Bamiyan was worth the risky journey. Built starting in the sixth century, the pair of stone Buddhas, one 125 feet tall and the other 181 feet tall, stood overlooking the valley.

High in the rugged cliffs of Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley, two colossal statues once gazed out over a land crisscrossed by ancient trade routes. These Buddhas, carved in the 6th century, were ...

After all, the last year the Taliban were in power, in 2001, they blew up the world’s largest statues, the Bamiyan buddhas, went on an iconoclastic rampage at the National Museum in Kabul, and ...

They’ve been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and featured in films and books. They were 2016 National Geographic Adventurers of the Year. They broke barriers with their sport. But for the ...

PARIS — Before the Taliban demolished the Great Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001, the figures were the world’s largest standing depictions of the deity.The destruction of the statues, which had ...

March 11 marks the anniversary of the destruction of Bamiyan’s sixth-century Buddha statues by the Taliban in 2001. According to experts, encroaching construction, negligence, and looting are ...

The Buddhas originally stood 125 feet (38 meters) and 180 feet (55 m) tall, respectively, overlooking the Bamiyan Valley below, according to Harvard University.