He reaches Afghanistan in Herat, roaming the city with a young woman who is afraid that the Taliban might come back. In Masar-e Sharif, he visits the ruins of ancient Balkh, which Marco had written about as the Mother of Cities. Today Bradley needs police protection to roam the famous ruins. He gets an army airlift to Faizabad in Badakhshan, starting point for an adventurous expedition in search of the world’s oldest mines. In the middle of nowhere, lapis lazuli has been mined for 7000 years. Marco Polo was the first European to write about the blue stone that was known as ultramarine.