this collection were taken in the Shomali Plain to the North of Kabul. Many of the villages in the area around the famous artisan village of Istalif were heavily damaged in the heavy fighting the previous decade. Read the full Afghanistan story.