A shopkeeper outside his store in Ishkashim, north-east Afghanistan, in July 2010.

You can wander around Ishkashim and imagine you’re not in Afghanistan. There are no soldiers, few guns and the only tanks are the rusting shells left by the Soviets. There is no sense that your life is in danger.

It feels like a different country to the one portrayed on the news – the Afghanistan of the insurgency, of suicide attacks and IEDs, of the countless deaths.

That’s the reason we were there. To spend time in this isolated corner of central Asia, and understand why it is peaceful enough even for tourists to visit – albeit adventurous ones.

When I say we, I was there with my BBC colleague Huw and two British climbers, Alan and Neal, who were planning to explore the far reaches of the Wakhan Corridor.

All four of us were met with traditional Afghan courtesy and hospitality during our stay. At every visit to the local police station or governor’s office we listened to long, elaborate speeches from our hosts welcoming us to Afghanistan and telling us we were important guests.

It only made our eventual hasty exit from the country – believing that we were possibly pursued by people with more hostile intentions – all the more strange. But more of that in a minute.

The journey to Afghanistan was via the long but secure way. After a rough two-day journey from the Tajikistan capital of Dushanbe in a 4×4 – along roads that varied from superbly smooth dual carriageway to dirt track – we reached the Tajik Ishkashim and the Afghan border.

After a night there, we crossed the border to the Afghan Ishkashim and spent the rest of the day following Alan and Neal around as they bought a month’s worth of supplies for their expedition.

There are many such communities like Ishkashim along the border – split by the vagaries of world politics decided from afar. Having said that, the atmosphere in the two places was very different, especially in how you could interact with women. (Generally you didn’t on the Afghan side , though I did notice women in burqas just flipping them up over their heads as soon as they reached the town’s outer limits.)

We then had two more days in 4x4s, travelling deep into the Wakhan Corridor on a road constantly in danger of being washed away by huge rivers. Both our vehicles got stuck at different points – ours on boulders during a river crossing and Alan and Neal’s in thick, orange mud.

The afternoon of the second day we arrived at Sarhad-e Broghil, the end of the road and the gateway to the Pamirs.

Our group was put up in a mud hut guesthouse, watched over by the kind and gentle Qachi Beg.

That evening we got a call from London on the sat phone. The BBC believed we could be in danger if we stayed in Afghanistan and told us to get out of the country immediately.

So there we were, with our host adjusting pillows around us as we relaxed after the meal he’d cooked for us, planning how we could get out of the country as soon as possible because of concerns for our safety. It was difficult to take in.

After what felt like a long 24 hours we were safely across the border and back in Tajikistan. It was the end of the trip for us and very sad to leave such wonderful people, as well as cut short our reporting on this incredible part of the world.

We’ll never know how real the risk was to us, but it was the right thing to pull us out – I don’t doubt that. The murders of several aid workers a week after we got home happened not too far away in Afghan terms.

Maybe one day we’ll be able to return.

As a consequence of having to ditch all our planned coverage, I have thousands of images that were never used, many of them the faces of people we met along the way. So I’m going to run some of them in a series on this photoblog over the next few weeks. I hope you enjoy them.