My thoughts are with Afghanistan’s people and the pain they must feel

A visit to the region in 2000, specifically the Hunza Valley, is one that I will not forget in a hurry, writes Katy Brand

An Afghan girl stands among widows during a project by CARE International in Kabul earlier this year (Reuters)

In the summer of 2000, I travelled with my boyfriend by road and rail from Shanghai to Islamabad. The final part of our journey taking us down through the Hunza Valley on the Karakoram Highway, the road that leads through the mountains and on to Islamabad. It was just over 12 months before 9/11, which then led to stringent Foreign Office advice not to visit this area under any circumstances.

I do not have a word larger than "spectacular" to describe the landscape and so it will have to do but it barely covers it. Your breath will truly be taken away, and not just because of the altitude. Or the death drop on one side of the road. As we set off on one of the brightly coloured hand-painted buses that beetle along the narrow mountain passes, I had my face pressed to the glass.

There are dramatic plunges into river ravines, occasionally with a wrecked bus at the bottom. You will see a shimmering plateau of silver desert spiked with pale grass that suddenly leaps up to meet the sky in huge snowy peaks. Ancient cave mouths appear and disappear in the rock folds, and then the next thing you are alongside a glacier from the last Ice Age, creeping onto the road. It’s hard to describe. As you can probably tell.