Afghanistan is not so much a country as a series of shifting borders. A place with no easily definable physical or civil boundaries. A place where war is an everyday fact of life. A place where more children will learn to use a gun than will go to school. About 1.5 million have been killed during the past 20 years of war. Perhaps another 4 million have fled. Every major road has been torn apart by tank treads. Almost every major building left standing has been blown full of holes. This is the most militant Islamic state on Earth but it was once was peace loving and Buddhist. In the Bamiyan Valley north of Kabul the two largest statues of Buddha on the planet were carved in the third century. David Adams was the last Westerner to exhaustively film them before they were blown up in 2001.
Up Next in Season 1
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The Road To Shangri-La
Legend tells of a utopian kingdom hidden among the towering mountains of inner Asia. A paradise on Earth, yet a place apart. A place of spiritual contentment and eternal life. A place that’s become known to the West as Shangri-La. For century’s romantics, adventurers and the devout risked their l...
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The Lost World Of The Khmer Rouge
Cambodia is a country of impenetrable jungles and ruins lost in time. Where kings became gods and monks still seek heavenly peace. Now, this mysterious land has begun to open up to reveal the dark beauty that has lured adventurers here for centuries. For more than 30 years, the jungles have been ...
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The Lost City of Gold
The two flinty syllables strike at the imagination like the sudden hard beat of an Andean drum. Cities of gold; sun worship; virgin sacrifice. The stuff of legend. Legends that for the most part remain hidden in the impenetrable no-man’s land of Peru’s high country. For the better part of 400 yea...
