Afghan refugees flood back home

The brightly coloured trucks jingle their way down the dirt track to the UN's refugee reception centre in Kabul, whole lives piled four metres high on the back.

One after another, their decorative metal chains providing a musical accompaniment to the convoy, they pull into the compound and entire families emerge from among the towering stacks of bags, buckets and wooden beams - the first part of their journey complete.

From the long bamboo ladders propped up against the sides, 12 families emerge from just two trucks, their cows poking their heads out the back, wondering where and when they will be grazing next after 24 hours on the road.

Every day hundreds of families arrive here and in another centre further up the road in Jalalabad, along with everything they own - also hoping for greener pastures in the home they left more than two decades ago.

There are three generations here - from the children who think it is all a fascinating game, to the old men and women who remember the Afghanistan they left during the Soviet occupation.

Closing camps

Millions fled then and during the civil war that followed, and since the Taleban fell in 2001, millions have been coming home with high expectations.

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