5-Day Bamiyan, Band-e Amir & Ghazni

Your guide meets you in the arrivals hall at Kabul airport and takes you to the hotel to drop your bags. The afternoon is an easy introduction to the capital: the riverside Shah-Do Shamshira Mosque, the caged songbirds and pigeon-fanciers of the Kah Faroshi Bird Market, and the quiet mausoleum of Timur Shah Durrani, who made Kabul the Afghan capital in 1776. At dusk you drive up Wazir Akbar Khan Hill to watch the city light up below. Overnight in Kabul at the Khyber Kabul.

The road to Bamiyan climbs over the 3,200-metre Unai Pass, a five-to-six-hour drive that rewards an early departure — bring snacks and water, as roadside stops are simple. In the Bamiyan valley you explore Shahr-e Zuhak, the Red City fortress, and climb the hilltop ruins of Shahr-e Gholghola, the City of Screams sacked by Genghis Khan in 1221. After the Buddhist niches of the Kakrak Valley you stand beneath the great empty niches where the 55-metre and 38-metre Buddhas watched over the valley until 2001, and wander the monastic caves cut into the cliff around them. The day ends gently, with tea in a cave house as guests of a local Hazara family.

A 4WD takes you deep into Band-e Amir National Park for a day among six blue lakes held in place by natural travertine dams at 2,900 metres. You cross Band-e Haibat by boat and visit the lakeside mosque and the footprint shrine of Hazrat Ali — who, the story goes, cut these dams into being with his sword — before settling into a picnic lunch with the whole improbable landscape in view. Back in Bamiyan by late afternoon, there is time for the town market before dinner.

This is the longest day of the tour, around seven to eight hours of driving in total, so an early start pays off — keep a warm layer handy for the morning mountain air. The route runs south-east to Ghazni, capital of the Ghaznavid Empire from 977 to 1186, where the two surviving minarets of Bahram Shah and Mas'ud III still rise in carved terracotta and Kufic script, both protected under UNESCO. You visit the tomb of Sultan Mahmud, the empire-builder himself, then walk among Soviet tanks and MiG aircraft from the 1980s war at the Military Open Air Museum, with the citadel above the old town as a final stop. From Ghazni it is a straightforward highway run back to Kabul for the night.

Your final morning takes in three farewell stops. First comes the Shewaki Buddhist Stupa, a Kushan monument of the 2nd to 4th centuries CE on the edge of the city, then Bagh-e Babur, where the first Mughal emperor lies buried in his favourite garden, and finally the Id Gah Mosque. From there it is a short drive to the airport — book your outbound flight for 17:00 or later so the morning never feels rushed.