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Saffron Field, Kashmir, India, 1999

"From each crocus flower patient hands will pluck three vivid garnet strands of saffron. An acre yields only a few pounds of the world's most costly spice. Lush fields and placid lakes once drew more than half a million tourists a year, but civil unrest has shattered Kashmir's calm and left tourism in shambles."

—From "Kashmir: Trapped in Conflict," September 1999, National Geographic magazine

Photograph by Steve McCurry