Afghanistan Photo Blogs

Afghanistan Tourism: An Introduction

Of all the Central Asian Republics, the easiest by far to get a tourist visa for is (surprisingly?) Afghanistan.
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I’d never planned to visit Afghanistan on this round of Central Asia (and indeed remember assurring several people that I wouldn’t… sorry guys), but after visiting the Wakhan Valley’s border market a quick visit to Afghanistan seemed much more reasonable than so many years of hearing negative media portrayals of the country had ever lead me to believe.

Ishkashim Afghan bazaar

Three short days after having the idea in the first place, and we were in! And you know what? It was entirely unexciting. Normal, even. We talked to people, shopped in the bazaar, made friends, and got invited into somebody’s house for tea at least once every hour or two.

“Good Luck!”

Bridge to Afghan Land

With that as the send-off, we were beyond the Tajik border in no-mans-land on the way to Afghanistan.

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I honestly don’t think I’d ever felt true anxiety until that moment. So many thoughts, so quickly. Is this a terrible idea? Are we making a mistake? Should I tell people I’m American? By doing so am I endangering myself and the two other foreigners I’m traveling with?

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And then we met Zeki. To be fair, he didn’t even do a whole lot. Gave us a ride in the back of his company Jeep, walked with us through the market and surrounding village, and did a little translating since we walked in with no Dari. What he did, though, was to act as a sort of foundation for getting acquainted with the area. Some sort of touchstone to go back to when we wondered about the looks from market salesmen or the best way to interact with this unfamiliar new place.

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And then, just that easily, it clicked. There were still some moments of small discomfort. The local police demanding passport copies and photos chief amongst them. But, for the most part, the people we met were just people.

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They wanted, mostly, to see the pictures you took after that had agreed through that universal traveler sign language that it was ok to take in the first place. So much of our anxiety about the rest of the world is just perception. Things we think we know because we’ve been told so often, but that turn out so differently when we confront them.

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Kids followed us around the village market, like they’ve done in countries I’ve been to from Indonesia all the way across to Azerbaijan.

Even after parting ways with Zeki, we managed to walk around for about 15 minutes before meeting the only other English-speaking person we’d see from the village of Redoge. From that point on, any worries were assuaged.

From then on we were just foreign people who stood out, interacting with people who happened to belong. We did normal things. We ate amazing food.

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Took a ton more pictures.

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 (I think Durmohammed, our new friend, was actually growing tired of us stopping for photos. Towards the end of the walk to his house where we would spend out first night, Maki/J/or I would stop and he would slow down a bit but keep walking.)

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It was actually surprisingly, amazingly, thankfully normal.

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Perhaps the single most exciting moment was a particularly intense 1 v 9 game of hilltop volleyball Jeroen played on our second night in Afghanistan.

By the end of the trip, Maki was walking along the street having a little “girl time” with some junior-high students we happened to pass on the road back to the border.

Girl Talk

When we asked Maki later she said they’d talked about studies, boys, and age. And really, could the answer have been any more stereotypically normal than that?

Border Guard

The honest appendix to this post, of course, is that a month after we left fighting flared up just across the Tajik border in Khorog. According to the Tajik government, a number of the civilians who have died in the fighting are Afghan nationals, which raises the question of whether everything was really so rosy while we were there?

 

4 Comments

  1. Glad you are back & seemed to enjoy your trip!!
    Also want you to know that my orchid is just now beginning to fade. Sure has been a nice one. Plan to see if I can make it bloom again next year. I have a new light & am moving the bird cage across the hall to make it a new orchid staging area while they are getting ready to bloom again. Maybe I will have it all together by the time you get here. Have got to figure out how to set the timer to make it come on for 12 hours in the right time.m I think my count is now up to 12 but not sure some of them will make it another year. Never can have too many as far as I am concerned. Sure makes watering day a job some times. But really enjoy these plants. I now have 3 pony tail plants but have to give one up for Cindy soon. Love U. N

  2. Very cool! Glad to hear you enjoyed yourself.

  3. Fantastic photos. Looking forward to reading about how it was.

    • Thanks man! II’ll have an apartment (!!!) in Bishkek soon, and hope to sit down and write up the past few months once I’m settled in.

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