An Afghan Adventure

After a flurry of form-filling, picture-taking, and finally, visa-obtaining – the plans were secured. Holly and I would be taking a weeklong expedition to the most northern region of Afghanistan – the Wakhan Corridor – situated between Tajikistan, China, and Pakistan. The second annual Pamir Cultural Festival would lure us into a valley isolated and remote, even by Central Asian standards. We rested assured that it was “the safest place in Afghanistan – too far for even the Talib to go!”

Nearing 5am Sunday morning, Holly and I emerged from our apartment, with trekking packs filled with sleeping bags, mats, a tent, modest clothing, photography and video equipment, and 19 Liters of clean drinking water in hand. We headed for the road and the Land Cruiser promptly pulled up, with Tiger at the wheel. As we waited for another passenger, his irritated hands paced around the perimeter of the steering wheel, he revved the engine, and his shirt bore the orange and black markings of an animal ready to pounce. Once our bags were all stowed, he let loose on the roads heading towards the mountainous eastern Autonomous Oblast of Gorno-Badakhshan (GBAO), Tajikistan.

Ten minutes later a hissing noise would soon turn into the dreaded flop-flop-flop of a flat back tire. With Tiger on the job, it was quickly changed and we continued on our 14-28 hour journey (depending on an assortment of road, car, and external conditions) towards the border of Afghanistan – without another spare tire in hand. Around 3pm we would regret not turning back earlier, when we rounded a bend 5km from the nearest town (which also didn’t have a spare tube), and heard the hissing noise once again.

"that's 0ne tricky tire, i tell ya"

How many Tajiks does it take to change a tire? (2 hrs later)

When finally reached the border, Monday at noon, we were like two little school-girls on the first day of class in September. Giggling, with our heads plastered to the windows and passports with official entry visas in hand – we were unable to contain our excitement to venture into this much-talked-about, but seldom traversed land. As we pulled our scarves over our hair and our jeep up to the border guard’s post, we were also nervous. Would they turn us back? Delay our entry without reason? Put an end to our adventure right here and now?

Ready to break into the Middle-Eastern version of YMCA?

As it turned out, our bag of dried apricots were more interesting than anything in our baggage. After one curious guard poked his head in our window, pointed, grunted, and was given a few fruits the others also made their way to our (rationed) snacks. We chatted in broken Tajik/Dari/Farsi/and English, made friends, and broke the first rule of international travel: Don’t take photos at/of military, police, check-points, border-crossings, etc. Photos snapped, we were off and running – or driving rather… Afghanistan awaits!

With the snowcapped Hindu Kush Range rising to the south and the Tajik Pamirs lining the border with the Panj River down the valley, our next 24 hours would be a breathtaking ride to a festival in the center of nowhere. The landscape was perplexing, as it turned from desert to rock to river to grassland, and back again. We crossed over 2 dozen rivers and glacier-melts, drove next to 2-humped camels and hairy yaks, and witnessed the slow lives of young herdsmen unfold in the infrequent fertile patches of the Wakhan.

A group of little ones hanging out in the fields

200km down a road we often carved ourselves, we made our final turn and decent into a wide-open grassy field with two large striped tents marking the site of the 2008 Pamir Festival. This was the end of the road – continuing on to either the Chinese border, the regionally renowned Little Pamir, or the Broghil Pass to Pakistan would necessitate travel by animal and foot. We would pitch our tent here and save trekking for another trip, as the Pamiri people inhabiting the surrounding nations had come to us!

***** Five Star Views Available *****

With horses chomping at the bit, rearing, and warming up for the coming events in the background – it was with great disappointment that we would proceed to sit through 2 hours of welcome speeches and introductions. It was, however, a good opportunity to suss out the crowd and the other “tourists.” As it turned out, only about a dozen foreigners made the journey – the rest also coming 3 days, but from the direction of Kabul. Many of us had close affiliations with AKF/AKDN – the event’s key supporter – though one man had truly arranged his vacation time in France to coincide with the festival and another was back-packing and free-lancing in the region.

A ball would soon be tossed into a fiery of horses and a polo match would commence the afternoon’s numerous activities. Football (soccer) and volleyball were a bit more unruly than North-American standards, but entertained the 150-200 local Afghan and Wakhi spectators who had gathered around the perimeters of the fields – of whom, all were men.

Spirits were kept lively during sporting intermissions with traditional music and dancing. After gazing in awe at the way in which the dancer’s feet kept beat with the pounding tabla drums while their arms and hands moved gracefully above their heads with the strum and twang of the local string instruments, someone grabbed my arm. "Dance, dance… dance!!" the familiar Afghani AKF staff member pleaded with me. With little interest in becoming even more of a spectacle than my colourful Tajik dress had already made me (I didn’t get the memo that Afghans stick to earth tones) and clearly noticing that the ratio of men to women was sitting at 40:1 – I tried persistently to avoid the situation. Defeated, I finally stood and tied my hijab (head covering) a bit tighter. Soon, Holly was dragged off the volleyball court and onto the dance area too. We used the hoola-like Pamiri dance moves we’d learned a few weeks earlier at a wedding in Dushanbe, laughed infectiously at our lack of coordination, and smiled at the cameras and video cameras which popped out of nowhere to capture the display. It wasn’t until after the (very long) song was completed that another foreign woman residing in Kabul informed us on the sidelines that women simply do not dance with men in Afghanistan. Mostly, however, it was only us who seemed to mind that we had been terribly taboo. After all, they had captured the next best home video and as one organizer chuckled: “no problem at all… you’ll be remembered in this valley for along time now!” Great. Just great.

Buzkashi Battle

My embarrassment soon faded, as I grabbed my cameras in time for the main event: BUZKASHI! Similar to polo, the traditional game is played on horseback – but the “ball” is a headless animal that must be picked up and dropped in a goal area. The anti was upped for the festivities and instead of a typical goat, the players fought tooth and nail to capture the carcass of a small calf. Dust was flying, animals snorting, and players grunting. Even a baby cow’s body is fairly heavy and quite awkward, particularly when another player is attempting to snatch one of its legs and tug it too his own horse. With brilliant mid-day sun and a quick sport shutter speed on my camera, I was ready and waiting for the perfect pictures of this oddly addictive cultural sport. It was during a particularly rare piece of footage – with the horses' nostrils flaring, the carcass in clear view, and the player looking directly into the camera – that I looked up to find the game was moving at a dangerously fast pace into the camera. At that point I let out a gasp, my camera jittered towards the ground and then sky, and I joined the crowd in dashing for cover from the 6 horses that came barreling threw the sidelines. Later on, I would plead with a rider to let me up on his mount. Though well fed and of good stature, it was immediately clear that these stallions had a streak in them distinctly different from the Arabians I’d had my hand with back in Canada. After a short canter, I pulled back the reins and decided I’d save riding for another day.

[(c) H.Shrumm]

After more traditional music (and less dancing) we ate local dishes of rice and meat, as no fruits or vegetables are available or grow deep in the valley. The moon was filling out nicely and we chatted by candlelight with locals and other expatriates about life in Afghanistan. The heat of the day had cooled down and I bundled up in sweater and wool socks, happy to have my down-filled sleeping bag back in the tent.
The morning sun brought with it more speeches and a few less eventful activities. We socialized, ate, packed up, and by 2pm were in a Land Cruiser convoy heading back through the valley. We’d reach Ishkashim by nightfall and gather around the satellite television to eat raisin-zeera rice, mutton stew, and watermelon, while mourning the recent death of 4 IRC humanitarian aid workers outside of Kabul and the implications of the impending Russian-Georgian crisis. Our vacation was soon to be over, as we prepared to head back to our respective realities far from the green pastures and rugged mountain landscapes of the Wakhan Valley.