This book is a personal account based on the author s past fieldwork experiences in different regions of Afghanistan and more recent work in Kabul spanning some forty-four years from 1966 to 2010. Although the fieldwork is ostensibly about music, it is the fieldwork experience that becomes the focus of the book. The individual journeys described in the book are more than simply routes or pathways from one place to another; they are about connections and encounters with Afghans who become the travel guides along the way and at destinations. The guides reveal the importance about being an Afghan; they convey their concepts of time, place, identity and music; they express their moral and ethical values; and they willingly share their customs and worldviews with the researcher who seeks a common bond with them. Readers who accompany the author on her journeys will gain a perspective of Afghanistan that is often overlooked or sorely lacking in the current popular discourse on the war in Afghanistan. For the general reader the book is first and foremost about travels and encounters, and secondly about the music that necessitates the travels. For the ethnomusicologist, the book is about the music and the fieldwork experience. The main framework of the book is geographical and chronological, yet chapters include leaps in time and place to illustrate connections between the past and present, and between one place and another including Tajikistan, Kirghizstan, Pakistan and India.