Afghanistan It Is

Afghanistan was always just a place on a map or in the News for all the wrong reasons. The thoughts of travelling there was always in the back of my mind but so is every other place on the planet. Yes, the country has a modern history that is not to be trifled with but, the borders are open and tourists have started to trickle back in. It only took a few youtube videos, some travel vlogs and message boards on Reddit and Caravanistan to have me decide "fuck it", just made the decision and go, and so I did. As you know, making the choice to do something is always the hardest part. Once done, now it all becomes planning, preparing and getting on that big old Jet Plane.

I started to share my plans with a few people the initial "what are you thinking?" slowly became "why are you going there? is it safe? "What is there to see there?" plus of course the reminders of Government Travel Warnings. I know everyones heart was in the right place, but I still ignored them all. I was nervously excited about heading well of the beaten path unto parts unknown. 

Now, it must be remembered that in the 60s and 70s places such as Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were off limits, and in the 80s Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador were not even an option. Here we are years later and I have travelled and explored all of those countries, with the exception of Laos. There is no talk of the past, only open borders that have now made each of those countries major stops on the backpackers trail, and for good reason. They are all awesome.

The now famous welcome sign at the Kabul Airport

Now here we are with Afghanistan, a country that always seems to fall into a pattern that it cannot escape. Foreign invasion, revolution, civil war, or foreign occupation with has lead to poverty, famine, ignorance and lack of education which has lead to fanaticism and the rise and fall of governments as they try to get back on track.  

When it comes to travel, I am an idealist. In this case, I like to think back to the time from the mid 50s to the late 70s, when Afghanistan was a major stop on then infamous Hippy Trail. What a time that must have been. However, the reality is that was then and this is now. It is quite obvious that the beautiful mindset of the 1960s is a long way from today's paranoid, quick to react and angry judgemental world we slosh through today. We, myself included ignore time and think we have more of it than we do. Sometimes you have to "Make a Decision", "Commit to that Decision",  "Do some research", "Book your Flight and Go!" With that muddled nugget of genius, here I sit at the Khyber Hotel in the middle of the madness that is Kabul without any trepidation at all.

A nice welcome as I head into Arrivals

Let's backtrack a bit on how I actually got here. The first thing I need to find was a tour company because Afghanistan is NOT a place that you can just "Wing it" and see what happens. There are a few travel writers who have travelled independently and then hired a guide when they realized that this is not a place to "see how it goes". Anyways I found a reputable company called Lets Go Afghanistan.

They were very responsive and their communication was very clear with no muddled language. In the end I chose the The Most Popular Destinations Tour, starting on May 20th and finishing on June 1st. I paid my deposit and started working through some of the logistics with them, including the most important item of them all, the Afghan tourist visa. It was suggested that the easiest and fastest way to obtain the visa was in Dubai. This made sense because I had read that if you do not get you visa in Dubai, Islamabad or Peshawar then there is the outside chance that it will be rejected when you arrive and that would be a serious issue, do Dubai it was. I planned to spend a week in Dubai in case I ran into any issues with the Embassy, plus I had never been to the U.A.E so it will be nice to poke around a bit.

David, Abbas and Me chugging some Sugar Cane Juice to get the day going

Without getting into the minutia of it all, I did find a place to get my photos taken at the end I got my visa in about 2 hours. There were a few issues with my application that were easily rectified. These guys are there to help after all. I paid my fee and was given the choice to wait 45 minutes in the waiting room or come back at 3:00 PM (it was 9:00 am). I obviously waited and it was fine because I had a nice chat with a few tourist and an Afghani going home to visit his family. I did not ask why he needed a visa for that. The Embassy Rep came in, handed me my passport and that was that. So now I had my flight book, my tour booked and my one month visa rested comfortably in my passport, I had crisp US dollars to pay the balance of my tour (which were mandatory) and I was ready to kick back a bit. Then I realized I was in Dubai and a Budweiser in a crappy wanna be pub was about $9, and NO they do not sell beer in retail shops. 

After a week of wandering in and around Dubai it was off to the airport. My flight left Dubai at 4:00 AM (what was I thinking), and this airport was a sh**show. Dubai International has three terminals and both 1 and 3 are huge, brightly lit and modern. I departed from terminal 2, the red headed stepchild terminal and it was anything but modern. I stood in line for 90 minutes to get my boarding pass as people cut in line, slipped under the que straps, yelled at agents and other personnel and were basically out of their mind. It really was a scene from any airport in the 1980s or 90s. This terminal is also home to the Duty Free Zone and it was taken advantage of. One guy was checking in a 55 inch TV, while most others had huge taped and plastic wrapped boxes to get on board. That was fun to watch.

My first meal in Kabul. I am not going to starve

In the end, I got my boarding pass in about 2 minutes, went through the security, which did not really exist and found my gate. I devoured a Quarter pounder Meal and my next stop was Kabul.I put on my earbuds, toned out the masses around me that included quite a few screaming and crying children who were obviously tired as it was 3AM.

The flight was painless and I think I slept for an hour. Oncelanded I passed through customs and immigration with ease and my guide and driver picked me and the other guy who had booked this tour, David who lives in the UK but is from Hong Kong. All I was experiencing was excitement as we drove into the absolute madness that was Kabul traffic. I had a moment of "holy crap I am in Kabul" and let that moment stay with me for the remainder of the day.

Welcome to Afghanistan.