Two enormous cavities open in the sandstone cliff that closes the valley, fifty-five and thirty-eight metres tall. They held Buddhas carved from the rock in the sixth century, blown apart with dynamite by the Taliban in March 2001. What you see now are the empty shapes, the sockets of the original scaffolding still in the stone, and the salvaged fragments under shelters at the foot of the wall. The cliff around them is riddled with hundreds of monks' caves, a few with painted ceilings still intact, reached by internal stairs that climb to the height of the missing shoulders.