The village of Istalef, situated some 30 km north of Kabul, has long been renowned for its natural beauty and craft traditions. The Mughal emperor Babur describes in his memoirs improvements he made to the irrigation of the gardens on the takht, where ancient plane trees stand to this day. The bazaar and surrounding villages were laid waste by British forces in 1842 during the first Anglo-Afghan war, attacked by Afghan government forces in the 1980s and by Taliban in 1998. Since 2002 there has been extensive reconstruction of damaged homes and resumption of the horticulture for which local orchards are known. Photos (c) Jolyon Leslie