The Road to Kabul

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August 31


THE ROAD TO KABUL..VIA JALALABAD

Torkham, the border crossing and its very few buildings was packed with people. Shortly before the bus came to the crowds of men, burqas and wheelbarrows transporting all sorts of goods (also the elderly that weren..t able to walk), other people in the bus wanted us to pull up the curtains, so that nobody would see our pasty white faces. Torkham witnesses violence and shootings quite frequently. Smugglers, random armed men, tribesmen, Pashtuns, the heat, the endless waiting hours sometimes bubble up, and seeing westerners passing through occasionally arouses anger. Especially since all officials want us to pass through as quickly as possible, for fear of something happening to us, some locals see it as an insult.

So peeking through the yellow curtains we crawled past the ocean of people underneath us. We halted. A guy at the front of the bus tells us to get out with our passports. We actually had to climb over all the people to get to the door of the bus, which most men didn..t really like seeing, especially when stepping over a burqa. In the end, due to our presence, the ride would take much longer than planned, since we had to pass several check points .. and writing down our data took some time.

The guy who called us in the first place took us past the staring faces. It was quite a peculiar feeling, trying to be hidden from a crowd. Across the road, to the office where smiling security guards waved hello and stuck out their hands to greet us. Yellow smiling teeth.

Inside the office, usual procedure. A quick snapshot of our sweaty faces, it seemed odd to have such advanced hardware up in the mountains, we later found out that this is how they use to identify kidnap victims if necessary. Quick electronic check up on our passports, and the usual question of where our bodyguard was, even though he was nonexistent a simple "he's waiting on the bus" got us through.

We boarded the bus again, climbed over each and every person on the bus, tried to get less uncomfortable in the back seats..for about 3 minutes, when we had to get out again. Now it was time to officially enter Afghanistan.

Compared to the advanced system of imigration control on the Pakistan side, the Afghans had their own archaic way of writing out everything by hand in a large log book that seemed to be a left over from when Alexander crossed the pass. But getting through here was not a problem either, though they should really work on their people skills. The border officials just smiled at us, and laughed about the fact that tourists were actually entering the country.

So for the (in total) 6th time, we climbed over the bus' inmates to find our seats at the back of the bus. Again, we had to keep the blinds closed. One man told us there would be snipers in the hills just waiting for folks like us. Although we didn't really believe that, we weren't ready to test the theory just yet. Although it doesn..t concern the road from Torkham to Jalalabad (at least we were told afterwards), there are quite a few roads in Afghanistan that are littered with bombs, that are detonated by the Taliban when they see enemies. That whole fact gave us a warm, welcoming feeling in our stomachs.

So hiding behind the curtain we drove for another few hours. Heat. Dust through the windows. The view merely a small strip of land through a crack in the curtain. Bobbling Burqa heads. But the road was good. After a while, we decided to fuck the whole curtain thing and slowly revealed more and more of the landscape. Completely different than Pakistan, we only saw a large, rocky desert .. but not in a boring type of way, but a fascinating, endless scenery sort of way. And quite often green patches of blooming vegetation along the road and its towns.

And yet there are certain things on the road that keep on returning. 5 main categories of landmarks: Desert, Gargantuan Marijuana/Poppy Plantations, Completely destroyed villages (or the ruins of those), the rusty, decaying soviet tanks littered alongside the road, and the numerous and huge, simply built cemeteries that sometimes stretch for several kilometers.

We were in Afghanistan. In a country that has been at war for several decades. Shortly before arriving in Jalalabad, we saw our first military convoy driving in front of us. Massively armed. Ready to fight. Getting out on some dusty street, the first thing that caught our eye were the fading ..Wanted: Osama Bin Laden.. pictures on a ruined wall. The worlds most wanted mans face staring back down on us. I don..t know who said it, but one of us couldn..t resist....fuck...this is cool.....

We caught the first Rickshaw to take us to the minibus stand .. a guy in the bus took us along, for we would have had our language problems..and we felt like we wanted to get out of Jalalabad as quickly as possible. Not knowing anything about the place made us feel unsafe, uncomfortable and an easy target. We knew from our researches that Kabul was a relatively safe place (not only because of the 14,000 ISAF troops stationed in the city), but Jalalabad was unknown territory.

While we were discussing a price with several of the minivan wallahs, the southern afghan provinces of Qandahar and Helmand were pouring with bombs. NATO started their Operation Medusa that day, a massive offensive against the Taliban insurgents in those areas. The start of basically a new war, after the ..official.. war operations stopped in 2001. This led to 3 mortar attacks in Kabul that same day .. and to the steady decrease of the security situation in not only those provinces, but throughout the entire country. We were completely unaware of the fact, that Afghanistan was falling back into a new war. 4 days later Kabul would be victim of the first suicide car bomb attack since a few years.

But we had no clue, and our only worry was getting to Kabul before nightfall. Boarding a small minivan with a few other friendly afghans, who were incredibly curious about us (yet couldn..t really speak English .. merely Russian) we started racing down the freshly paved roads via Kabul. Same scenery as before. Desert, Mariujana & Poppy, destroyed towns and villages, cemeteries and even more rusting soviet beasts scattered along the road. Every once in a while a Chinese building crew that was building this new road. It..s quite impressive to see how much money was being brought into this country .. infrastructure-wise..

We came to a stop. Several other vehicles were standing on the roadside. Middle of the desert. No structure in sight. We looked at one another, having the pasty expression of ..What the fuck is going on.. written in our eyebrows. The door opened, and a man pointing to Brady, who was sitting directly at the door, kindly asked in the most polite manner: ..You, come!...

Brady got out and disappeared among a few other people. Although in the back of our heads the thoughts came up of ..This could be it..fuck..this could be it..we..re gonna get shot.., Chris and I couldn..t resist saying; ..Well, guess that was the last time we saw Brady..., and chuckled cynically. In the situation of not knowing whats gonna happen next, whether if its just a normal checkpoint or a roadblock by some fundamentalists that would behead us, our minds could only deal with it using humour..and so we started cracking jokes about Brady never returning .. disappearing.

10 minutes later of waiting in the heat, looking about for signs of what the fuck was going on, we saw Brady wandering around, lost. We yelled out of the car for him to see us. He came up explaining that he just had to talk to the chief of police to allow us passage over the new, paved road to Kabul. And on the journey went. Over a brand new, black road. The scenery changed. A beautiful lake, endless white/yellow desert, mountains in the distance. Beautiful. Of course with the typical 5 landmarks as stated before.

It was 1400 when we stopped in a little town, consisting of 5 or less houses along the road. We got out, stretched our legs and wiped the sweat off our foreheads. Our eyes hurt of the dust and sand. We were fuckin dirty.

After climbing some steps we sat down in a restaurant, where they brought us typical, authentic afghani food .. a small piece of beef in a sticky red sauce, some sweet rice (what on earth is their thing with sweet rice!!) and some bread. The passengers of the bus were all lined up next to one another on a few pillows, sitting on the floor munching away happily. Almost having finished the meal, the driver comes in and says something to another man, who comes up to us and says:

..Come on. We need go now. This dangerous area. They know you here...

Without hesitating we put our shoes back on and climb into the bus. Whirling up sand behind us, the bus screetches into the direction of Kabul.

The rest of the ride was quite unspectacular. Same scenery, until we came into the valley before Kabul .. a narrow trench with more rusting soviet memorabilia than elsewhere. Winding up paths high along mountains and through tunnels, the paved road came to an end, and we drove through a dusty, bullet holed town, passing German tanks and soldiers. The hills of Kabul were visible. Almost there. The minivan stopped at the main busstop. Hundreds of vehicles lined up disorderly, hundreds of people everywhere. Getting out, several taxi drivers jumped on us in hope for business. We decided to go for one who could speak fairly good English, although he tried, and managed to scam us. Having no clue how far it was to the city center, we promised him 20 bucks for the ride.

Our first impression of Kabul was the destruction everywhere. Inhabitable houses lined the streets..no windows, roofs, rarely with walls..but the people lived in them. It was fascinating and an awesome impression. We entered the afternoon traffic jam, the sun was starting to set, and being at 2000 meters elevation and in the desert, it cooled down quite rapidly. Masses of people. Kenny was able to point to the hotel where we could stay, where they allow foreigners to stay. We got out, paid half the price (and discussing briefly, that the damn wanker lied to us about how far it was), and got our room. The rest of the night entailed jimming the window and hanging on the roof of our hotel, watching the sunset and the rapid decline of activity in the city as darkness fell. By 10pm there was not one person on the streets and everything was shut down.

We felt safe again. We were in Kabul, Afghanistan. It seemed unreal. Like a bad film. Surreal. In a way it still does..

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Photos

Welcome to Afghanistan
They really need to get a new sign/....

Border Crossing
Not only hot but dusty as well!!

Our non-armored vehicle
So these walls are great at keeping in heat but keeping out bullets?? Like riding in a soda can.

Some ruins
One of the four main sights on the road to Kabul

Kabul bus stop
You may notice this road from the recent CBC special on Afghanistan, only a few meters away was the corola car bomb, not that I think much of corolas anyway

Hotel rooftop Kabul
Safe and sound in Kabul, Humour is a great way to stop soiling yourself