The lush-green valley of Swat, with its rushing torrents, icy-cold lakes and fruit-laden orchards is a veritable Garden of Eden. This is "Udayana" (the "Garden") of the ancient Hindu epics; "the land of enthralling beauty" where Alexander of Macedonia fought and won some of his major battles before crossing over to the plains of Pakistan.

This is "the valley of the hanging chains" described by the famous Chinese pilgrim-chroniclers, Huain Tsang and Fa-Hian in the fifth and sixth centuries. Swat was the cradle of Buddhism where 1,400 monasteries once flourished and it was home to the famous Gandhara School of Sculpture, an expression of Graeco-Roman form in the local Buddhist tradition. It was also the historical land where the Muslim conquerors, Mahmud of Ghazni, Babur and Akbar fought their battles before their conquest of the sub-continent.