In 1990, armed with five kilos of luggage, a camera, and a liter of vodka, Sheila Paine set off for the high valleys of the Hindu Kush in northern Pakistan, looking for an interesting amuletic pattern relevant to her work as a textile expert. It remained elusive, always to be found "in the next valley." Undeterred, she followed traces of it on tribal costumes and in fabric amulets into increasingly dangerous and remote territories.

Over two years, her quest took her into Makran, an area split by the Pakistan/Iran border and totally closed to outsiders, then into Iran itself, once she was able to escape the watchful eye of a suspicious government official. She was smuggled into Afghanistan and continued her journey through Iraqi and Turkish Kurdistan before reaching the Black Sea and the last link in the chain, the small town of Razgrad in eastern Bulgaria.