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Bamiyan and Band-i-AmirBamiyan was always a popular tourist destination in the old days because of the two enormous Buddhas that dominated the valley. These were, famously, destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001, who also destroyed the painted stucco decoration in the rabbit warren of caves in the surrounding cliffs. But these were only one of the reasons to visit Bamiyan and there are a number of other sights in the area. In particular, the chain of brightly coloured lakes at Band-i-Amir must be accounted one of the natural wonders of the world and is due to be made a UNESCO World Heritage Nature site.
The drive to Bamiyan is spectacular, via the Hajigak Pass from Kabul, and enters the valley through a narrow defile of magenta cliffs, passing some curious hot springs whose water is an orange colour and is gaseous and bubbles like a cooking pot. The entrance is guarded by the ruined castle of Shahr-i-Zohak
Civilisation is very ancient in this valley, and long precedes Buddhism. Remains of fortifications from before the Christian era have been found here[1] and it seems to me likely that Bamiyan was settled during the period of the Greek kingdom of Bactria – certainly the shopkeepers are always trying to sell you coins they claim to be ‘Bacterian’ that might be genuine.
It is still possible to climb up the staircase at the side of the giant Buddhas and look out across the valley from the balcony behind what used to be the large Buddha’s head. In 2004, an archaeological team was cataloguing the debris with the aim of reconstructing both statues. But the most exciting archaeological prospect in Bamiyan is the possibility that there is an even more enormous Buddha buried in the valley. An 8th century Chinese traveller, Hsiuen-Tsang, wrote ‘To the east of the city 12 or 13 li there is a palace in which there is figure of the Buddha lying in a sleeping position as when he attained nirvana. The figure is in length about 1,000 feet or so.’ A Japanese team has been using Ground Penetrating Radar to search for this, and in 2003 was optimistic that it was on to something[2].
About three miles to the east of the Buddhas is a rock formation that I would describe as one of the most remarkable natural sights I have seen anywhere in the world. It is a long tongue of lava cracked open by an earthquake, with mineral water pouring out from springs at the north end, springs originating so deep that one can hear their subterranean bubbling and groaning. The story is that it is the petrified body of a dragon, killed by Hazrat Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law.
It makes an extraordinary impression. Nancy Dupree wrote ‘In escorting visitors to the Bamiyan dragon, I have found their initial scoffing quickly turns into genuine sympathy for this dragon who has lain here groaning, bleeding and crying through the centuries’.
The dragon’s body is a long peninsula of frozen lava about 300 yards long, flat on the top where it is broken by a crack running the entire length of the body. This is where Hazrat Ali’s sword bisected the beast.
Or it may be the product of an earthquake. At its widest it gapes open about 3 feet. At the tail end it seems about six feet deep but then deepens rapidly and in the middle could be hundreds of feet deep. You can hear deep gurglings and rumblings from a long way down. It is easy to believe that it goes, through the crust and magma, right to the centre of the earth. The sheer rock formations along the crest suggests that the dragon itself must have looked similar to those dinosaurs who, for obscure evolutionary reasons, had plates along their back.
As you walk down the spine, your footsteps ring hollow on the rock. The northern tip of the peninsula does indeed look like the head of a creature and the fissure is only inches wide here, like a skull split open by a Mongol scimitar. The waters from the springs at the north end which corresponds to the dragon's eyes have given rise to soft waves of white calcium, over which the water still flows silently, forming patterns like those left by a retreating tide on a tropical beach. These are the dragon's tears: its ears are formed of plugs of lava eroded into cones 15 foot high. The surrounding countryside is of soft loess hills, green in the spring, making the dragon all the more astonishing.
By pressing your ear to the rock, you can hear the trapped dragon’s moans as it chafes at its captivity. Locals say that they used to be much louder and presumably the underground springs are drying out.
A three-hour journey away by car, or a three-day trek on horse, is the extraordinary chain of lakes at Band i Amir. They are astonishingly beautiful – the water varies in colour from turquoise to deep blue-black from lake to lake. Before I first came here I had always assumed that the Afghan Tourist Organisation’s photographs of the lakes had had their colour touched up. But they really are these colours, tinted by the mineral salts in springs that feed the lakes.
Bamiyan and Band-i-Amir makes an excellent expedition from Kabul, or may be part of a longer trip to Ajar and beyond. It leads to one of the few passes across the Hindu Kush and down to the plain of Afghan Turkestan – Robert Byron’s land of Oxiana.
[1] Nancy Dupree Afghanistan, 1972 edition, p. 172
[2] See my article in The Spectator on this. However, my hunch is that Hsiuen-Tsang’s story refers to the dragon outcrop.
