preparing for my dream trip

 I’ve wanted to go to Afghanistan ever since I saw some photos of the country in 2003, and having read reports over the past year from a few travellers who’ve enjoyed great visits there since the Taliban took over, I decided it was time to go.  Who knows what will happen going forward, whether access will be closed off once again?  So I signed up for a tour with Untamed Borders, the travel company with the most experience of taking people to the country.  After I signed up and paid my money, the Taliban shut off access for women to the two places in the photos I’d seen back in 2003 (the shrine of Hazrat Ali in Mazar-e Sharif and the lakes of Band-e Amir), but I still wanted to go ahead with it as there are so many other places in the country to see, not to mention the possibility of getting to understand more about the Taliban and the situation in the country.

So as instructed by the tour company, I booked my flight to Pakistan and applied for my Pakistan visa – as this is where we had to go first so as to get our Afghanistan visa at their consulate in Peshawar.  & the ‘visiting Afghanistan experience’ started there, as we were instructed not to even state on the Pakistani visa application that we would be going to Peshawar.  Nor should I state that I was applying from Indonesia, unless I wanted to risk them asking for proof of residence in Indonesia – and given that, I decided when the form asked for address of my last employment that I should put the UK head office address rather than the address of the office in Senegal where I was based.  Clearly this was not going to be a straightforward trip…

But the planning went smoothly.  We female group members had to don a burka on entry to the Afghani Consulate in Peshawar (the outfit that covers the face, with a mesh panel over the eyes – difficult to see where you are going, and I nearly fell down a step), and we were all instructed that if asked why we wanted to visit the country we should talk about it finally being safe to visit, now the Taliban are in control.  Apparently the men were asked this, but the staff didn’t want to interact with women so we were given our visas with no questions asked.  We sat waiting with other women, and the interactions I had with them were very interesting – from the employee who shared how much she (and some other Afghani women) hate having to be veiled, to the escapee (a former university lecturer) waiting for a copy of her marriage certificate so that she and her husband could complete their asylum application to the US.

Whilst we had a little time to tour Peshawar, and visited the ruins of the Buddhist religious complex at Taxila, we were there to prepare for Afghanistan.  For example by acquiring abayas for the women in the group.  Just a pity that we had to go back to Islamabad to fly to Kabul … that we were not permitted to enter via the Khyber Pass.


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