My trip to Afghanistan has been the most eye-opening experience of my life thus far. There is so much to be said, so much to be explained, so much to think about when it comes to this wildly misunderstood country, and of course this little blog will barely scratch the surface. However, I learned a lot during my time in Afghanistan that mass media does not portray. So with that being said, I hope to spread a tiny bit of knowledge and provide some insight into different aspects of this place. The good, the bad, the tragic, and some of the most ridiculously outrageous things that happened while I was there. Yalla.

The Taliban

Let’s start with the obvious first series of questions that I received when I told my family and friends that I was going to Afghanistan: Aren’t the Taliban in power? Isn’t it dangerous to travel there as a woman because of them? Are they terrorists? All valid questions, and my experiences with them varied greatly from region to region. Let’s get into it.

City Taliban vs. Country Taliban

First of all, there was way less of a Taliban presence everywhere than I was expecting. I was prepared for Taliban soldiers lining the streets menacingly and yelling at women for not being covered enough and kidnapping people for making eye contact with the wrong person. You know, the type of thing you read in the news. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure I would see women on the streets because of what the western media portrays their life like as a result of the Taliban takeover. What I was not expecting was a whole bunch of local people, men, women, and children, going about their business and the Taliban being a fairly rare sighting in day-to-day life. Walking the streets of Kabul, we really never saw them with the exception of entering a mosque or getting their permission to let the women of our group into various parks and sites. Even then, our group had very few interactions with them. Our guide spoke to them on our behalf and they barely glanced our way. So basically, Kabul was not the place for the Taliban stories. We minded our business and they left us alone. The real interactions began when we left Kabul. The Taliban have checkpoints throughout the country when you go to different regions, and we were not excluded. Our first of these experiences was exiting Kabul on our wait to the province of Bamiyan. There were many of these checkpoints along the way to Bamiyan from the city, but they changed in nature along the way. The first one was the most intimidating. Partially because we were all nervous, and partially because they were actively trying to intimidate us. They were wearing masks to protect from the scorching sun, so we could only see their eyes glaring at us from beneath their army helmets. Not a look you want pointed your way when there’s also a gun pointing with it. Another fact about the Taliban is that very few of them speak English, or even Dari. They speak Pashto, an Afghan language from the mountains where the Taliban originally came from. This is where a guide is really important to a safe and successful trip here, something as simple yet as crucial as a language barrier. This means, however, we had no idea what was happening during these interactions. There was a lot of intense pointing into the van at us, raised voices, guns, and of course they had our passports during every one of these cute little meetings. My group had a tiny problem with dark humor and laughing during inappropriate and potentially dangerous situations, so our guide’s one rule for us during the checkpoints was to just shut up.

Me on the side of the road overlooking Kabul and the Hindu Kush range

The only mosque in Kabul where local women are still allowed in to pray.

Anyways, near the city, the Taliban really did not interact with us, only with our guide. All questions were directed towards our guide, who then asked us if there was any follow-up necessary. This changed when we approached the more rural areas. In Bamiyan and Mazar-i-Sharif, they interacted with us significantly more, and I hate to say it, but in an overall positive way. Here’s a little tale that I never thought I would be telling. When we were exploring the City of Screams in Bamiyan Valley, the ancient and destroyed city in which Genghis Khan once murdered the entire population, we came across two Taliban men at the viewpoint overlooking the famous Buddhas of Bamiyan. The girls, including me, were cautious. Female tourists are so uncommon there that there are no true rules on how to interact with the Taliban, but the general consensus from our guides was, “don’t”. Our male companions, however, strolled right up to them with the kind of audacious over-confidence that only a man could have, and started a conversation translated by our lovely and probably overly tolerant guide. The ladies eventually made our way over to listen in as well, and here’s the information we received: a few months prior, an American pornstar had visited Afghanistan and taken a little outing to the spot we currently were. She had successfully gotten the Taliban men to take a picture with her, which she then posted online. Somehow the Taliban men in said scandalous photo had gotten in trouble with their superiors, and that’s why most of the Taliban in that region will refuse pictures with tourists now. You learn something new every day. 

View of the Hindu Kush mountains from the City of Screams in Bamiyan

The lake in Band-e-Amir. The only national park in Afghanistan.

When we left Bamiyan and flew to Mazari-i-Sharif in the Balkh province of Afghanistan, interactions with the Taliban were, frankly, insane. Not in a scary way, more in a “is this a fever dream” type of way. Firstly, we visited the actual city of Balkh, one of the most ancient towns in the world. For reasons that are still unclear to me, we needed a Taliban escort with us for “safety reasons.” Because nothing makes you feel safer than a man with two old Russian guns strapped to him getting into your already crowded van. All I can say is thank goodness this guy didn’t speak English, because every word out of our mouths during that car ride from Mazar-i-Sharif to Balkh with him right there in the front seat I’m pretty confident would be considered deeply, deeply haram. After a while, however, our guide told us that this Talibro was “one of the good ones” and said that we could ask him questions and he (our guide) would translate the conversation. It was an incredibly unique opportunity to be able to actually ask unfiltered questions to an active member of the Taliban, so we didn’t hold back. Not a ton of self-preservation or survival instincts among this group of people, I must admit. One of our first questions was his thoughts on the situation with women in Afghanistan. His response was incredibly surprising to me. He told us that he has a young daughter, and he wants her to be educated past 6th grade (which is when Afghan girls are currently forced to stop school). He told us he did not want her to be forced into marriage, and he believed that women in general should have the right to education. This may seem like a low bar to be impressed about, but coming from a member of one the arguably most oppressive groups of people in the world, his response honestly gave me a tiny bit of hope for the future of the country. He went on to say that there are a lot of different beliefs within the Taliban. Sort of like a very extreme version of politics anywhere, the younger generation of the Taliban is, from his point of view, more progressive than the older generation of the Taliban. His point was supported when he asked our guide if he could play music and proceeded to play a Pitbull song remixed with Dari verses. I’m not kidding. 

The travel group + our guide at the famous Blue Mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif

When we arrived in Balkh, he stuck around with us the whole day. He sat with us while we all ate sheer yakh (the traditional Afghan ice cream), he took group pictures for us, and he hovered around with his guns while we were shopping for souvenirs and tried to intimidate the crowds of people we were inevitably attracting. As I said earlier, the Taliban we had encountered so far on the trip would not take pictures with us. However, I was determined to get a photo with them for my parents, as any good daughter would. Finally, the goal was achieved. We were looking at ancient ruins in Balkh in a very tucked-away area, and there was a group of Taliban men who were “guarding” the ruins. They were friends with our Talibro, and they all started yapping while we were walking around and taking pictures. Then, one of them walked over and handed me their gun. It was a massive and very ancient looking assault rifle, and this man plunked it right down in my arms and started taking pictures of me with it. He even stuck a flower in the muzzle of the gun to make it pretty. Is my picture circulating Taliban twitter somewhere in Afghanistan? Probably. But my group and I saw our opportunity. After we had all gotten some photos with the star of the show (the gun), our guide asked if we could take some photos with them. They agreed. I’ve been told it’s a bad idea to post these pictures here because it may send the wrong message, but you’ll have to take my word for it that they exist. If you don’t believe me, the security at the Dubai airport will confirm. They were not happy with those photos.

The sheer yakh stop where were we joined by our Taliban escort. I really tried to get a picture, but he was not thrilled about it. Here’s the ice cream.