It’s still the “most beautiful place on earth,” the young Nobel Laureate says.

Returning home after a long absence is always going to be an emotional experience, but we can imagine this one was on another level.

Twenty-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by Taliban extremists in 2012 for her advocacy for girls’ education, went back to her native Pakistan for the first time last week.

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Yousafzai was moved to the United Kingdom for treatment for her injuries following the attack, and she’s lived there since.

She’s been keeping busy – Yousafzai started studying at Oxford University last year, and she has a non-profit working on improving girls’ access to education.

So it wasn’t until she’d been gone six years that Yousafzai made it back to Pakistan. Details of her trip were kept under wraps while she was still in the country, but now, Yousafzai has shared some photos on social media.

A post shared by Malala Fund (@malalafund) on

“I missed everything about home – the rivers, the mountains, my friends,” she wrote in the caption of this family snap. “Seeing it again today, I’ve never been so happy.”

Alongside images of her Swat Valley hometown in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Yousafzai said it was “the most beautiful place on Earth to me.”

It’s a dramatic landscape, and one that clearly means the world to Yousafzai.

On Twitter, she shared another beautiful family photo.

Yousafzai plans to return to live in Pakistan when she finishes her Oxford studies, Gulf News reports.

We’re sure that memories of this trip will make the rest of her time away easier.

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Images: Malala Yousafzai/Twitter