The district following Lal, called Dawlat Yar is the
Taliban hub (according to the locals and this is the trickiest part of the
journey to Chaghcharan - the capital of Ghor) and checkpoints are frequent
there. The journey by falancoch (Toyota van accommodating about a dozen of
passengers) - the only available form of public transportation takes
around 2 hours and another 1.5 h to the provincial capital.
It's a dirt road all until reaching the city of
Chaghcharan but not as bad as one might expect, so the journey goes pretty
smooth.
Dawlat Yar is nothing but a small village, probably even smaller
than Lal. The van doesn't stop there unless some passengers need to be dropped
or picked up.
Some people got got down along the way to a villages hidden
between hills. Some people (as usual) happen to be speaking some English (there
was even an English teacher from some remote village travelling in the van).
Going there was a crazy idea, I KNOW. Going there
was potential asking for death or in the best case for big trouble. That's why
I didn't tell anybody where I was going. Partially because I didn't want to
make people worry and partially for what everyone says - safety reasons (don't
inform everybody about your current location or where are you heading).
I was one of the 2 women in the car. When I started
to put on my chodri/burqa (without covering the face) I was told not to do so
until we reach Dawlat Yar (the teacher told me he would let me know when we
reach the dangerous area - in the end, he never told me). On the way we
saw 2 places of recent land mine explosions. Quite usual thing in the country.
In the meantime, I called a friend who had other
friends in Ghor (that's how locals call Chaghcharan), and asked for
accommodation. That's the beauty of Afghanistan. You can never be homeless.
There is always somebody who knows somebody, and in the worst case, you can
just stay in some tea house (cheap option) or a hotel. Actually, I was even
invited to go to Herat province by the guys sitting in front of me and stay in
their house. 10-20 min conversation is enough to become somebody's guest. I
quickly found a place to stay (in the end it was 3 options) and got picked up
by a friend of a friend while eating lunch with a guy whom I'd just met in the
van.
Chaghcharan is not the city full of ancient
attractions and sites. It's a regular Afghan city with some miserable remains
of old fortress and Taliban infested village around the city (as the locals
say). Some of the people on the streets must have been Taliban but during the
day you can't tell who's who. There is a representative mosque, some statues
(one being the small copy of famous Jam Minaret - UNESCO site in Ghor). Other
things are just a regular city sites such as street markets, shops, houses,
offices behind barbed wire and security checks, etc.
Long ago I stopped looking for a
"beautiful" tourist attractions in the cities I visit, so the best
way for me to spend the day was to walk around the streets, chat and joke (as
much as my Dari and body language allowed) with vendors, and attract general
attention of the people (in the peak moment there were around 30 people
surrounding me, mostly kids who would walk behind and beside me). A few people
demanded a photo with me, which I turned into getting a photo for myself (taken
by my camera/phone).
The thing you want the
least in Afghanistan is a crowd around you (if you are a foreigner, that is),
so I was told to leave the place as soon as the number of people exceeded the
“normal” amount. I also stopped caring about cultural “do’s” and “don’ts” (not
the smartest move, I know, but let me be me), so I would stop every now and
then and chat with different people (kids, street vendors, police officers), in
most cases causing outbursts of laughter (thanks to trying to tell jokes in my
Dari; which the people claim is good but I know they just want to flatter me).
I got some unexpected
souvenirs (key chain with an Afghan flag and map; 2 for 30 Afs), a passport
cover saying “Passport of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan” (which I swear I
will constantly use), tried probably the worst ice cream I’ve had so far in the
country, saw a bunch of sheep/goats heads for sale (and tried asking where is
the rest of the animal’s body, using my body language), bought a nice pair of
winter pajama trousers (after around 20 min of bargaining and provoking another
laughs) which I would later loose somewhere (the mystery remains unsolved),
went to one of the “no-go” places around the village to see the remains of a
“castle” (the place notorious for being a spot of killing somebody in the past,
and a current location of hashish smokers and other gatherings), and even there
I bumped into somebody who could speak fluent English (after 2.5 years in China
I am still astonished by these kind of encounters), met the person responsible
for women affairs in the city/district and got to know a lot of nasty
stories/details of life of women in Afghanistan, especially in Chaghcharan.
I was constantly with
somebody beside me (not my choice of course, I’d do things differently if I was
on my own, but on the other hand I didn’t know the city so it saw smarter to be
around some locals), but still enjoyed the time. The guy with me was super
chilled any many times was standing somewhere on a side while I was chatting or
buying stuff.
1.5 days in the city was
a time spent with different people (“new” friends and people on the streets),
listening to (not always nice) stories and visiting a place considered a cave
of lions. Honestly I haven’t noticed much difference between Chaghcharan and
other places I’ve seen in Afghanistan. People wouldn’t pay too much attention
to me (I’d say they were rather surprised to see a whitey on the streets, but
having a local dude beside definitely helped in being left in peace).
The way back was also
arranged by the same transport company I used to get to the city. I was wearing
burqa when entering the van (just coz I didn’t know who was travelling there),
and didn’t remove it until we passed Dawlat Yar. Nobody talked to me, although
I had a guy sitting next to me (got ignored by him, too). Only when I removed
the burqa, the avalanche of questions fell.
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