Syria, Iran and Afghanistan are considered high-risk for Westerners to visit today – but when one European travelled around them in the 1970s, he discovered ‘heaven nearly everywhere’.
Dutch native Frank van den Berge, 73, took incredible photographs of his time in these countries, showing Afghanistan before the Taliban, Iran in an era when people dressed in a ‘Western style’ and landmarks that have since vanished – such as the Buddhas of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban