Before dusk turned to pitch black, we caught views of the surreal Afghan desert on either side of the road.  Women all wore the full chadri or burqa with webbing over the face area so no part was visible.  (Women in Iran were no longer wearing the burqa in 1978–part of the westernization and modernization reforms by the Shah that led to the revolution.) Small numbers of people were walking out on the desert as darkness approached and there was no obvious nearby buildings or villages.  Pretty soon, we realized that most of the people in that area actually live in caves, tents, and in mud structures built around the caves on the side of hills.  I remember thinking, “Welcome to the third world!” 

Exhausted, stoned, and so grateful for our escape from the paranoia and oppression in Iran, we arrived in Herat, Afghanistan around 10 pm and checked into the Adriana Hotel.  As would be customary for the rest of the trip, I had to argue with the desk manager about the room fee since he initially demanded about twice as much as we had been told other travelers had paid.  I quickly learned not to take it personally and that bargaining for everything was simply the expected way of life. We paid $.60 per night each.

September 15-16  Herat and Afghanistan would become some of the best parts of our journey for both Cath and me (with Kashmir tied for first place).  Our first day in Herat is the epitome of “culture shock”—we spent so much time walking and sitting along the dirt streets where we could just take in all the sites, sounds and smells of Herat.  It was so obvious that Afghanistan has a huge mix of tribal groups who dress distinctly and all have a strong independent spirit.  There was little motor vehicle traffic—mostly carts pulled by people or single-axle tonga carts pulled by a variety of animals.  Two main features dominated the scenery—the 15^th century citadel with rounded towers and the 15^th century Masjid-i-Jami Great Mosque which was decorated with intricate tilework and inscriptions.

Cath’s description of our first day captures our high spirits and intrigue:  “Hotel is good with excellent vegetarian restaurant.  Herat is one of the nicest places.  Everyone is so friendly.  Spent a really good morning with a family [we met while out for a walk] who gave us tea and nan bread.  This afternoon, well loaded, we saw the circus where we were again given tea.  We then went bargaining in the shops—more tea.  It feels strange to be here.  “3^rd World” is a good description.  Goodies flow in abundance [Cath’s short-hand for “lots of hash and vegetarian food”].  I feel very relaxed and peaceful.  Tonights meal was excellent with lots of real vegetables, yoghurt, and fruit.  The restaurant man is really nice, too.  We keep meeting up with people from the Magic Bus which is nice.  Only spending about [2 dollars] per day on average…hope it lasts.  All the kids are fascinated by us.  They can all say “hello, how are you” and want to shake hands the whole time.  Went to see the guy who sold Jon a shirt yesterday in exchange for his collapsible travel mug.  We had a lunch of rice, raisins, potatoes and tea.  We walked around the bazaar—amazing the hustle/bustle and cries of “hello”.  Went to the mosque that has such beautiful architecture (four large iwans (worship halls), 460 domes, 444 pillars, 12 minarets, and extensive use of glazed tiles).  Met a kid who took us to his father’s shop for tea and playing around with instruments called dutars.  We then saw his brother’s weaving shop and watched him work on a large, very unusual loom.  Also walked around the old part of the city.  Found a good restaurant again and were given a joint for dessert—we stayed and listened to drums and sitar and enjoyed fruit yogurt.  Finally, we saw a full moon with an almost total eclipse.”

September 17-18:  Between the “fruit yogurt” we had for dessert the night before and the primitive everything in Herat, both Cath and I got the shits on Sept 17-18 that limited our activity.  Between debilitating bouts of sickness, we did get out to see most of the sites on our list:  Herat Citadel, the National Museum, Jami’s Tomb, Khwaja Abd Allah Ansari Shine, and some parks with gardens.  Cath captured our misery in somewhat graphic detail:  “What a wonderful 24 hours this has been.  It started last night with uncontrollable brown fluid from either end…I’m so dehydrated though and feel really weak.  There were times today when I thought I was dying.  Jon started feeling poorly, too.  Last night was funny—we sat on neighboring toilets making the most revolting noises.”  In fact, there was no “sitting” on toilets–toilets in Afghanistan and much of Asia consisted of a hole in the ground with two foot-sized slabs, where one would squat. There would be a pitcher of water provided, toilet rolls were unheard of. Some toilets were cleaner than others, but none were a places to day-dream. Flies and shit were usually everywhere. Plumbing was almost non-existent.

Sept 19-20:  We alternated between times when one or the other wasn’t feeling well and excursions out in the heat to see the sites of Herat.  We became close with a number of the other travelers who were doing the same—alternating between illness and tourism.  It was nice for Cath that we became friends with other couples and guys that she could hangout with or go sight-seeing with.  We were pretty honest that it was nice to get away from each other periodically as we had been through a lot of exhausting experiences and sickness together.  We decided to skip stopping in the city of Kandahar and spend more time in Kabul and in the areas of Bamiyan and the Lakes of Bandi-Amir that we heard so much about from other travelers.  I got bus tickets from Herat to Kabul via Kandahar for Sept 20 but Cath was not feeling up to travel that day and I was able to switch our tickets to Sept 21.  The trip of 550 miles would take about 24 hours and about the only city along the entire route was Kandahar which we visited briefly during a break. 

It is worth relating one final experience in Herat which involved my introduction to haggling and bargaining for merchandise (or for anything else you bought since there never were prices on anything). One day when Cath was feeling poorly and stayed in the room, I explored some shops and asked about “puzzle rings” that I had read were common in Afghanistan. One shop keeper showed me an entire display of rings that could be separated into multiple parts that only went back together in a certain, non-obvious way. I found one that I thought Cath would like and asked “how much”? That began an hour of negotiation, breaks for tea, offers to smoke hash, and more negotiation about the purchase of the puzzle ring. It was worth less than $1 dollar but the shopkeeper started at $10 because he knew I was interested in it. I walked away several times and he and I each expressed how disrespectful the counteroffers of the other were. I really wanted that ring and finally got it for $2–I am sure I could have gotten it for $1 or less if I had stayed another hour or two and the shopkeeper didn’t appear to have anything else to do other than negotiate with me over that ring. Cath really liked the ring and appreciated my story about the bargaining.

Herat to Kabul

Sept 22            Herat to Kabul .  We felt well and largely enjoyed the long trip by old public bus from Herat to Kabul.  Watching the primitive and very tribal Afghan countryside was like watching a fascinating movie.  There were a lot of westerners on the van and we all got along with the driver who was super friendly and made sure everyone got plenty of hash along the way and had nice tea stops.  The Bactrian camel lives in Afghanistan and we saw some limited use of camels for transporting goods.  I was quite fascinated by all the unusual features of camels and recalled the saying that “a camel is a race horse designed by a committee”—not a great compliment about committees.  Many Afghans were nomads, known as kuchi, who moved around the country with their herds as the seasons changed—we would sometimes see their low, black tents from the road.  Banditry was a common concern on roads and in cities—Herat was under an evening curfew during our stay and we didn’t venture out much at night anywhere as electricity was limited to sparse indoor lighting and there were no street lights.

September 22-25:  Kabul sits high in the Hindu Kush mountains and is surrounded by snow-capped peaks.  Based on recommendations of other travelers, we got a room at the Balkh Hotel.  Instead of beds, there were mattresses on the floor.  The manager was a very friendly and helpful man who offered to see to our every need.  He had a young boy helping him and they were always offering us tea, chai, hash, and special meals.  He had a lot of Bob Dylan music and let us pick tapes to listen to.  The Hotel had a wonderful courtyard in its center where we often sat and listened to music and chatted with other travelers.  The manager would show us how to use his pollen press to turn pollen into hash and we all found that to be quite novel and fun.  We all quickly learned that it is very easy to have “too much of a good thing” when it comes to hash.  After a few episodes of exploring the limits and either just becoming stupid or having to crash in our room, we learned to enjoy the open hash culture in Kabul in some moderation. 

We met Kerry and Rick Bolter with whom we hung out for more than a week.  They were also staying at our hotel. Kerry was from Tasmania and Rick was from London and they recently married in London and were traveling overland back to Tasmania. We saw many of the great sites of Kabul.  The National Museum was really fascinating as so much of the history of the Silk Route and of this area were new to us.  The Museum was one of my early introductions to Buddhist dharma and the concept of bodhisattva enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings.  I was drawn towards Buddhist dharma and religious sites during the balance of the trip and that interest has continued for the rest of my life. We (Rick, Kerry, Cath and I) also had a beautiful visit to the lovely and exotic Babur Shah Gardens or Gardens of Babur.  There were terraced buildings and gardens and pools and lovely walking areas.  There were not many people there as the gardens involved some public transportation and then a long walk.  We all relaxed and even dozed a bit—it was the first “peace and quiet” that I think any of us experienced since leaving Europe.  We also visited the Darul Aman Palace which is adjacent to the National Assembly, the National Museum, and the Afghan International University.   Chicken Street was the famous narrow street full of Afghan bazaars and stalls and shops selling a wide variety of hippie clothes, hippie items like chillums—the conical stone pipes favored for smoking hash and weed in a much more sanitary way than sharing joints, and many types of jewelry and leather goods that were handmade in Afghanistan.

We became increasingly aware of Afghanistan’s turbulent history which was rapidly headed into another chapter during our visit.  We knew that the Saur Revolution had occurred just five months earlier in April, 1978 resulting in a coup that overthrew Afghan president Mohammed Daoud Khan (who himself had led a coup in 1973 to gain power).  Daoud and most of his family and supporters had been publicly executed at the Arg Presidential Palace in Kabul followed by a purge of anyone who didn’t support the new socialist government aligned with the Soviet Union.  We sensed a lot of instability and paranoia about the government, but had no idea that the recently appointed US Ambassador to Afghanistan would be assassinated in early 1979 at the same time as the Afghan Government welcomed a Soviet invasion to battle the mujahideen (tribal Muslim fighters who became the Taliban).  We heard that professors at the Afghan International University had been purged.  Because we had learned the hard way in Iran, we were careful not to say or do things that attracted too much attention or might be interpreted as against the new government. 

Tabas Earthquake: A Near Miss Natural Disaster on the Hippie Trail

In the Kabul city center, I was able to find a news stand that sold both the Herald Tribune (international newspaper in English) and Newsweek Magazine (a popular US magazine that summarized the news around the world each week). I splurged and bought a copy of each. As I read the Newsweek, I learned that the same night that we made the decision to skip sleeping in Mashhad and to go directly to the Afghan border, Mashhad and a large region around it was severely damaged by a devastating 7.4 magnitude earthquake that killed 15-25,000 people in 90 villages around Mashhad and Tabas. The earthquake was felt 500 miles away in Terhran and we probably felt it in Herat though none of us noticed it–probably because we were already in total culture shock. I showed the article to Cath and we checked the time of the earthquake and decided it occurred the very night we decided to pass through Mashhad instead of staying overnight. For the second time on my trip,, I had a “there but for the Grace of God go I” experience as I looked at pictures of the earthquake devastation in my Newsweek magazine.

Bamiyan Valley and the Lakes of Bandi-a-Mir

September 26th: All of us had Bamiyan Valley and the Lakes of Band-i-Amir on our bucket list for Afghanistan so we asked our hotel manager to help us arrange the trip.  He cautioned us to be very careful but he thought that we would be safe even though our trip would take us through areas that were barely controlled by the central government.  We estimated how much money we would need and correctly assumed that money exchange would be pretty limited in Bamiyan.  Cath’s journal notes that we “spent hours in a bank” but we eventually completed the cumbersome exchange process so we could buy tickets to Bamiyan through our hotel manager. 

Our trip to Bamiyan started out in a van that drove us out of Kabul north about 25 miles to a rendezvous area at the top of a valley near Khamzargar.  It seemed like we were at the end of canyon with huge, rugged mountains rising around us on three-sides.  This was where people and animals switched from vans to riding in the back of colorful trucks the rest of the way to Bamiyan.  Fortunately, I took pictures as it is impossible to describe the surreal experience.  No one spoke English and I don’t recall if there were any other western travelers besides the four of us.  Eventually, they figured out which truck could hold the four of us, we crawled up on top of the bags of feed or rice in the back of the truck, and then we watched as a large number of other locals and their animals were hoisted up on the truck with us.  Several trucks left at the same time, so the noise and dust took some getting used to.  The sun was bright, so we covered our heads and put hankerchiefs over our noses and mouths to minimize the dust impacts.  The roads were incredibly bad.  They would switchback and wind up and down substantial mountains through passes barely as wide as the truck and through periodic canyons. 

We had been warned that banditry and tribal warfare both were possibilities in the area we were traveling as the government control didn’t extend very far outside of Kabul and the other couple of major cities.  Increasingly, we saw evidence of Soviet “advisors” in the area. This kept us on edge, but our entire trip was without incident.

After eight hours of bouncing and climbing steeply through beautiful scenery, we arrived in the village of Bamiyan.  We initially checked into the Green Hotel but the manager just would not stop bargaining about everything—room rate, food, advice on how to get to the Lakes of Bandi-Amir, etc.  He also refused to make showers available even though he had them—we were so filthy from the dust.  After an argument the next morning over the room rate we had agreed upon the night before, we used the tactic of just walking away which usually caused the other person to cave in and offer a lower price.  It didn’t work with that dude and the four of us were on the street.  We moved into the Caravan Hotel which had sleazy rooms/beds but did have luke-warm showers that worked….sorta. 

We spent a day exploring the Buddha complex and resting up after our rugged trip by truck to Bamiyan. We then enjoyed two magical days touring the long river valley outside of Bamiyan.  Rick and I were fascinated by the 1,000 year old canal and irrigation system that delivers water from the Dukani River to much of the large agricultural valley.  We heard the legend that Genghis Khan conquered the nearby ancient city of Ghulghulah (the ruins of which we saw) by blocking the canal with straw and forcing the city to surrender.  The legend says Genghis Khan killed every man, woman, child, and animal in the valley as retribution for a revolt against his rule in which the locals killed his son.  Cath, Kerry, Rick and I walked long distances in the valley and up on the ledges overlooking the valley.  We saw men tending gates to the web of various sized canals and we looked at the crops though much had been harvested and ground was being prepared for planting by Oxen pulling plows. 

We watched potatoes being dug out of the ground with oxen and even negotiated for a few potatoes for a picnic.  Rick told us of skills he learned as a boy preparing potatoes in a fire.  We spent a lot of time gathering kindling and making a small fire and then we let Rick do his thing.  Whether it was his skills or the hash we smoked, the potatoes came out raw and inedible, so we gave them to nearby cattle to eat. 

Transport to the Lakes of Band-i-Amir

September 30th: Somehow, we arranged for smaller trucks to transport us up the winding, dusty, remote roads to the Lakes of Band-i-Amir. The ride was very, very rough and dusty but all agreed it was well worth it to see the pristine lakes and setting of Band-i-Amir.

The trip from Bamiyan to Band-i-Amir covered 50 rugged miles climbing high in the Hindu Kush Mountains almost in the center of Afghanistan at 9,500 feet.  The chain of six lakes later became the first national park in Afghanistan. The lakes consist of intensely blue mineral-rich water that seeped out of faults and cracks in the surrounding rocky landscape.  Band-e-Amir is one of the few travertine systems in the world where water deposited layers of hardened mineral (travertine) that built up into the walls that contain and separate the lakes.  Depths average up to 150 metres (450 feet).  The high mountain climate was quite cool when we visited and the sun was especially intense in the cloudless sky and we all got sunburned.  There was little in the way of lodging, food, or facilities nor were there many locals in the area or other tourists.  We did find a family who offered a stone hut as an accommodation.  The hut had dirt floors with mats, had a small wood stove with questionable venting, and no electricity or running water.  The family’s enterprising children made a pretty good living keeping the hippies comfortable with wood in our stove, delivery of museli with yogurt and chai for breakfast and stew with nan bread for dinner, along with the odd coca cola and, of course, hash.  Cath, Rick, Kerry, and I stayed in the one-room hut for three days while we explored the lakes and region. 

The lakes and setting are unbelievable and unforgettable.  Cath captured it: “This place is beyond description—Shangri La perhaps.  The four of us were like kids exploring the closest lake.  We moved around it fascinated by the perfect mirror reflection of the sky and the surrounding mountains in the calm waters.  We had rock-throwing and rock-skipping contests.  We even conducted some depth experiments because we had no idea how deep it was though we knew the amazing visibility was deceptive and we could only guess.  While the air was cool, the sun warmed us up enough that we eventually stripped down and went swimming.  Being in clean water and feeling completely clean after our swims, we were very happy campers other than being quite chilled from the ice cold lake water.”

A highlight was hiking between two of the lakes when we came upon an ancient but still-operating flour mill powered by water flowing between the lakes.  Local tribesmen were sitting around the mill when we came around the corner.  They surprised us and we surprised them because there really wasn’t anyone else around other than our host family back at the first lake.  We waved and shouted “hello” as we approached them.  The tribesmen seemed friendly, so I pulled out my large frisbee and threw it towards them about 50 feet.  Holy shit—one guy jumped up with his rifle (they all had rifles) and started to look angry until we calmed him down.  Eventually, we taught all the tribesmen to play frisbee and we laughed together and then had tea.  Another fabulous day on the Hippie Trail!

I probably over-did it swimming in the cold lake and ended up with a bad cold for two days.  Kerry also was feeling poorly and had fever and the shits.  The 9500 foot elevation didn’t help and we probably also were feeling some altitude sickness.  The hut became a recovery room for Kerry and I while Rick and Cath explored the area further and tried not to catch whatever we had. 

Back to Bamiyan on October 4:    After three days enjoying Band-e-Amir, we rumbled back down to Bamiyan in trucks that our host family arranged.  Kerry and I were feeling better.  Our hotel in Bamiyan was familiar and we all just relaxed a bit and enjoyed having restaurant meals again and toilets.  We had shared a lot of togetherness for quite a few days and both couples enjoyed a little time away from each other and Cath and I also both needed some solitude and time to ourselves.  Rather than head back to Kabul the next day, we thought another day of rest would be good before the long truck ride down the mountains.  Additionally, I saw a brochure for a Buzkashi event in Bamiyan in a few days.  I tried to get Cath, Rick and Kerry as excited about Buzkashi as I was but they were lukewarm due to the brutal and cruel nature of this national sport of Afghanistan.  The game is pretty simple—horse-mounted local tribesmen attempt to place a goat or calf carcass (or the largest remaining piece of the carcass in play as it is torn apart during the competition) into a goal while the other side defends its goal in often violent collisions.  Horsemen and horses alike are often injured or even killed in a competition.  Apparently, the spectators also are very rowdy.  One of us noticed that a movie about Buskashi was being shown somewhere in Bamiyan—we watched it and that more than satisfied our need to see an actual competition. I found this picture of Buskashi.

Return to Kabul and on to the Kabul Gorge and the Kyber Pass to Pakistan

October 5-6 Kabul  We bounced back to Kabul in a truck and relaxed in the courtyard of the Behzad hotel where we had stayed previously.  We all decided to depart for Pakistan and India as quickly as we could make necessary arrangements—two to three days.  Rick suggested we ask our hotel manager to prepare a special meal for the four of us with wine and some favorite dishes we had come to love.  We got our tickets on a public bus through the Kyber Pass to the Pakistan border and then arranged to have the special dinner the night before our departure.  Both Cath and I took long, cold showers in the shower room.  She commented in her journal: “Even a cold shower was welcome, the rush of dirt downwards was amazing.  Looking forward to a good meal and wine—the first alcohol since the Pudding Shop.”  We had a marvelous evening and the wine from Russia was decent though I think I splurged on some local Afghan beer instead.  It was nice to have a relaxing evening just to reminisce about all the ups and downs and beauty we experienced together in Kabul, Bamiyan, and Band-e-Amir.  We all got buzzed on the alcohol and enjoyed a tremendous, delicious meal in a private area of the hotel set up as a dining room with white linen.  Were were all playing cards after dinner when the manager, Barot, interrupted us to invite us for chai and joints.   Cath noted that Barot was “one helluva joint roller and he played a lot of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash so we partied until we collapsed”.

October 6    Cath and Rick were both feeling pretty bad the next morning.  Rick was particularly weak but he said he thought he would be able to travel to Pakistan the next day.  Cath and I decided we would transit across Pakistan as quickly as possible so we could get to India, Kashmir, and Nepal which were all high on our itineraries.  I was lucky and was able to get my visas  quickly—the other three didn’t need visas since they had Commonwealth passports.  I next got our tickets to the border.  I also went through the dance of making sure we had just enough Afghan money to get to the Pakistan border.  Banks in Afghanistan were a nightmare in part because the Afghan government was largely bankrupt and its currency was a joke internationally.  I checked for mail at the American Express office.  I also checked around with other travelers on what the Pakistan border process would be like and what would be the quickest and cheapest way to get across Pakistan.  Though our judgement was certainly unfair and primarily reflected just how exhausted we were traveling across Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, we both just wanted to get out of the Muslim world with all its male-dominated customs.  In particular, Cath was really tired of being viewed as an immoral infidel for her lack of modesty in dress and for being invisible as a woman in a male culture.  Time and again, Cath and I would strike up a conversation with a local and he would inevitably address all his questions to me and not to Cath.  It would especially drive her crazy when some guy would ask me what Cath thought about something or what she wanted in a shop.  Bring on the Buddhist/Hindu world!

Kabul to Pakistan October 7-8:  Rick was really ill on the 7th so we arranged to delay our bus tickets by one day so he might recover a bit. Cath, Kerry, and I went bargain shopping as we all wanted to buy gifts/mementos from Afghanistan.  After I returned home, I was surprised at how many items looked so cool on a table in the bazaar in Kabul but ended up being really impractical and tacky once I got them home.  I suppose the tendency of shopkeepers to get you stoned while you shopped contributed to my poor choices in souvenirs and gifts.

October 8th: On October 8th, we traveled from Kabul to Peshwar, Pakistan via the Kabul Gorge and the Kyber Pass in a van.  Rick was able to travel, so the four of us got on an 8:30am bus to Peshawar.  The 94 mile trip from Kabul to Jalalabad, Afghanistan drops about 4,000 feet through the stunning and frightening Kabul Gorge–winding up and down narrow switchbacks with frequent views of the drop-off to the Kabul River from the edge of the road. Reaching the Kyber Pass was a relief as the landscape became more gentle after the Pass. The Kabul Gorge is so rugged and beautiful and historically important as the site of a notorious 1842 massacre in which Afghan tribesman slaughtered 16,500 British and Indian soldiers along with their camp followers.  We enjoyed a brown bread picnic when the bus stopped in a rest area.  We marveled at the abandoned forts along our route and imagined the centuries of battles between warring countries and local tribes who each unsuccessfully and tragically tried to control Afghanistan—one of the best examples anywhere that the #1 “lesson of history” is that human beings refuse to learn the lessons of history.  In 1978, I saw the first evidence of Soviet presence in Afghanistan but had no idea then that first the Soviets and then the Americans would repeat the same mistakes made by the British over and over again for more than three decades.  We wound our way down to Jalalabad and across the border into the Pakistani town of Landi Kotal.  As our bus proceeded through the border gate,  local traders started calling to us and banging on our windows as they offered to sell hash, opium, acid, and guns which were all on open display.  This was, by far, the wildest frontier town I had seen or would ever see!

We arrived in Peshwar late afternoon and reconfirmed our plan to get out of Pakistan as quickly as possible.  Rick was very ill and we feared he might have hepatitis or some other serious condition that required medical care.  He and Kerry agreed that they needed to go to a clinic or hospital.  They got in a rickshaw and the last I ever saw or heard of them was our quick goodbyes and a very weak Rick waving goodbye from the rickshaw.