Afghanistan Road Trip – America's Finest Ambassador

The Plan

: Suicide mission or adventure of a lifetime? The debate raged on in my head in the weeks leading up to my departure date. Taking into consideration the disapproval of pretty much everyone I’d told about this trip and after having read a book by Wesley Morgan called “The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley,” I felt pretty uneasy about what I was about to do. That said, I did all the research one could possibly do in preparing for a trip like this, I was committed to the plan, understood the risks, and had been – although reluctantly – totally accepting of the potential consequences, whatever they may be. To get out into the area, I’d booked a flight on Turkish Airlines for the evening of December 26, 2022, which’d take me from Chicago to Islamabad with a brief layover in Istanbul. Once in Pakistan, I’d spend one night in Islamabad just to get oriented and then would take a bus early the next morning to the city of Peshawar. That same day in Peshawar, I’d go and get a visa from the Afghanistan Consulate located there. After that, the next day, I’d cross the border into Afghanistan where I’d meet my guide, get into his car and begin our journey across the country. The route in red here, after having crossed into Afghanistan via the Torkham border, takes us over to the city of Jalalabad, then briefly up through Kunar and Nuristan provinces before returning to Jalalabad on the same route. We’d then head east across the country through Kabul, Bamian and Ghor before ending in Herat. From Herat, we’d return to Kabul via Helmand and Kandahar on the southern portion of the national ring road. From Kabul, I’d fly out to Dubai on Kam Air. The journey, I figured, would take about two weeks. I ended up spending 15 days in the country. Without further ado…

First Stop: Pakistan

: The name Islamabad means “City of Islam” in the same way that Hyderabad means “lion city” (haydar = lion and the suffix –abad = city). That said, when some people read it, they see the name in some kind of messed-up English context and take it to mean “Islam is bad.” Might sound ridiculous, but a couple years ago someone actually started an online petition – and it got several hundred signatures – to change the name of Pakistan’s capital to “Islamagood.” Anyway, in the spirit of misconstruing names based on linguistic biases, wouldn’t it be funny if inside Butt Money Changers, behind the counter, instead of a person there was just a giant ass attending to customers and I could stick the $100USD bill I wanted to convert between the butt cheeks and into the rectum and seconds later it would shit out the equivalent in the local currency?

: Security guard outside Roomy Signature Hotel in Islamabad. Check-in at this hotel isn’t normally until 2pm and I arrived around 5am which’d leave me with nine whole hours to kill after like twenty-five hours in transit from Chicago to Islamabad. Unfortunately, paying extra for an early check-in wasn’t an option because the hotel was booked solid the night before and there weren’t any rooms available. That said, just wanted to quickly give a shout-out to the manager here – I don’t even remember his name – who offered me drinks and snacks upon my arrival and promised that, the first room someone checked out of, he’d have cleaned right away so I could get in there to take a shower and have a rest after my long journey. Guy got me in my room by 8am at no extra charge and then gave me directions to the currency exchange and arranged for my taxi the next morning to Faizabad Bus Terminal. He really went above and beyond the call of duty for me and, with so much uncertainty looming on the horizon, this really made for a smooth and pleasant start to the trip.

: In Faizabad Bus Terminal, the guy at the counter of a company called Faisal Movers asked me what my name is when purchasing my ticket to Peshawar. I said “Timothy Lally” and what he heard was “Mr. Saib Samiti”

: Maybe instead of going with Faisal Movers, I should’ve bought a ticket on the Butt Express. Though I don’t know if they run any routes from Islamabad over to Peshawar. I think they just specialize in entering smelly brown tunnels along a tract colloquially known as the Hershey Highway

: Had to wait in this security line in the cold rain before being granted access to the road that leads up to the Afghanistan Consulate. Unlike all the local people here who were allowed to walk from this security point over to the consulate on their own, I had to be escorted by some security guy wearing clothes that said “One Shot, One Kill” to the office of Pakistani intelligence where I was briefly interviewed by some dude named Mr. Khan. He asked why I was going to Afghanistan, how long I’d be there, when I was gonna cross the border…ya know, shit like that, “Just in case something happens,” as he said. After that, I was led through another security checkpoint with a metal detector where I was made to leave my cell phone before being escorted directly over to the office of the Afghan consul. As instructed, I took my shoes off before entering the room. Upon stepping into the office, there was a desk on the opposite side of the room with a big black and white Taliban flag behind it. Sitting at the desk was a Taliban official with a black turban and a big bushy black beard. He spoke English and instructed me to have a seat in one of the chairs near his desk. He asked for my passport which he took and handed to one of his employees who’d emerged from a door behind his desk that led to another office. He handed me a form and told me to fill it out. The whole thing seemed surreal, but I did as I was told. No more than ten minutes later I was handed back my passport with a fresh new visa in it. They didn’t charge me any money. The guy said to me, “Have a great time in Afghanistan. We welcome you to our country. Don’t take photos of anything you shouldn’t and you won’t have a problem.” “I won’t, sir. Thank you, sir,” I said before turning around and walking out of the room.

: Bab-e Khyber or “Khyber Gate” leading to the entrance of the historical Khyber Pass

: About 3km from the border with Afghanistan, traffic drew to a halt. Up ahead in the distance, I could see some sort of mob had decided to set the road on fire. Everyone got out of their vehicles to behold the spectacle. Police showed up but didn’t seem too enthusiastic about confronting the mob or resolving the situation, so they stood idly by as all the angry men added more fuel to the fire. I stood around waiting for about an hour before giving up on the idea that I was gonna be able to finish my ride all the way to the border in the taxi I’d already paid for. The morning was slipping away from me and the agreed-upon time that I was supposed to meet up with my Afghan guide on the other side of the border was rapidly approaching. I had no cell reception at this point on the road to reach out and tell him what’s going on, so I was starting to get pretty anxious. I asked an English-speaking guy I’d been chatting with if the mob had any hostility against Westerners specifically. “No, no, no, sir,” he assured me, “they are angry with the government. This…this is a daily occurrence.” Hearing that was enough for me to remove my bags from the taxi, shake the hand of my driver thanking him for his services, and head on my way.

: Here’s a photo of the guy I ended up hiring to carry my big bag for me on the 3km walk up to the border. Through an English-speaking third-party, he offered to do the job for the equivalent of seventy-five cents in USD. I countered his offer by saying I’d give him the equivalent of $5USD. Both he and the translator seemed confused. By their standards, I guess that was too much money for the task at hand, but I refused to have anyone carry my bag that long a distance for anything less. With a big shit-eating grin on his face, he accepted my terms.

: Super Power Mercedes Benz Model 2021 as seen while walking towards the mob of guys burning shit

: Thankfully, walking past the mob wasn’t a big deal. Aside from a few curious stares, nobody really cared about the presence of me and my bag porter. Onward we marched towards the Torkham Border Crossing, as seen in the distance

: Here’s where me and my porter had to part ways – the official entrance to the border crossing. This area was total chaos. Upon entering here, everybody had to put their bags through a scanner and walk through a metal detector and…there was just no order to any of this. People were pushing and shoving in every direction, some people were getting through without even walking under the metal detector and far too many bags were being loaded onto the scanner at once for the guy reviewing them on the screen to catch anything illegal. In the middle of the free-for-all, before even getting to the metal detector, I was singled out by some Pakistani security guy who asked me if I had any cash in my bag. I said yeah. He asked how much. I told him probably around $500USD. This wasn’t true. At the time, I had close to $4500USD on me because in Afghanistan I wouldn’t be able to access the funds in my bank account via ATM, so I’d need a lot of cash money. I’d agreed to pay my guide $200USD per day for driving me across the country and translating and whatever else. $200 x 15 days = $3000. Then food and accommodation would be around five or six-hundred dollars. And then, since my credit card hadn’t been working on Kam Air’s website, I’d need $400 cash to buy my plane ticket to Dubai at the end of my stay in the country. And then the $500 left over, I’d need for tips and small expenses in Sudan and Somalia, which is where I’d be heading to after Afghanistan. And so…like I said, I told the guy I had $500USD on me. He asked to see it. I pulled out five bills I had in my travel wallet and showed him. He wasn’t satisfied. He said he was going to search the rest of my bag. He did and found the rest of the money. He asked why I’d lied to him. I said, “Because we’re in a crowded place surrounded by poor people whose families are starving. You think it’s a good idea to announce I got four-and-a-half thousand dollars on me? Sounds like an open invitation to be robbed on the other side of the border, don’t ya think?” And the guy says, “Were you aware that you’re not allowed to bring more than a thousand US dollars across this border?” “No,” I said, “how would I know that? In the US it’s ten-thousand dollars. I figured it’d be the same here.” “I’m afraid not, sir. You’re going to have to come with me.”

: This guy was the boss in the customs office on the day I was there. Made me wait in this room for an hour or so before he came to see me. One of the first things he asked me was where I’m from even though he already knew. “Oh yes, America. You know what we should do with you?” he asked. “We should take you and throw you into a place like Guantanamo the way your country does with our citizens then throw away the key.” He then proceeded to tell me they’d be confiscating the $4500 I was trying to “smuggle” across the border. “We’re at war with these people,” he said. “How do we know money like this won’t end up in the hands of terrorist groups that are fighting against the Pakistani government?” In response, I told him that, “I like Pakistan. This time I was only here a couple days, but in 2017 I was here for a couple weeks. Came over from India at the Wagah Border Crossing on bicycle and pedaled up to Islamabad. From there I took a car into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – did some hiking in Swat Valley then went over Lowari Pass and visited Chitral. If I ever come back, I’d love to do the Karakoram Highway. I feel no animosity towards your country and wouldn’t give my hard-earned money away to people that do.” He asked what I do for a living. I told him I’m a gutter cleaner. He didn’t understand, so I showed him a video of me on a roof in Chicago with a leaf blower, blowing the fallen leaves out of someone’s gutters. “And that’s my brother and that’s my dad,” I said when they appeared in the video. “It’s a family business. But my dad’s dead now and so I’ve become the boss of the business.” “This is what you do for a living?” he asked, surprised. “Yeah,” I said, “that’s what I do.” He nodded approvingly. “I like this. I respect people that do the real type of work – the physical things.” He told me to go back and sit in my chair. He left the room for another half-hour or so. I still had no reception and couldn’t contact my guide on the other side of the border, so I just sat waiting as patiently as possible.

: When the guy eventually came back in the room, he said to me, “You know, I once thought about moving to America. A while back, I had the opportunity to do so. But I thought about it and I asked myself, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ There they have laws that are actually enforced. Here in Pakistan, I have this job. I have money. I have power. I can get anything I want, no problem. I would never be able to live this well in America.” “I see,” I said, not sure where he was going with this. “Listen,” he continued, “since you have a mostly positive impression of my country, I don’t want to spoil that by taking all your money and have you thinking that we did you wrong. You understand that the law here says you cannot take more than one-thousand US dollars across the border, correct?” I told him I understood. “Okay, good. So what I suggest you do is keep a thousand of the dollars in your wallet and then go to convert the rest of the money into rupees or afghanis and then you’ll be able to cross over the border.” I said, “Oh, so the limit isn’t the equivalent of one-thousand US dollars, it’s just one-thousand US dollars and then I could have more in the local currencies?” “Yes,” he said, “because terrorists do deals in US dollars. If you fly across the border you can bring five-thousand US dollars, but here on the ground it’s only a thousand.” “Okay,” I said, “but I’m worried about taking out that much money at one of these local currency exchanges. I feel like someone’s gonna rob me or rip me off really bad.” He told me not to worry. He said, “I’ll send one of the guys here from my office to accompany you to make sure you get the best deal possible.” I agreed, thanked the man for his mercy, signed the above customs slip and then was on my way.

: The guy on the left, I don’t really know who he is. He was just kinda hangin out. I got nothin against that guy. The guy in the center is the owner of the currency exchange I was taken to and the guy in the black on the bottom right is the man from the customs office that was sent with me to ensure that I got a good exchange rate. Ya see, back when I was still in the customs office and before it was even apparent that I’d be let go with all my money, this guy took my phone out of my hands and was going through all my WhatsApp messages and going through all my photos and messing around with my Snapchat and wouldn’t give my phone back. I’d reach out to take it back and he’d jerk it away from me. And like, he wasn’t ordered to do so and wasn’t doing it as part of his job, he was just taking advantage of me because he knew he could. So, from that, I sensed he was a sleazy bastard and figured he could be bought. Back in Islamabad at Butt Money Changers two days beforehand, I’d exchanged $100USD into Pakistani Rupees and’d only spent about $30USD worth of that sum and the rest I was hoping my guide would help me change into afghanis on the other side of the border. So here, as we walked to the currency exchange, I let the guy know straight up that I’d rather just keep my US dollars because that’s what my guide’d prefer to get paid in and that I got all these Pakistani rupees I could give him as a gift if he were to just look the other way and let me cross the border without doing this big exchange. He played along and made me feel like he was interested, and then during one of the afternoon calls to prayer that’d suddenly monopolized everyone’s attention, we stepped behind a big dump truck whereupon I took out the aforementioned stack of rupees and handed them over to the guy. As he was counting ‘em, I said, “Okay, can we go to the border now?” And he puts the money in his pocket and says, “Oh no, I can’t let you do that. That’s against Pakistani law. That would be a very big problem. Let’s go to the currency exchange.”

: So yeah, that guy played me like a fuckin fiddle, and then over here at the currency exchange, they were giving me totally bullshit rates, trying to get more of my money. I knew the current rates because I’d just asked my guide the day beforehand via WhatsApp and argued a bit on my own but wasn’t really getting anywhere. Thankfully I was able to connect to some network and was finally able to call my guide on the other side of the border to let him know what was going on here. He’s fluent in Urdu and Pashto and yelled at ‘em a bit in their own language – not sure which of the two it was – but ultimately told me that they’re not gonna make the exchange unless they cheat me out of at least seventy or eighty dollars on top of the seventy bucks the guy already finessed outta me. If I didn’t take the deal, the only other option would be to go back to Islamabad and then fly to Kabul a couple days later which’d end up costing me even more money in the long run. So, I ended up accepting their offer, counted these here stacks of money two times to make sure they didn’t fuck me any further then walked out that bitch and headed back to the border

: As I was waiting here in this long line to get an exit stamp from Pakistan, a lot of people took notice of my presence and started to chat with me about where I’m from and what I’m doing there. After a few minutes, all the people I’d been chatting with agreed that since I’m a guest, I shouldn’t have to wait in this line. They told me to go to the front. I felt uncomfortable cutting the rest of the queue and told them I’d just wait it out like everybody else. One old man wouldn’t accept my decision and came up and grabbed me and started dragging me to the front of the line. A lot of the people we bumped into on the way to the front weren’t exactly pleased by this, but the guy shouted back at them saying I’m a guest. He got me to the front, then shook my hand and went back to his place in line. A minute later, it was my turn to go. I slid my passport across the counter and the guy had no idea what to do with it and told me to get out of the way so he could serve the next Afghani or Pakistani person in line. A few minutes later, a supervisor came to the window and said he’d process my exit stamp, apologizing for the other guy, explaining that he was new and didn’t know any better. Ten minutes later, I was again on the move.

: This was a photo sent to me from my guide in Afghanistan, telling me where he’d be waiting. This fenced-in tunnel from one country to another was probably about a kilometer long and, before I could even get to Afghanistan immigration, as I walked along inside it I was stopped by at least three different Pakistani police officers who all wanted to take photos of the information page of my passport, my Pakistani visa, my Pakistani entry and exit stamps, and my visa for Afghanistan. And then right before exiting the Pakistani sphere of influence, I was pulled aside and interviewed one last time – this time by an old man who was taking copious notes as he asked me where I’m from, what I do for a living, what was my father’s name, my mother’s maiden name, how long I was in Pakistan for, what I did there, why I’m going to Afghanistan, et cetera. And then I got to Afghanistan immigration and there was only one guy in line in front of me. He got served right away. I got up to the window and the guy asked me my purpose of visit. “Tourism,” I said. He nodded, stamped my passport and waved me along into the country.

Getting My Bearings in Jalalabad

: Still inside the long chain-link tunnel between the two countries but officially now in Afghanistan, I was stopped by these two guys who told me if I couldn’t prove that I’m up-to-date with my polio vaccination, I was gonna hafta take one of the oral polio vaccines that sit out in this cooler all day every day at this dirty disgusting border crossing. Thankfully I had proof and didn’t have to get into a physical altercation with these guys because, even though they seemed like nice friendly guys, I would’ve fought each of them to the death before risking giving myself polio at the behest of some stupid-ass Afghanistan government mandate

: Boots officially back on the ground in Afghanistan. Felt weird to be there again. Honestly never thought I’d go back after my first visit in July 2019 to hike the Wakhan Corridor up in Badakhshan Province. That time, to get into the country, I’d come in across the Ishkashim Border Crossing from Tajikistan and it was a thousand-and-a-half times easier

: Here we are checking into a hotel in Jalalabad. On the left is my guide and driver, Mirwais, and on the right is his long-time friend Nasrat who he brings along to help him out when showing tourists around. Mirwais is originally from Mazar-e Sharif and the language these guys talked to each other in is Dari, but as I previously mentioned, Mirwais also spoke Pashto and Urdu – and very useful in his role as guide to visiting foreigners – could speak intermediate level English. Although I’d been in contact with several different guides during the planning of this trip, Mirwais – who was recommended to me on CouchSurfing by an Afghan dude who’d fled to Germany after the Taliban takeover – is ultimately who I ended up going with. What were the deciding factors in this decision? I dunno…gut instinct? He was more responsive in our communication via WhatsApp and always did his best to promptly answer all my questions to the best of his ability instead of taking two days to respond then giving me bullshit answers like, “No problem,” “Don’t worry” and “Afghanistan is 100% safe for tourists after the Taliban takeover.” And I talked to a couple other foreigners who’d used him and they said they had a good experience, so I felt comfortable hiring him. Could I have done this trip by myself without a guide, using public transportation? Yeah, probably all of it except the visit to Kunar and Nuristan provinces, but the question is why would I want to? I don’t know any of the local languages, didn’t research where to stay in any of the places, don’t know where to eat, can’t get permits to travel from the Taliban, can’t communicate with the Taliban when they’re interrogating me, etc… Like, I don’t care that his services cost me three-thousand dollars. To me, it was well worth the security and comfort I had knowing these two guys were looking out for me during my fifteen days in the country and if I ever went back, I’d do it again the same way.

: This photo is actually from Kabul, but during my first night in the country we got takeaway kabobs to eat for dinner and I remember thinking how odd it was that the kabob was wrapped in Korean newspaper. I found it even stranger as the trip went on that several other kabob places in completely different provinces throughout the country also wrap their kabobs in Korean newspaper. I mean, what’s the deal with that? Where’s all this Korean newspaper coming from and how did it become the de facto kabob-wrapping material?

: Here’s the room I stayed in at the hotel in Jalalabad and in my hand is a banana milkshake. I became obsessed with these and would order ‘em any chance I got during my time in the country.

: So, after I ate my kabob dinner, I went straight to bed. It’d been a very long day with the flaming road and the walk to the border where I was detained and then extorted. Unfortunately, my sleep hadn’t been as restful as I would’ve hoped because around one or two in the morning, I was woken up by someone pounding violently on the door to my room. Whoever it was didn’t speak English and I couldn’t understand what the fuck was being said. Mirwais was sharing a room with Nasrat down the hall and I sent him a text on WhatsApp to ask him what the fuck was going on. He didn’t answer. The pounding continued. I didn’t know what to do so I just sat there on my bed and didn’t make a peep. The pounding on my door eventually stopped but then picked up down the hall. First the sound of a bolt and then that of a door squeaking open. I heard Mirwais. Footsteps back towards my door, two sets of them. More pounding and the voice of Nasrat saying, “Hello, mister!” I open up the door and the guy who works at the hotel walks right past me and goes up to this fuse box that’s in the corner of the room and starts fucking around with it. I look down the hall at Mirwais who is standing in the doorway of his room. “What the fuck is going on?” I asked. “There is a problem with the electricity,” he said. “The guy needs to fix it.” “Why is the main circuit breaker for the hotel in a guest’s room? That doesn’t make any fucking sense.” Mirwais shrugged. The guy finished what he needed to do. Mirwais told me to bolt my door and that he’d see me in the morning. I said good night and went back to bed, though barely slept a wink the whole rest of the night.

: Unfriendly stare from a butcher on a morning stroll around Jalalabad

: Here you’re looking at a cup of tea and a little bowl of sweets called “gur” that are made from sugar cane. They were served to me by some Taliban dudes at what I believe had been the Jalalabad branch of the Ministry of Information and Culture. We went there after having breakfast in hopes of obtaining an official permission letter to go and visit Kunar and Nuristan provinces. Most of the guys I talked to in this office were very nice and welcoming – one guy wished me “a good entertainment” on my journey – but one of the dudes was a bit aggressive and was demanding that I make a movie no less than three minutes promoting Afghanistan as a popular tourist destination that they could then share on social media. He proceeded to text me following up on this demand for the next two weeks, but then suddenly changed the tone of the conversation one day when he asked me if there was anything I could do to help him get to America.

: Permission letters like these had been issued pretty regularly for tourists visiting Kabul, Bamian, Herat and Kandahar in the months leading up to my visit, but since they don’t get too many tourists in Jalalabad, the guys in that branch of the Ministry of Information and Culture had never drafted one of these letters before. Instead of being made from an oft-used template, this one was typed up from scratch right in front of me on a computer and printer that hadn’t even been set up or plugged in when we came into the office. They used a photo from Mirwais’s phone of an old permission letter he had from another tourist as an example to follow while they typed it up before taking it over to their boss to get the official stamp of approval, as seen there in blue and green on the center of the page.

: Here we are walking through Jalalabad market. Though it was an unspoken rule, anytime we were walking through crowded public places, Mirwais led the way through the crowd and I tried to keep up with him while Nasrat was bringing up the rear, making sure I didn’t get lost and nobody was picking my pockets and all that good shit

: Expert gunsmith who sits and builds weapons all day at Jalalabad gun market

: One of the first things that Mirwais said to me the day before when I met him after having crossed over the border was, “Why are you dressed like that?” At the time I’d been wearing that brown top (seen in a few of the previous photos from when I was still at the border) that I bought from a Pakistani clothing store here in Chicago before going on the trip. “Nobody dresses like that here,” he said. “People will know immediately that you are not from here. We need to get you some local clothes.” And here we are, doing just that.

: While we were at the market, Mirwais wanted to buy a stuffed animal to give to his young daughter back home. The stuffed animals at the market were not on display out in the open, but instead were piled up in this here storage unit that the guy unlocked and opened up just for us to take a look at

Foray Into Kunar and Nuristan

: This is a picture from the road leading north out of Jalalabad in Nangarhar Province up into Kunar and then eventually into Nuristan Province. The name Nuristan means “land of light” or “land of the illuminated” and is relatively new. Up until 1895 when the local population had been forcibly converted to Islam, the area had been known as Kafiristan which means “land of the infidels” because, very much like the Kalash peoples on the other side of the border in far northwest Pakistan who actually still continue the tradition to this day, the people there used to practice some sort of pagan animist religion. Again like the Kalash people, a lot of Nuristanis tend to have lighter skin and eyes than other ethnic groups in the surrounding areas and claim to be descendants of soldiers of Alexander the Great that were left behind when all those guys went to go fight the Battle of Hydapses in Punjab more than two-thousand years ago. When doing research for this trip, I’d read that Nuristan was supposed to be one of the most beautiful provinces in Afghanistan. Shrouded in mystery, not too many visitors had dared venture that way over the years. Since I was already gonna be rolling the dice going on this trip to Afghanistan in the first place, I figured…like, why not go all the way? Ya know what I mean?

: Here we are stopped in a market area not too far outside of Jalalabad where Mirwais got out of the car to run and go get everyone some banana milkshakes

: Cheersing my empty milkshake glass with these two Nuristani guys who were going to accompany us on the trip. Mirwais had “subcontracted” his guiding duties to these guys who were college students living in Jalalabad but who had roots in Waygal I believe, saying that people from Nuristan might be suspicious of outsiders – himself and Nasrat included – if not accompanied by local people who could introduce us and let everyone know we’re just guests and not there to cause trouble. That said, Mirwais also warned me that, “The only two people you really trust during this trip are me and Mr. Nasrat. The other two guys I don’t know very well. Do you understand?” I told him that I did. The guy in the middle was a pretty nice guy and was happy to talk to me and to show me pictures of his village on his phone, but the guy on the right I got kinda weird vibes from right from the start. He was like, “Why are you even here? Why do you want to go to Nuristan?” And then later on, after the trip, that same guy was sending me messages on WhatsApp asking me to send him money and that made me really uncomfortable and I ended up having to block him.

: This photo is from somewhere near the border between Nangarhar and Kunar provinces. That Toyota on the left there is decorated in celebration of a wedding. Even though music is banned under Taliban rule, we’d blast it quite loudly while cruising along, especially here as we sped up to drive alongside the wedding car and shout our congratulations to them – I think the phrase had been something that sounded like “arse mubarak!” Of course, when approaching Taliban checkpoints along the way, we’d just shut the radio off before getting within earshot of the soldiers on the road

: Yeah, so…ya know how I just mentioned that music is banned under Taliban rule? Right, well, there’s actually one form of music they do approve of. It’s a type of song known as a “tarana” and, while there are different variations of taranas among different cultures in the world – like, I don’t even see this particular type mentioned on the tarana Wikipedia page – this style of tarana is sung in Pashto which is the preferred language of the Taliban. The voices in these songs echo hauntingly and, not sure if they actually do, but sound to me like the singers are using auto-tune as they exalt jihad and glorify martyrs that’ve given their lives for the cause. I remember the first time I heard one of these songs. I was in my hotel room in Asadabad, the capital of Kunar province. The sun was about to set and the only thing I could see out my window was a giant Taliban flag blowing in the wind with the mountains in the background when a tarana rang out from somewhere very close by, above the otherwise deafening silence. I’d been browsing the internet when the tune began, but I found it so chilling I had to set my phone down, then just sat there taking it all in until the song was over

: The mean streets of Asadabad, as seen early in the morning, the day after this story I’m about to tell. So…earlier in the day – the day we got into Asadabad – getting those permission papers from the Taliban office in Jalalabad and buying me some local clothes took way longer than we were hoping it would, so we weren’t able to drive all the way up to Nuristan in one go as we’d originally planned. That’s why we ended up spending the night here in the capital of Kunar, which upon first impression seemed to be kind of a piss-poor, fervently Taliban-supporting, xenophobic shithole. Um, yeah, sorry if that sounded a bit harsh and I’m very sorry if that’s inaccurate, but that’s just the vibe I got. So, after pulling over to ask several people in town where he could find a hotel, Mirwais pulled in front of some ramshackle old building where there’d supposedly been a place we could stay up on the second floor. He got out of the car and went up to go have a look. When he came back down, he said, “Okay, we’ll sleep here tonight. I’m going to go park the car in a secure place. Take with you up to the room only what is absolutely necessary. We don’t want attention from people seeing you carrying all your bags in. I want you to follow Mr. Nasrat up into the hotel and don’t speak to anybody at all – not even Mr. Nasrat – because if they hear, people will immediately know you are a foreigner and maybe it could be a problem.” I did as I was instructed and got settled up into my room where I was told to bolt the door and not open up if it was anyone but Mirwais and/or Nasrat on the other side.

: Dinner with Mirwais in the hotel in Asadabad – the same room where I’d just recently mentioned hearing that tarana ring out maybe only an hour or so before we’d share this meal together. The night before in Jalalabad – and most other nights throughout the trip – I had a room to myself while Mirwais and Nasrat shared a room of their own nearby. On this night in Asadabad, however, Mirwais told me that Nasrat was gonna share a room with the two Nuristani guys while he slept in the same room as me for security purposes…and I’m glad he did. Sometime around two or three in the morning, there began some vicious rapping, rapping on my chamber door. And unlike the night before when it was just some inconsiderate hotel employee looking to get into my room to fuck around with that poorly placed fuse box, these guys were coming specifically after me. Mirwais opened the door as I sat up in my bed. At the front had been a pair of young Taliban cleric-looking dudes and right behind them were a pair of gun-toting soldiers, index fingers of their shootin hands stiff and just outside the trigger guard, parallel with the barrels of their AK-47s. They heard there was a foreigner here. “Give them the paper,” Mirwais instructed me after briefly speaking with the men. I reached down into my backpack at the side of my bed and pulled out the permission letter from the office in Jalalabad. One of the cleric dudes came in, took the paper from me and then sat down on Mirwais’s bed as he began to read it. Meanwhile, the other guy and the soldiers stood in the doorway at the ready. “Salaam aleikum,” I said to them. “Wa aleikum asalaam,” they said back. The guy reading the paper said something to Mirwais. He said something back while pointing at the paper. The guy shrugged and handed the paper back to Mirwais who in turn handed the paper back to me. I put it away while the guy stood up and walked back to the door. As the guy was leaving, Mirwais followed closely behind to shut the door after them, uttering a bunch of Pashto formalities and thanking them with a “dera manana.”

: Crowded around that stove on the far right side of the photo in the lobby of the hotel, trying to stay warm as we await our breakfast before continuing our journey up to Nuristan

: Since the road from Asadabad up to Parun, the capital of Nuristan Province, is unpaved, uneven and full of massive craters that are said to be filled with ice this time of year, Mirwais decided it best to leave behind his car that only had 2-wheel drive and hire a local driver that he knew from before who had a pickup truck with 4-wheel drive. I sat up front with the driver while Mirwais, Nasrat and the two other guys all crowded into the backseat. On top of that we’d also end up picking up a bunch of hitchhikers who’d brave the freezing conditions by taking a seat or standing back in the bed of the truck. Anyway, from the front seat of this vehicle, I took a photo of this air freshener because I found the name “Car Deodorant” to be pretty amusing

: Making our way up along the Pech River Valley

: Some town we were passing through

: Sights around town

: Another Kunar street scene

: A close-up of the girls on the left side of the photo previous with big baskets full of recently gathered firewood strapped to their backs

: More colorfully dressed girls out on the road in the middle of nowhere, presumably walking from one village to another

: During this part of the drive, I was unfortunately not looking at a map and didn’t bother to ask anybody the names of the villages we’d been passing. Just took these photos

: Another hillside village along the river. Not long before his death, when a lot of his al-Qaeda brothers had been being decimated by US drone strikes in North and South Waziristan in what’d then been called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (formally merged into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in 2018), Osama bin Laden argued for their relocation to Kunar Province in Afghanistan. He said, “Kunar is more fortified due to its rougher terrain and the many mountains, rivers, and trees and it can accommodate hundreds of the brothers without being spotted by the enemy. This will defend the brothers from the aircrafts, but will not defend them from the traitors.”

: I think this is about where we left Kunar behind and entered into Nuristan

: Even though the truck had 4-wheel drive, we still ended up getting stuck. Also, the guy with the gun was some Taliban dude who’d been hitching a ride in the back of our truck

: Entering Parun, the capital of Nuristan. Some of the locals we’d met in Jalalabad were saying the best way to experience Nuristan was during the summer, hiking through the mountains from one village to another. They said doing such a thing during the winter was not advisable because of extremely low temperatures and deep snow. So, in January, a visit to Parun was basically the best we could do

: Walking out into the more rural area surrounding Parun’s main drag

: The old man on the right had been casually holding a live chicken behind his back as he walked along

: Kids playing cricket

: Me in the Afghan gear that we’d shopped for in Jalalabad the day before

: Getting ready to depart from Parun early the next morning

: Little car trouble along the way. Now, I don’t know shit about cars, but I’m pretty sure the problem was that it was overheating. And the guys remedied the problem by taking that plastic neon green grocery bag and running down to the river, filling it up with water, running back and dumping it into the radiator

: Photo taken out the window as we were comin back down and out of the mountains

: Truck bed filled to clown car capacity

: Back to Kunar and the Pech River Valley

: Some small place we stopped at for lunch along the way. I really enjoyed all the food I had in Afghanistan. Don’t think I had a single meal where I was like, “Ehhh….I’m not putting this shit in my body.” And in the two weeks I was there, I didn’t get sick once

: After I’d walked into the restaurant and sat down, the guy who worked there came up and was talking to me in Pashto, which I obviously didn’t understand a word of. When Mirwais finished washing up at the sink outside and walked in a minute later, he talked to the guy and ordered our lunch. Then he said to me, “That guy thought you were a Nuristani person. He was confused why you not answer him.” And so then our speaking in English right there drew the attention of these dudes on the other side of the room who kept staring in our direction for the duration of the meal

: Very similarly to what I just described in the previous caption, when we’d been driving up into Kunar and Nuristan, when passing through Taliban checkpoints, if I said nothing but “as-salaam aleikum” (peace be with you), the guys figured I was Nuristani and they’d wave us through the checkpoint. But sometimes, as they stood just outside the passenger window, they’d say something to me beyond that and would be waiting for a response from me and I’d just stare at them blankly. And they’d get confused or annoyed that I’m not responding to them and they’d bend down to look past me over to Mirwais in the driver’s seat for more information. And from what Mirwais would later explain to me, these interactions would normally go something like this: “Hey,” said the Taliban security guy, “why doesn’t this Nuristani man speak any Pashto?” “He is not from Nuristan,” Mirwais said back. “He is from foreign.” “From foreign?” the Taliban guy asked. “From where in foreign?” “He is from America,” Mirwais said. “America?” the guy asked. “I don’t understand. The war is over and all the Americans have left here.” “He is not here for war, he is here for tourism,” answered Mirwais. “Tourism? What is tourism?” “It’s, you know…” Mirwais struggled to explain the concept to the man who’d probably spent the last decade hiding out in the mountains, fighting guerilla-style warfare against NATO troops and the Afghan National Army, “…it’s when a person visits a place to relax and enjoy the beautiful things and to learn about the culture and things like that.” And this only confused them more. This is when Mirwais would tell me to take out my permission letter and my passport and hand it over to the guys, and they’d examine those documents for a few minutes and have their boss look at ‘em and they’d send us on our way. At this particular checkpoint shown in the photograph though, when we were somewhere close to the border between Kunar and Nangarhar Provinces, it didn’t quite work out that way. None of these guys had ever seen a passport before and didn’t know what it was. And none of them were literate enough to read our permission letter and understand what it was saying. So, I was taken to the nearest Taliban police station for further questioning. This photo was, of course, taken after all that. And the photos weren’t my idea. These guys at the checkpoint all wanted their photo taken with me. The way Mirwais described it was, “This is very funny. One hour ago all these guys want to bring you to jail. Now everybody wants to take pictures with you.”

: Here we are at the police station after one of the bigger bosses had decided it was okay to let me go. I wasn’t in a jail cell with bars or anything like that, but was sat in a room in the station by myself while they discussed the matter with Mirwais who, god bless him, did his best to argue with them that I am not a threat and that we have official permission to be visiting there. Once the decision had been made to release me is when all the camera phones came out and selfie time began. Everybody wanted to shake my hand and one guy even asked if I wanted to go shoot off some guns with him. At the time, I respectfully declined having thought it would’ve been a distasteful thing to do given how many Americans had been killed in Kunar Province during the war, but looking back I’m a bit regretful. I think it would’ve been an interesting experience.

: Uhh…where the fuck am I? Can I go home now?

: Here we are driving from the police station back to the checkpoint where they decided I needed to be detained. On the right in the backseat is the Taliban police officer who was assigned the task of accompanying us/directing us from the checkpoint to the police station. Pretty sure if I didn’t have a guide who spoke the local languages to advocate for me and this’d happened to me while trying to visit Nuristan on my own, I’d still be in Taliban jail right now and probably nobody would know where I was.

Passing Through Kabul

: After returning from Kunar, we said goodbye to the two young Nuristani dudes and then spent the night in Jalalabad at the same hotel. The following morning we began the drive to Kabul. Where this photo was taken, somewhere in Nangarhar Province not too far outside of Jalalabad, I was blown away by how many stands there were selling such a large quantity of peanuts. I mean, I’d also seen a lot of stands selling fresh oranges in that area which Nangarhar is apparently also famous for, but god damn I’ve never seen so many nuts in all my life

: The highway from Jalalabad to Kabul briefly passes through the southern end of Laghman Province and I believe that’s where we were when we stopped in to get some snacks and drinks from this here shop. More peanuts anyone?

: Along this stretch of highway, there’d been guys here and there selling fish on the side of the road. I don’t understand why this is the case and have no way of verifying it, but Mirwais said to me that, “These guys always say, ‘Look, look! Fresh fish caught right here from the Kabul River! Come buy some!’ But those fishes are not from Afghanistan. We have fish in Afghanistan, but it is very expensive. The fish those guys are selling comes from Pakistan.”

: Mr. Nasrat doing a balancing act on an old tank left over by the Russians from the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989). I dared him to walk further out towards the end, but he said that was as far as he’d been willing to go

: I asked Mirwais, “What are all those things? Is someone doing laundry out here in the middle of nowhere?” And he said, “No, this is a popular place where they sell the headscarves for ladies.”

: This part of the road was winding and mountainous and quite dangerous. “Every week people are driving over the side and dying,” Mirwais said as we entered the area. And then not long after we went flying around a blind corner and, like shown in the photo here, there was a little kid standing in the middle of the road there. And I said, “Holy shit, what the fuck is that kid standing there for? He’s gonna get run over.” And Mirwais said, “They are working. They are poor children from Kabul. They stand at the corner and direct the traffic. Maybe if one big truck is coming one way, they tell the car the other way to stop. They are good workers. I like them. I give one of them a ride out here the other day when I’m coming early in the morning to pick you up from the border.”

: Five-minute break at this viewpoint overlooking the aforementioned crazy mountain roads. One thing I’d like to take a moment to mention here is how, every time he started his car, Mirwais would repeat this one prayer called the Basmala that goes “bismillah al-rahman al-raheem,” which translates to “In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful.” He even had a sticker across his back windshield with the same prayer written out. Now, I’m not the most religious guy in the world, but when driving on roads like this all day every day, I’ll take whatever help we can get – ya know what I mean?

: Entering Kabul, it was impossible for my attention to not be captured by that giant black and white Taliban flag blowing in the wind straight ahead of us. For those of you who don’t know, in Islam there are five core beliefs and practices that are known as the Five Pillars of Islam. One of them is prayer (ya know, facing Mecca five times a day), another is giving a certain percentage of your annual income to charity, another is fasting during Ramadan, going on pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca is another, and – most pertinent to the flag – is the “shahada,” or the “profession of faith.” On the flag, in Arabic it says, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” That’s the shahada and it’s what’s written on the flag of the Taliban, the flag of Saudi Arabia, the flag of ISIS, and had even been written on – although much smaller – the old black, red and green flag that used to represent Afghanistan before the Taliban came back into power.

: I guess having one of their flags on top of the world is symbolic of how they feel after having taken over the country about a year-and-a-half beforehand. Though I imagine it’s much more fun and easy to be the insurgents always criticizing and fucking up the efforts of the ruling party than it is to actually be the group in charge who’s responsible for trying to run a place as unruly as Afghanistan. Good luck with that one, guys

: Pretty nice hotel in Kabul with rooms for $40USD a night. Though I was the only guest in the entire place at the time of my visit

: This photo was taken from the parking lot outside some office building in Kabul where me and Nasrat spent close to three hours waiting for Mirwais to come out with a fresh batch of permission letters needed to visit the rest of the country. The new rule that the Taliban government had just put into place was that tourists get the papers from here for general permission to travel to other provinces, but then on top of that you still have to visit the local Ministry of Information and Culture office in the capital of each province you go in order to get some additional signatures and stamps from those places as well. All this bureaucratic bullshit and having to sit and visit with these Taliban tourism officials had really begun to stretch my patience quite thin by the end of the trip, but what can I say? It is what it is. Anyway, while we were waiting for Mirwais, I spent some of that time watching the women who live in this apartment building as they leaned out the windows to hang their freshly washed laundry

: I also spent this time giving an English lesson to Nasrat that focused on the names of body parts and basic articles of clothing. He said he was going to study that vocab list very hard and wanted me to quiz him on it every day, but he didn’t end up studying it beyond right here and when I went to quiz him the next day he wasn’t interested in the slightest

: Boredom makes you do weird things. While still sitting in that parking lot, I began studying some Afghan license plates and on this one issued in Kabul…

: …I noticed on each of the numbers, it says “AFG TRAFFIC” over and over. And just above the black number 8, in Perso-Arabic script it says “Afghanistan –affic.” I’m assuming that the letters that make the “tr-” sound had been obscured by the 8 there

: I’ve seen Che Guevara stickers and decals in pretty much every country I’ve ever been to and, yeah, we all know that this image symbolizes leftist radicalism, anti-imperialism and revolutionary action, but I’m curious as to exactly what those things mean to your average citizen in Afghanistan. Like, what political ideals did the owner of this vehicle hold so dear that he thought would be perfectly summed up by a sticker of Che on the back of his Toyota? I mean, someone who truly embodies the beliefs of Señor Guevara wouldn’t have supported the old US puppet regime headed first by Hamid Karzai and then by Ashraf Ghani before being toppled in August 2021 even if they did enjoy more basic rights and personal freedoms with this government in place than they did under the notoriously brutal rule of the first Taliban regime back in the nineties. And then on the other hand, I guess if you support the Taliban that could be considered in line with the whole anti-imperialist thing, but with them being so reactionary and so backwards in their approach to human rights, there ain’t no fuckin way my man Ernesto would stand for such bullshit. So, I dunno. I’m just rambling here. But yeah, I don’t get it. Maybe I’m reading too much into it and the driver simply thought the sticker made him look cool

: After the seemingly interminable wait, Mirwais finally came out to the parking lot and told me to follow him inside to meet the guys and sign a bunch of papers so we could, at long last, get our permission letters and begin the drive out to Bamian

: Trying to head out of Kabul towards Bamian but stuck in a massive traffic jam caused by all these men in the middle of the road yelling at one another

: I don’t know where we were exactly. I think we were somewhere near the border between Kabul and Wardak provinces when – just like a couple days beforehand – the guys at some checkpoint weren’t satisfied with my letters of permission and I was temporarily detained. Unlike a couple days beforehand, however, this incident seemed far less serious. Instead of being sent to go sit in a room by myself, I was sat in a room full of Taliban personnel who – through Mirwais – had told me to make myself comfortable, and had offered to get me tea and food, and had told me not to worry, assuring me that this was only a formality and that once they’d gotten word from their boss, I’d be let go and sent on my way. At first, many of these rank and file Taliban dudes just crowded around me and stared in awe, but after a while they worked up the balls to start asking me questions via Mirwais. They wanted to know what city I was from in America. They wanted to know how often I cut my hair and beard. They wanted to know if the phone I had was the new iPhone. They were a very curious bunch. And it didn’t take long before everybody took out their phones and started taking photos of me and asking for my WhatsApp number so they could send me said photos. So, yeah, the photo you’re seeing here was taken and sent to me by one of these random Taliban dudes. Take note of the RPG hanging on the wall behind me

: This is the WhatsApp profile photo of the guy in the background here. He was the highest ranking guy in the police station at the time of my detainment and had been too tired to get out of his bed when I was there which is why, in the photo previous, me and everyone else were sitting on the floor of the barracks where these guys all sleep, crowded around his bed so he could ask questions and keep an eye on me until his boss returned to give me clearance or whatever. The guy had a sly smile and cracked a few jokes, but was quite candid in telling Mirwais he thought I was a spy after it became known that I could read “Islami Emirat” in Arabic on his guys’ uniforms. Mirwais obviously denied it and the guy then just stared at me from the reclined position he was laying in on his bed. After a few moments of silence, he raised both his hands as if he were holding up an invisible rifle – not pointed at me, but just to communicate what he had on his mind. He cocked an eyebrow, pulled an invisible trigger and nodded towards the back of the building. Unlike a couple days beforehand when I was made a similar offer, I didn’t hesitate. I nodded my head yes and said, “Let’s go.” He laughed and then shook his hands no. He was only kidding. And so, then about half-an-hour later, when I was being let go – at this point he was out of bed and dressed – he shook my hand, wished me a pleasant rest of my journey, and apologized for having interrupted my trip, saying that he was only doing his job and’d had specific orders that afternoon to stop any and all foreigners coming through.

: Here’s a selfie I took in those barracks. I love how each guy had a hook over his bed from where he could hang his AK at night while having a rest

: And just for shits and giggles, here are a couple more WhatsApp profile photos of the guys that started texting me after this incident, because…

: …if you’re not in the Taliban, how often do you get to see what your average Taliban guy’s WhatsApp profile photo looks like?

: One more for the road

Short But Pleasant Stay in Bamian

: Between Kabul Province and Bamian Province is Wardak. And here was the first time I really started to notice all these craters in the road that’d been half-assedly filled in with rocks and dirt. They’re the result of roadside bombings carried out by the Taliban against the ANA and NATO troops back during the war

: Because we got held up at that tourism office when trying to get our permission letters in Kabul and then’d spent a couple additional hours detained at that Taliban police station, we didn’t reach Bamian well before sunset as originally planned. Here we are still in Wardak Province sometime after nightfall

: Dinner in my hotel room after reaching Bamian around 10pm

: As esteemed gust, me am happy comply the sandal rule when I am in Hotel

: There are two Buddhas of Bamian that were both carved into the side of this here cliff back in the 6th century. This one, the Western Buddha, the bigger of the two, is approximately 180 feet tall. Sadly, back in March 2001, when those guys were still in power, Taliban founder Mullah Omar ordered the destruction of the Bamian Buddhas and the act was widely condemned by the international community and locals alike. As you might be able to tell from the scaffolding there in the photo, however, Mirwais told me that some foreign NGO is currently working to rebuild this one – not sure whether or not they’re doing the same thing for the Eastern Buddha. That said, back in the day, during a conference held at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Sayyid Rahmatullah Hashimi – ambassador of the former Taliban regime – explained that, “This decision (the original decision to destroy the Buddhas) was taken after a Swedish monuments expert proposed to fix and rebuild the statues’ heads, which were already destroyed. When the Afghani head council asked them to provide the money to feed the children instead of fixing the statues, they refused and said, ‘No, the money is just for the statues, not for the children.’ Herein, they made the decision to destroy the statues. These people do not care about the children who are dying every day in Afghanistan. If they care about our past, they won’t destroy our future.” Seems to me that the same argument could be made given the extent to which people are starving in Afghanistan right now in 2023.

: Some of Mirwais’s contacts had told him that the road ahead – the road between Bamian and Chaghcharan – was completely covered in snow, so here we are buying a new set of chains for his tires just in case

: Ya know, I think littering is a disgusting fucking habit and that people who do it are lazy-ass pieces of shit that have no respect for their surroundings. So, now that that’s been established, the first couple days while in the car in Afghanistan, not gonna lie – I was pretty turned off when my guide and his helper would just roll down the window and toss out any empty plastic bag or bottle or whatever the fuck else when they decided they were done using it. And if that itself wasn’t bad enough, they were encouraging me to do the same. And at first, ya know, I resisted. I held onto my trash like a good little boy and would dispose of it properly when we got into town at night. But each day in the car they would encourage me to stop being so closed-minded, they insisted I try it their way, that it’s a good habit that might help rural people who are looking for empty plastic bottles to store stuff in but can’t find them anywhere and other rationalizations like that. So here, when I finished drinking this delicious can of peach juice, I took a page outta their book and just rolled down the window and chucked it out. The guys were really proud of me. And honestly, I was really proud of myself as well. I felt like I grew as a person and actually ended up becoming quite fond of littering by the end of the trip. That just goes to show – when in Rome, do as the Romans do

: Walking up behind Nasrat for an aerial view of one of the lakes at Band-e Amir National Park

: When we’d been driving up to Band-e Amir, Mirwais said to me he didn’t think it would be possible to go out on one of the boats they got there. He said he thought they were closed for the season. But this proved otherwise

: If you ask your average American what’s the first thing that comes to mind when they think of Afghanistan, I guarantee the last thing they’d mention is swan-shaped pedal boats in a place as beautiful as Band-e Amir

: View from the swan boat as me and Nasrat pedaled back towards the shore

: A lot of our drive that afternoon through the western portion of Bamian Province looked more or less like this

: Typical brown-colored hillside village in western Bamian Province

: Very beautiful area of the country. Sparsely populated. Calm. Peaceful

The Lesser Explored Province of Ghor

: I think the only reason any tourists would go to visit Ghor Province is to see the Minaret of Jam. It’s a very rural and very underdeveloped province with terrible roads and truly feels like “the middle of nowhere.” The Minaret of Jam for example, in the western half of the province, is a 12-hour drive from Herat city to the west and something like a 17-hour drive from Bamian to the east. Unlike every other place we’d been thus far – as well as every other place we’d end up going on the trip – Mirwais had never visited Ghor Province. So, it was as much an adventure for him as it was for me. That said, by the time the sun was setting we were still about five hours outside of Chaghcharan, the capital of Ghor Province. Because Mirwais didn’t want to be driving in the dark in an area unfamiliar to him, we stopped in a couple different small villages we’d been passing through and asked at the hotels if we could sleep there and every time they told us to get lost. “I guess we’ll have to go all the way to Ghor Bazaar,” he shrugged after one too many rejections, throwing the car back into drive.

: Vicious dog that was trying to eat our car

: Here Mirwais and Nasrat were trying to find the most shallow place where we could cross this half-frozen river that’d overtaken the road. Long story short, we ended up getting stuck and it was a pretty bad situation, but some of the locals who’d seen us drive this way came behind us and helped us out of the water. They explained that they recently opened up a new route with a bridge a kilometer or two down the road and that when they saw us go this way, they figured we’d probably end up needing help. They told us to follow them as they led the way to the bridge. Once there, we thanked them for their kindness and parted ways. An hour or so later, we saw a car broken down on the side of the road. Mirwais wanted to pay it forward and help these people out after how nice the other people’d just been to us. There was a whole family in the car. It was freezing out. The man said his wife was in labor and that they were waiting for an ambulance. Mirwais offered to take them with us to Chaghcharan, but the man refused. He said they’d stick with the plan and keep waiting for the ambulance which he said should be there very soon. Mirwais wished them the best of luck and we continued on our way

: By the time we got to Chaghcharan, it was pretty late. Probably like 11pm. Pretty cold too – maybe around like twenty degrees Fahrenheit. After asking around, it appeared there was only one hotel open this time of year. Shown in the photo is the room in which the three of us’d all be sleeping on the floor that evening. Mirwais and Nasrat are busy breaking twigs into smaller pieces then stuffing those and as much dried-out animal dung as possible into the stove here to make a fire so we wouldn’t freeze to death overnight.

: There was no central electricity system in place in the hotel. The light you see in the previous photo had been powered by this here car battery

: Carbon monoxide poisoning anyone? The ventilation system that led from the stove in our room to the exterior of the building had a bunch of holes in it. Before going to sleep, I curled up inside my sleeping bag and completely covered my head in hopes that I wouldn’t be breathing too much of that shit in. I guess my plan worked because I didn’t fare quite as poorly as Nasrat – a regular smoker – who woke up in the middle of the night practically choking to death. I don’t know the time, but at one point had been jarred awake by his coughing fit and uncovered my head to have a look, only to find I could barely see across this tiny room we were in. Nasrat staggered towards the window and swung it open, sticking his head outside to alternate between taking huge breaths and spitting. We slept the rest of the night with the window open. I guess it’s better to be really cold and alive than warm and dead.

: The next morning, to eat some breakfast, we moved into this bigger room where all these guys had slept on the floor the night before. Given the absence of smoke, I guess the stove’s ventilation system in this room appeared to be functioning properly. As we were eating breakfast here, Mirwais had been talking to all these guys and at one point turned to me and said, “These guys are saying the road ahead is closed from a big snowstorm. There are people working to clear it all off right now and today the weather will be warm so hopefully it will be good by tomorrow, but they say today it is not possible to drive on the road towards Herat.” “Aw, dude, what?” I said. “I don’t wanna stay at this place another night.” “We don’t have a choice,” he said. “But we can stay in this room tonight with everybody else. It is warmer and there won’t be any smoke.” I had a bit of a hard time swallowing this news, but ultimately decided to make the most of it. I ended up just listening to an audiobook by Mary Roach pretty much all day and, at one point, even worked up the balls to do a workout in this room even though it felt weird to do so with all these strangers watching me. I think the turning point in the awkwardness of the workout had been when the older man in the right side of the photo – the guy in the brown jacket who’s looking at me while I take this photo – decided to join in and try to do every exercise that I was doing. If I did twenty pushups, he did twenty pushups. If I did twenty squats, he’d do twenty squats. If I did thirty crunches…you get the idea. And it was cool because the rest of the guys were all cheering him on to keep up when he was getting all tired and out of breath. Really unique experience.

: Bread and tea. It’s what’s for breakfast. To be fair, the lunch and dinner served at this place were far more substantial and very delicious. I regret not having taken any photos of that

: The ceiling in the big room where we were sitting with all the other guys had been made from concrete, but slapped on the inside of it had been a layer of plaster or some shit like that. And as the temperatures rose outside and all the snow on the roof began to melt, I guess some of that moisture had been seeping down through the concrete and soaking the plaster which subsequently fell down on us in gooey, wet chunks the whole day while sitting there

: Couple of the guys trying to preemptively knock down a few of the bigger chunks from the ceiling so they wouldn’t fall and splash everyone and make a big fuckin mess to clean up

: There it goes! Catch that shit!

: After having spent that second night at the hotel, the next morning we went to the office of Information and Culture to get my permission letters signed and stamped and then headed to the bazaar here on the right to pick up some snacks and supplies for the road

: The guys thought it was a good idea to pick up a canister of gas just in case there was any snow or ice that we’d have to melt along the way, but we didn’t end up needing it. Honestly though, I can’t say I understood in what situation trying to melt snow on the road would be more effective than shoveling it away were we to get stuck, but I didn’t really care to argue about it

: Tough day to be out there motorcycling on those roads

: Not too long before we left Chaghcharan behind and ended up back out here in the middle of nowhere, we had to pass through a Taliban checkpoint. There were three guys sitting around in chairs, waiting for cars to approach. When we pulled up, one guy stood up from his chair to come over and check us out, and when he did, I noticed that his cell phone fell out of his pocket onto the ground. He didn’t notice, but the other two security guys did. And instead of telling him, I saw one of the other two guys quickly reach down to pick it up and toss it to the other guy who quickly stuffed it in his pocket before the phone’s owner could take notice. Without any questioning, the guy opened up the gate for us and waved us along so I didn’t get to see how that prank turned out, but for me this was a really big moment in humanizing your everyday, run-of-the-mill members of the Taliban. I never pictured any of them having any sort of sense of humor, or jagging around one of their buddies by hiding his phone on him and shit like that. I dunno. It was a small moment, no doubt, but still somehow managed to broaden my perspective.

: Traffic jam

: The guy in this photo directing Mirwais around that big flooded crater, his name is Farhad. He was one of the guys staying at the hotel in Chaghcharan and works around Ghor Province administering vaccinations to people in small villages, but is from Herat originally and ended up catching a ride with us back to his hometown

: Man on motorcycle emerging from very small village in rural Ghor

: Some sort of dummy set up to scare wolves away from livestock with the threat of rape using its massive wooden dong

: Farhad and Nasrat trying to guide Mirwais through yet another massive flooded crater that could seemingly swallow his car whole

: We finally made it. The Minaret of Jam. This 213-foot-tall minaret was constructed around the year 1190, is made entirely of baked bricks, and is said to be in imminent danger of collapse

Into Herat, Afghanistan’s Westernmost Province

: After briefly visiting the Minaret of Jam, we got back in the car and drove for a couple more hours until we came across some hotel on the side of the road. The sun had already fallen and, if they’d take us, Mirwais said we should definitely stay there because we still had about ten more hours of driving before we’d reach Herat…well, the city of Herat. Because here in the room with the awesome racecar ceiling that the four of us would be sharing for the night at said hotel, we’d already crossed over into Herat Province.

: The next morning we left the hotel – a hotel that didn’t have any bathrooms, mind you, where we were encouraged to just urinate and defecate on the roof of the building – a little after 6am and began the long drive to Herat city. After a couple hours on the move, we came across some old man who’d been standing on the side of the road. Mirwais wasn’t really in the mood to pick up any hitchhikers and it looked like he was just gonna drive past this guy without acknowledging him until the old man suddenly jumped out at the car, frantically waving his arms around with this panicked look on his face. So Mirwais slams on the brakes and rolls down the window to see what’s up. The old man says a bunch of stuff to Mirwais who then turns to Nasrat in the backseat. Nasrat hands him a lighter and he passes the lighter out the window to the old man. The old man just stares confusedly down at the lighter in his hand. Mirwais says something and reaches out the window. The old man hands the lighter back to him. He sparks the lighter a few times then passes it back to the old man. The old man tries sparking the lighter and the thing ignites. His face lights up with joy. He says a bunch of stuff, Mirwais says something back then waves, rolls up the window and we drive away. I ask what that was all about. Mirwais says, “The old man is saying to me, ‘Please help. My family is freezing. We have run out of matches and have nothing to light our stove – do you have any you could give to us?’ And I tell him I don’t have any matches, but have an extra lighter. And the old man, he never see a lighter before. So I have to teach him how to use it. He was very happy.”

: Filling up on gas somewhere in the eastern part of Herat Province

: The bull logo on those generic energy drinks…I feel like I’ve seen something exactly like that before back in Chicago, but don’t remember where. Hmm…

: Not the easiest to see, but the water flooding that valley is the result of a hydroelectric dam that was funded and constructed by the government of India then officially opened in 2016 by the old Afghan government under President Ashraf Ghani. Mirwais had said it’s called the Salma Dam, but I see it’s been officially renamed the Afghan-India Friendship Dam. Whatever you wanna call it, they say that Iran was pretty pissed off by the construction of the dam because it severely reduced the flow of the Hari River across the border. In fact, they were apparently so pissed off that they’d even been accused by the Afghan National Police of having funded the local Taliban to sabotage the construction of the project. Although that has never been proven, in March 2013 Afghan officials did find a whopping 2,900 pounds of explosives in the Pashtun Zarghun District of Herat which were said to have been amassed there by the Taliban for the specific purpose of blowing up the dam.

: Farhad and some old man hitchhiker we picked up along the way. I asked Mirwais if that guy’s elf-lookin hat was a popular thing that people wear in this province and he replied with a resounding no. “I asked the man where he got it from. He said that he likes to make his own hats. That’s all.”

: Apparently Herat Province has an insane amount of marble which, if streamlined – if done correctly and without corruption – could bring in millions more dollars in exports each year. Here’s a truck hauling several freshly cut chunks from the mines over to the capital city

: About to pass through a village where we ended up dropping off the old man in the silly hat

: When we were saying goodbye to the old man in the silly hat, I saw these buildings that looked like tits and had to snap a quick photo. Which of the two nipples does it look like the baby’s been sucking on more?

: Camels enjoying a drink

: Aspiring footballers

: The final stretch of the road to Herat was in terrible condition. Was what it must be like to drive on the moon

: The first thing we did upon arriving to Herat around sunset was get a car wash

: Dinner in my room at Sadaf International Hotel in Herat

: While we were in Herat, Mirwais forwarded this photo to me on WhatsApp. He said that one of the guys from the hotel in Chaghcharan sent it to him. He said, “The day after we left Chaghcharan another big snowstorm came. This is the road to Herat that we were just driving on. We are very lucky that we were able to get out of there when we did.”

: The Citadel of Herat as seen from a nearby bazaar

: Mirwais’s radio started fucking up on the ride between Chaghcharan and Herat and since long road trips kinda suck without any music to listen to, here are the guys picking out a new one at the bazaar

: Inside the Citadel of Herat which was built more than a couple thousand years ago, supposedly under Alexander the Great after he’d captured the city in 330BC. They say that many empires have used the citadel over the past two millennia and, during that stretch, that the citadel had been destroyed and rebuilt several times over. The most recent rebuild that you’re seeing here in the photo took place between 2006 and 2011.

: Checking out the art gallery at the citadel

: A couple of kids were stripping the paint off that old beat-up car there in front of the Musalla Minarets

: I forget who was buried here. Really sorry about that. Pretty building though

: Lunch with the fellas

: Normally everywhere I travel I like to try the local brand of chocolate milk. I bought this thinking it was chocolate milk, but it actually turned out to be date milk. Still good, but I was kind of shocked when I took the first sip and it didn’t taste the least bit chocolaty

: A biryani place disguised as a McDonald’s

From Herat to Kandahar via National Highway 1

: Out on the open road somewhere in Farah Province

: In this area, there was no shortage of massive bomb craters spanning the entire width of the highway. Local people know that everybody needs to slow down when driving over these bomb craters or it’ll majorly fuck up your car and they love to take advantage of it. A lot of people stand by the sides of the craters just trying to hitch rides or openly begging for money, but a lot of the times there are people like these kids with shovels who wait until a car is near and then start tossing piles of dirt over from the side of the road into the bomb craters to make it look like they’re the ones personally responsible for maintaining the usability of the highway and, naturally, demanding tips in return for their efforts.

: This kid at a different bomb crater a bit further along was burning some kind of locally grown plant that Mirwais called “espand,” explaining to me that some people view it as a sort of blessing. As the kid waved at us the smoldering contents of his right hand, he stuck out his left for a payment

: I didn’t know that the tops of semi trucks (and buses as well) were made to hold the weight of one – let alone two – automobiles, yet this seemed to be a regular occurrence on the southern portion of Afghanistan’s ring road. Like, how the fuck do you even get a car up that high? And what’s it tied to? I wonder how often they end up falling off mid-journey on these bumpy fucked-up roads where everyone drives like a crazy person

: Couple guys hitching a ride on the back of a sheep truck in the very small portion of Nimruz Province through which NH01 passes

: Couple guys running a gas station in Helmand Province

: These sort of mud flaps with colorful designs on ‘em had been a popular accessory on trucks on the southern highway, and when looking more closely at this one that I’d seen somewhere in Helmand…

: …I noticed it had part of the Chicago skyline on it. Err…not sure just how much of the skyline it had on there because it’s kind of faded, but I’ll damned if that ain’t the Sears Tower to the left of that truck there.

: Stopping to let the camel caravan go by

: Since we’d already stopped to let all those camels cross the road, Mirwais decided to just buy gas from the guys who owned the stand next to where they’d all been crossing

: Entering Kandahar Province. Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban and – not sure if all these small business owners truly are avid supporters of the Taliban or if they do it out of fear – but look at all them black and white flags everywhere. God damn

: Kids sitting on the back of a truck driving in front of us, sticking out their tongues and laughing at the stupid white kafir in the car behind them

: All along the southern highway, I saw a ton of wreckage on the side of the road from previous accidents. It’s like…they don’t really clean it up. They just push it close enough to the side of the road so that traffic can continue to get by. And then it just sits there. The most brutal had probably been that of a semi truck which’d crashed head-on at a very high speed into the front of a bus. Can’t imagine there were many survivors, if any. The sight of that one gave me the chills. But that’s just wreckage. This right here is a bus that’d flipped over on its side very recently, so recently that when we’d been driving past, survivors were still crawling out the broken windows on the front and top of the bus. And then half-an-hour after that, right outside Kandahar city, two guys right in front of us had been cruising along on a motorcycle when the driver hit one of those big bomb craters at too high of a speed and the guy on back hadn’t been expecting it and ended up bouncing off the seat into the air then went tumbling down along the road. At that point, I really couldn’t wait to get outta the car. I’d had enough.

: In my hotel room in Kandahar, they were playing some old reruns of How I Met Your Mother. It was hilarious to be in the birthplace of the Taliban and see Barney Stinson dressed in the red, white and blue, recreating Apollo Creed’s entrance in Rocky IV while James Brown’s “Living in America” blasted in the background

: Dude carrying a bunch of windshields on the back of a motorcycle in Kandahar city

: Somewhere between Helmand and Kandahar provinces, we busted a wheel bearing and needed to get it fixed. So as we were here somewhere in Kandahar city having our problem attended to, I started to get curious as to how old the mechanic’d been. He seemed to know what he was doing and talked to Mirwais with the confidence of an adult that’d been doing this job for over twenty years, but had the face and stature of an eighth grader. “Hey Mirwais,” I said, “ask this kid how old he is.” Mirwais asked him then said back to me, “He says he doesn’t know his birthday. But if I am guessing, I would say he is fifteen.” “He doesn’t know his birthday?” I asked. “How is that even possible?” Mirwais then explained to me that he didn’t know his own birthday either and that his father just made something up so they could put something on his birth certificate so they could get other official documents issued to them by the government. Birthdays aren’t big in Afghanistan, he explained. People don’t really count them or celebrate them the way foreigners do.

: Visiting the Tomb of Ahmad Shah Durrani

: Delicious lunch. Instead of water or tea, to drink we were given piping hot glasses of this greasy-ass beef broth which caused my taste buds to ejaculate

: As we ate lunch, I noticed this picture of bacon on the wall and asked Mirwais why they’d advertise foods that are haram – ya know, foods that are forbidden in Islam. And he said, “That is not haram.” And I was like, “Dude, that shit’s made of pork. It’s totally haram.” “No,” he replied, “I don’t think it is pork.” “Okay dude,” I said. “I dunno. Maybe you guys got some sorta turkey bacon or somethin here that looks and tastes like pork but is really halal, but bacon like that in America is typically made from pig meat.”

: In Kandahar, we stayed in this modern township called Aino Mena. It was actually really nice. All new houses. Clean. Secure. Here we are hanging out after dinner, shooting pool at a hotel in Aino Mena called Dubai Inn

From Kandahar to Kabul and Out

: A morning WhatsApp exchange between me and Mirwais before our last big day on the road

: Meat hangin and swangin as we creep along the curb of a market on the outskirts of Kandahar, looking for anyone who might be selling gas so we can fill up before hitting the road

: Somewhere along the highway in Zabul Province, these guys had been working to remove landmines. According to the United Nations Mine Action Service, “Since 1989, about 46,868 Afghan civilians have been recorded to have been killed or injured by landmines and explosive remnants of war.” Mirwais said he almost took a job doing this sort of work a few years back because it paid better than whatever he was doing at the time, but… “My wife wouldn’t let me,” he said. “She said, ‘I’d rather be poor and eat only bread every day than have you risk your life for more money.’”

: White rocks mean that it’s safe to walk there and red rocks are a sign that there’re still some explosive remnants of war in the area. Not gonna lie, this totally fucked with my head. Made me wonder how close I was to having my legs blown off each time I got out the car to take a piss along the side of National Highway 1

: More cars on top of trucks because why the fuck not!? Who cares if it falls off and kills everyone in the car behind you? Life is dirt-cheap in Afghanistan

: Why stop there? I’m sure you could fit another ten feet worth of shit on top of that bus if you tried

: Oh look! Another flipped-over bus that they couldn’t even bother to push all the way off the side of the road

: And there’s someone living in it! Look! They even got two chairs to sit on around that nice little fire they got going on the front porch there – how nice!

: A late lunch in Ghazni Province. More kabobs wrapped in more Korean newspaper. Delicious as always. We’d end up getting back to Kabul that night probably around 8pm

: On my final day in the country, Mirwais came to pick me up from the hotel around 9am. He was gonna show me around Kabul for three or four hours before dropping me off at the airport for my afternoon flight to Dubai on Kam Air

: View of Kabul from the top of one of the hills

: Same city, different view

: Sakhi Shrine seen from afar

: Cruisin around town

: Wonder if they only serve airplane food in Marhaba Restaurant

: Bunch of Taliban guys enjoying a nice leisurely day at Kabul Zoo. How terribly strange it must be having fought a war for so long, hiding out in camps in shitty fucked-up rural areas of the country and now…now being able to stroll freely in the capital of the country and enjoy the monkey exhibit at the zoo. Can’t even comprehend it

: On our way to a place formerly known as Bush Market – named after US President George Bush – where they used to sell military uniforms and gadgets and protein and other imported goods like that to American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan during the war. Since the takeover of the Taliban, the market has now been renamed Mujahideen Bazaar.

: Inside a shop at Mujahideen Bazaar. Just as it was weird for me to see the Taliban guys at the zoo, it was also weird for me to see Taliban guys shopping at the market here. Like, I didn’t even know that Taliban soldiers get paid money or…honestly, I didn’t even think they’d know what money is. I figured they’d just go into any shop they want and take whatever they like without paying because they’re the unquestioned rulers of the country, but it wasn’t that way. It wasn’t that way at all. I witnessed these guys actually exchanging paper money for goods, as – ya know – we normally tend to do in societies. And just outside the bazaar in the parking lot where Mirwais had left his car while we browsed the shops, I saw a Taliban guy actually pay the parking attendant just like everybody else right before he and his AK-toting bearded posse all hopped in their pickup truck and drove away. It made me feel uncomfortable to see how truly civilized these savages could be.

: Technological advancements

: Final meal with Mirwais. Huge plate of beef ribs. Absolutely delicious. Take note just outside that big window directly above our food, you can see the back of the restaurant owner or manager’s head there. More to come in the next caption…

: Really nice guy. Sits there greeting customers all day as they come in. The only thing I don’t get, though, is why the guy would wanna have all those dead animal dicks aimed right at his face from two feet away like that. If you’re gonna be sitting there all day, why not hang the meat elsewhere? Or at the very least turn them the other way so you’re not eye-to-eye with the dicks all day. I dunno. Maybe that’s just me

: Best – and most accurate – sticker I saw in all of Afghanistan

: Where me and Mirwais said our goodbyes

: Really can’t describe how awesome it felt to land in Dubai and get picked up by my old buddy Konrad. The tour was over. I survived