An oasis of peace

There is a checkpost at the entrance to the Bamiyan Valley — one of the scores of shacks set along the earthen roads of Afghanistan designed to provide some appearance of security or, at least, a quiet place for policemen to sip their green tea. But this one is different.

It is not merely that the building marks the blessed end to an eight-hour ride over unpaved roads that shake the body like a box of matchsticks. It is that this shack seems to mark the entrance into an Afghanistan of which the world has never dreamt.

Beyond it, flowering fields stretch between stark grey mountainsides like a green carpet interspersed with the gold of wheat ready for harvest.

In an unpretentious governor's residence sits the only female governor in Afghanistan's history — appointed to rule over a province where 52 per cent of the registered voters are women, 10 per cent higher than the national average.

And on a rocky plateau, behind barbed wire, stand international soldiers who say the area is so safe they haven't needed to fire a shot since they arrived in 2003.

All Afghanistan reveals surprises upon closer inspection, but no place more than Bamiyan, where history and geology conspire to produce a people and place of incomparable beauty.

There is something almost spiritual in the drive to Bamiyan — a valley where two towering Buddha statues had been carved into sandstone cliffs and dozens of cave monasteries honeycombed the ruddy rock beside them.

Today, those Buddhas are gone, destroyed by the Taliban, but the echoes of those pilgrimages remain.

My camera whirs along as the neutral browns and greys of the Afghan palette give way to conceited greens that seem aware that they are, in this arid corner of the world, extraordinary.

Idyllic refuge

At the checkpost, Afghanistan becomes an idyllic place. The 90F heat of Kabul has turned into what seems a pleasant autumn afternoon. Beside the road, the Bamiyan River gurgles serenely over slick stones.

At the heart of the Bamiyan Valley rises an ancient citadel city, pale white against brush strokes of green, the seat of an empire conquered by Genghis Khan 800 years ago. In his anger, he destroyed the citadel and ever after, the wreck of a city — never rebuilt — was known as Ghulghula or the City of Sighs.

My sigh is of relief. Here there is no Taliban, which means that when journalists and aid workers enter the valley, their minds are freed from the constant vigilance that is Afghan life.

"Aid workers love coming here," says Jennifer Brick, a Kabul-based researcher for the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit.

Most of the New Zealander soldiers sent here to maintain peace can't believe their good fortune. Colonel Roger McElwaine, commander of the Bamiyan Provincial Reconstruction Team, says it is so safe that his troops can go out on weeks-long patrols, driving to the remotest corners of the province to make their rounds — in southern Afghanistan, patrols leave their base for no more than a few hours at a time.

The people of Bamiyan clearly look different from most Afghans: Their features suggest a Mongol origin, giving rise to the belief that they are the descendants of Genghis Khan's horde.

The Taliban certainly believe it, which is one reason they want to exterminate the people of Bamiyan and central Afghanistan, known as Hazaras, who are Shiites in an overwhelmingly Sunni country and are seen as outsiders.

By virtue of its staunch opposition and remote location, Bamiyan held out against the Taliban five years longer than Kabul, falling in 2001 — only months before it was freed by the US-backed Northern Alliance.

Bamiyan's ethnic heritage also means that its uniqueness is not confined to its landscapes. Long derided as brutal and beastly by some Afghans, Hazaras are, in fact, among the most progressive groups in Afghan society.

At the office of a leading Bamiyan cleric sits his head of financial affairs, Latifa Naseri, bashful but not in a burqa.

Outside Kabul, women are not to be seen or heard by male guests. But here, in the office of a senior cleric of the province, was a woman doing a job — openly.

"I feel so comfortable when I go to any part of Bamiyan," said Naseri. "But I have been to Baglan and Kabul, and even in Kabul I feel threatened."

A forgotten land

It is why President Hamid Karzai appointed a woman as governor. People see her gender as irrelevant. The farmers and traders of this valley care about electricity and roads, and their concerns are understandable. Bamiyan has been the Land the World Forgot. There are no paved roads and no connection to the Afghan electricity grid — when the local diesel-powered plant shuts off in the afternoon, there is no power, save that by personal generators.

Yet there is an allure to that — as if the whole valley is hushed in one sustained exhale. At daybreak, a haze of smoke settles in the valley as wood stoves kindle homes into the day's activity. Again, at midnight, when there is only moonlight to illumine the valley walls and the distant barking of dogs alone breaks the stillness, Bamiyan seems a world best left alone.