The Spectator’s Notes | 14 August 2010

When I asked him whether we needed any waterproofs for our visit to Afghanistan, our leader, Sandy Gall, was firm. No need whatever, he said. But when we reach Bamiyan on a UN plane early in the morning, we look down from the cliff above the town and see our hotel cut off by flood. A lorry has capsized in the torrents, and men with their salwars hoisted high are wading ineffectually about. Sandy’s solution is to book ten donkeys to carry us across later, and meanwhile breakfast in the rather broken-down hotel where, pro tem, we find ourselves. From where we sit, we can survey the niches in which, until the Taleban bombarded them to smithereens, stood the two colossal Buddhas — one from the fifth and the other from the third century — which were wonders of the world.

It is so sad to look in the niches and see only the faintest ghosts of those great figures.