Bamiyan is a heritage site of Buddhist remains carved on the rock cliffs of the Hindu Kush Mountains that stand 5000 meters high penetrating the middle of Afghanistan. This heritage site is situated in the lush Bamiyan Valley and was constructed between the 5th and 6th centuries AD.
The site consists of more than 720 rock caves on the cliffs facing south stretching 1500 meters from east to west. The 55 meter tall Large Buddha is considered to be the tallest standing Buddha statue in the world, and sculptures of sitting Buddhas, shrines for worshiping, and monastic cells for meditation are carved out of the rocks. Inside, the caves were once beautifully decorated with murals and sculptured statues. Buddhism began in India and as it spread to Central Asia and China before reaching Korea and Japan, it also extended to Bamiyan at its most western point.
Many world explorers yearned for Bamiyan's historic Buddhist site since Bamiyan was the merging point for eastern and western cultures. Xuan Zang, a Chinese's great monk visited Bamiyan in the mid-seventh century searching for Buddhist scriptures and he left a record of his visit in his "Journey to the West in the Great Tang Dynasty." He recorded a 300 meter long great reclining Buddha of Nirvana in his journal, its whereabouts remained unknown until October of 2003 when it was announced that it may have been discovered underground by Japanese delegates.
Bamiyan Heritage was terribly damaged by a war lasting over 25 years, but the Japanese government provided the Japanese Funds-in-Trust to UNESCO and this has afforded experts from all over the world the opportunity to collaborate on the project to carry out research, repair, and reconstruction of this site.