Kandahar
Kandahar is situated in the far south of the country, about midway between Kabul and Herat. It's the second-largest city in Afghanistan and lies at an important crossroads, where the main thoroughfare from Kabul branches northwest to Herat and southeast to Quetta in Pakistan.
Kandahar lies very much in the Pashto heartland and has gained modern significance as the power base of the Taliban militia. Kandahar's great treasure, a cloak that once belonged to the Prophet, is safely locked away from infidel eyes in the Mosque of the Sacred Cloak, known locally as Da Kherqa Sharif Ziarat.
A few kilometres from the centre of Kandahar towards Herat are the Chihil Zina, or Forty Steps. They lead up to a niche carved in the rock by Babur, founder of the Mogul empire, which is guarded by two stone lions.
Herat
Herat was once a small, provincial, relatively green, laze-about place that everyone seemed to like, an easy-going oasis after a lot of hassle and dry desert. In the 15th century, Herat was the Timurid centre of art, poetry, miniature painting and music, blending Persian, Central Asian and Afghan cultures to create one of Central Asia's cultural highlights. Today the city sits particularly uneasily under puritan Taliban rule.
The Friday Mosque, or Masjid-i-Jami, is Herat's number one attraction and among the finest Islamic buildings in the world, certainly the finest in Afghanistan. It has some exquisite Timurid tilework to complement its graceful architecture. Herat's ancient citadel, or qala (1305), is currently a Taliban base. The covered bazaar in Char souq is a complex of all sorts of shops and artisans' workshops.
A short walk from the city centre are the remains of an old medressa (1417), built by the Queen Gaur Shad. The wife of Timurid ruler Shah Rukh, Gaur Shad was Timur's daughter-in-law and a remarkable woman in her own right, who kept the empire intact for many years. Her mausoleum still stands near the medressa, a carbon copy of the Gur Emir in Samarkand.
The shrine complex of Gazar Gah (1425) is about 5km (3mi) east of Herat. The tomb of Abdullah Ansar, a famous Sufi mystic and poet who died in Herat in 1088, is the main attraction. The Afghan King Dost Mohammed and the famous Persian poet Jami are also buried here.
The 65m-high (123ft) Minaret of Jam, 313km (194mi) from Herat and around 550km (341mi) from Kabul, is the second highest in the world, as well as one of the oldest, dating back some 800 years.

Source: http://www.yahoo.com


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