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XTrying to cross the Oxus in 2003

XTravel Afghanistan work closely with Afghan Logistics Find out more about them here.

Introduction by Matthew Leeming

Afghanistan is unlike any other country in the world. I have never been to a more beautiful country, or met such hospitable people. This is why I have written a Traveller’s Companion and Guide – the first guidebook since 1972 – to this extraordinary country and in 2004 started to take tours there. I think that everyone who came on one of those tours wants to return.

In the 1960s and 1970s Afghanistan was the most romantic and exciting travel destinations in the world, but after twenty-five years of war, is unjustly thought of as a barbarous backwater.

I have been visiting Afghanistan since 1993 and since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 have seen the country improve out of all recognition. The most recent milestone in the country’s reconstruction was the presidential election in 2004.

Travel in Afghanistan is tough but rewarding - you will see a unique world that will not survive much longer.

Travel Afghanistan is an Anglo-Afghan joint-venture with Afghanistan’s largest and best transport and logistics company, Afghan Logistics who have fifty vehicles ranging from lorries, buses and 4WD Landcruisers to town cars run by Muqim Jamshady, one of Afghanistan’s most dynamic young entrepreneurs, and we are uniquely well-equipped for you to make the best of your time in this wonderful country.

Afghanistan as a travel destination in the past

Until the Russian invasion of 1979, Afghanistan was a well-known tourist destination. Bruce Chatwin and his wife Elizabeth were regular visitors. When I interviewed Elizabeth for a Times article on Afghanistan she said ‘Afghanistan is the benchmark for me against which all other countries are compared. Perhaps Kashmir comes close in beauty.’ Some of Bruce Chatwin’s best pictures were taken there and can be seen in the new paperback edition of Peter Levi’s Light Garden of the Angel King. (The full collection is in the care of the Trevillion Picture Library and is well worth seeing)

Bruce Chatwin wrote as brilliantly about Afghanistan as one would expect:

‘On the streets of Herat you saw men in mountainous turbans, strolling hand in hand, with roses in their mouths and rifles wrapped in flowered chintz. In Badakshan you could picnic on Chinese carpets and listen to the bulbul. In Balkh, the Mother of Cities, I asked a fakir the way to the shrine of Hadji Piardeh. ‘I don’t know it,’ he said. ‘It must have been destroyed by Genghiz.’

‘Even the Afghan embassy in London introduced you to a world that was hilarious and slightly strange. Control of the visa section rested with a tousle headed Russian emigré giant, who had cut the lining of his jacket so that it hung, as a curtain, to hide the holes in the seat of his pants. At opening time he’d be stirring up clouds of dust with a broom, only to let it settle afresh on the collapsing furniture. Once, when I tipped him ten shillings, he hugged me, lifted me off the floor and bellowed: ‘I hope you have a very accident-free trip to Afghanistan!’

His introduction is a lament for the world that has not been accessible to travellers since the Russian invasion until now:

‘That will not bring back the things we loved: the high, clear days and the blue icecaps on the mountains; the lines of white poplars fluttering in the wind, and the long white prayer flags; the fields of asphodels that followed the tulips; or the fat tailed sheep brindling the hills above Chagcharan, and the ram with a tail so big they had to tie it to a cart. We shall not lie on our backs on the Red Castle and watch the vultures wheeling over the valley where they killed the grandson of Genghiz. We shall not read Babur’s memoirs in his garden at Istalif and see the blind man smelling his way round the rose bushes. Or sit in the peace of Islam with the beggars of Gazar Gagh. We will not stand on the Buddha’s head at Bamiyan, upright in his niche like a whale in a dry dock. We will not sleep in the nomad tent, or scale the Minaret of Jam. And we shall lose the tastes – the hot, coarse, bitter bread; the green tea flavoured with cardamoms; the grapes we cooled in the snow melt; and the nuts and dried mulberries we munched for altitude sickness. Nor shall we get back the smell of the beanfields; the sweet resinous smell of deodar wood burning, or a whiff of a snow leopard at 14,000 feet.’

The monstrous Taliban blew up the Buddhas at Bamiyan and Istalif has been flattened. But you can experience most of the other things he listed.

Note: The Chatwin passages come from his introduction to the Picador edition of The Road to Oxiana.

Accommodation

In the old days, one stayed in hotels that were known as Klubs. Many of them were taken over by the local mujihadeen commander to put up visiting foreign dignitaries (and there were some), members of the government and journalists. Some of these guest houses are very good: any journalist who has covered Afghanistan will speak very highly of the government guest-house at Astana in the Panjshir, near Massoud’s home village, which has electric light, western lavatories and baths. 2002 saw the completion of what was intended to be a palace for President Rabbani in Faisabad on a rocky eminence overlooking the Kokcha river. As Rabbani is no longer president, this house has become the Government guest-house, and the Governor of Badakhshan considers it the first of what will be a chain of first-class hotels. Herat also has two perfectly decent hotels.

In the other towns, like Kunduz, the old Klubs are more basic and although the staff are (as always in Afghanistan) extremely hospitable, paying tourists would probably be disappointed. In these towns we will use our own tents moved onwards day by day in a Landcruiser and put up awaiting the group.

Getting around

Thesiger told me not to travel by car. ‘Always go by horse or on foot. That’s how I did it. There’s just no point travelling in a car.’ He is absolutely right. In a car, you are an intruder, not a participant, in the landscape. Sights rush past you, like a speeded up picture of a flower opening.

Therefore, although we will use Landcruisers to cross the Hindu Kush and for long journeys, we try as much as possible to let you travel as Thesiger did: by horse drawn carriage or foot. It is a completely different experience of travel and the country. Of course, if you prefer to go by car, you can. In the northern cities the main method of transport is horse-drawn carriage and this is how we will move from town to town.

You don’t need any experience to travel on a horse. The ones I have had have been very placid and I just sit on the back and let the horseman lead it. I had never been on a horse before I crossed from Badakhshan to Pakistan in 2001. You do, though, get quite stiff for the first few days and it would be a good idea to get some practice in before we leave. I can organise a few one-day courses in England.

You don’t need to be physically particularly fit. I take no exercise and have never really suffered. Nor especially young. My friend Mr Gary is 63 and spends months at a time in the country.