FlyerTalk Forums - Four days in Afghanistan

Last month, I spent four days in Afghanistan (primarily in & near Kabul & Mazar-i-sharif

It was a fascinating experience, not without risk. I flew to/from Kabul via Dubai on flyDubai (a fairly miserable airline where everyone is crammed in like sardines).

Afghanistan doesn't have much in the way of tourist attractions (or even infrastructure). They average about 1000 tourists/year, which is basically zero when averaged out across the year. Getting the tourist visa took effort & persistence (and apparently my experience was easy compared to others). Due to security concerns, we stayed in unmarked hotels (behind concrete walls, with steel doors & armed guards), which were barely two star accommodations. But I wasn't there for luxury, and being safe was more important anyway. Breakfast & dinner was always served in the hotel, although we did eat in restaurants for lunch (and the food was quite good).

While Afghanistan currently has no COVID19 restrictions whatsoever, Emirates (and its subsidiary airline, flyDubai) require a negative PCR test from an 'approved' test lab to board the flight (in either direction). This wasn't a big issue to fly into Afghanistan, but getting tested for the return flight turned into a literal life & death adventure. Emirate's list of approved labs for Afghanistan had about a dozen options on the day we entered the country. Literally the day that we got tested for the return fight, Emirates removed all but one lab from the list, for the entire country, and that wasn't the lab that we used, meaning that we would have to get tested yet again. More on this below.

The highlights of the time in Kabul were visiting a local mosque (which locals generally used as public park space for picnics, as it was a holy site that was unlikely to be attacked by religious zealots), the National Museum (which didn't have much on display, as most of their treasures had been looted over the past 40+ years), and a day trip up to the Panjshir valley (where some of the most brutal battles of the Soviet & Taliban occupation took place, there are stull burnt out tanks along the road side).

We flew from Kabul to Mazar-i-sharif on KAM Air. Kabul's airport security is easily the most insane & restrictive anywhere that I've ever been. There are four layers of security which include repeated permutations of frisking, metal detectors, x-ray machines and passport checks. KAM Air has flight schedules, but they are more an aspiration than a reality. Our 45 minute flight departed 75 minutes late for no reason, and is sometimes hours late and/or cancelled with little to no warning (more on this below). Our flight used an old 737-300, which was in surprisingly good condition considering what its subjected to on a daily basis.

Easily the highlight of the trip was Mazar's Blue Mosque, which is also a shrine, with huge sprawling grounds that also act as safe social space for locals. The mosque is visually stunning, using architecture that is quite similar to that found in Iran & Uzbekistan. Additionally, we took a day trip out to Samangan to see the 5th century Buddhist stuppa & meditation caves (all carved from rock) known as Takht-e-Rostam. The drive out there took nearly 4 hours, even though it should have been about 2.5 hours. The huge delay was because of a trucker strike along the road, where they parked through trucks to block the road in protest of being double taxed on imports from neighboring Uzbekistan by both the Afghan govt and also Taliban setup checkpoints. What this meant is that the road was no longer passable, and everyone had to literally go off road past the road block. This offroad section was mostly desert and deep sand, meaning that the only way to prevent getting stuck was to drive very very fast. And since there was no real road, everyone was blasting through the open desert in random directions at high speed. It was quite literally a Mad Max Fury Road experience, with 30+ year old cars littering the landscape, huge trucks dug in up to their axles in sand, and every manner of ethnic & cultural representation on full display. We briefly got stuck at one point, and a dozen random men appeared, each with their own opinion of how to extricate ourselves.

The original plan for the remainder day was to drive back to Mazar, catch an afternoon flight back to Kabul, get tested an approved PCR test before the lab closed for the day at 6PM, and then fly out the following morning. This plan was completely obliterated when KAM Air announced that our afternoon flight was going to be delayed for an unknown amount of time, such that we no longer had any assurance of returning to Kabul early enough for the PCR test.

A last minute decision was made to drive ~6 hours all the way back to Kabul, instead of flying. And of course, the route passed through Taliban controlled territory, where there was known to be active hostilities, and random Taliban checkpoints setup. Supposedly, the conditions had been relatively calm in the past few weeks, and so we had some confidence that we might make it through safely. Of course we later learned that our driver was a former Northern Alliance (anti-Taliban) fighter, with over a hundred kills, experience driving tanks, and a questionable understanding of the laws of physics when it comes to driving a bread van at high speeds on Afghan roads. Initially the drive was fine, beyond the fact that he was speeding at over 100kph on roads that I wouldn't consider safe at 60kph. However, it became clear when we entered the Taliban controlled territory, as everything changed dramatically. First, there were govt fortified military posts, literally every kilometer or so, with obvious bullet and mortar blast wounds all over them. Also, the road itself had huge, car sized craters from mortars & rockets, that we needed to drive around. And finally there was the ever present risk of being stopped by the Taliban. Obviously, we made it through ok, but it was extremely tense for about an hour. We thought the worst was behind us at that point, but no, we still had over 3 hours of driving remaining, including over the highest pass (3500m) in the country, on a road that was more rock & rubble than anything else, plus avalanche tunnels. The scenery was gorgeous (glaciers, etc), but the road was seriously awful for over an hour. We ended up making it into Kabul at about 17:30, so with barely time to spare to get tested. It worked out in the end, but it was a very long day of adventure that no one anticipated.

I would love to return to the country some day, when more, or another part was considered safe enough to explore. Who knows when that might happen, as the security situation has been slowly degrading for months, and things on the ground tend to change day to day, making even optimistic trip planning difficult.

What follows are some of the photo highlights from the trip. I'd be happy to answer questions.

Panjshir Valley (AF)

Heading off to school (AF)

Blue Mosque, Mazar-i-Shariff (AG)

Rest stop, Panjshir Valley (AF)

Kabul at dusk (AF)

Goats (AF)

No roads (AF)

Trucker strike (AF)

Bridge (AF)

3500 meters up enroute to Kabul (AF)

Kabul mosque

Buzkashi chaos

Kabul mosque

Fury Road

Sunset over Kabul

Buddhist prayer caves

Blue mosque

Kabul "suburbs"

Spring in the north

Buzkashi winner

Gridlock

Kabul cemetary

High noon

5th century stuppa

Two tone

A very detailed trip report is also available here.

thanks!