10 Chapter 10. Into the Hindu Kush

Once in Kabul, travellers frequently headed directly for the Khyber Pass into Pakistan and then on to India. But other options beckoned. Before leaving Kabul for points east, one could travel by truck or bus through the Hindu Kush mountains to the province of Bamiyan, west and slightly north of Kabul. The town of the same name had long been famous for two magnificent sixth-century statues of the Buddha and was also the starting point for an excursion to the glacial-fed lakes of Band-e Amir. Alternatively, one could travel north from Kabul along the main highway to Mazar-i-Sharif, a city not far from what was at the time the Soviet Union. Bruce Shore and Brenda Grant managed to combine the two destinations, travelling to Mazar-i-Sharif and then to Bamiyan, before returning to Kabul. They and Don Skelton were the only travellers I interviewed who journeyed to Mazar-i-Sharif from Kabul, and to this day I regret that I didn’t.

The name Mazar-i-Sharif means “tomb of the exalted one,” a reference to the city’s magnificent Blue Mosque, venerated as the shrine of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first imam of Shia Muslims. Arriving in the city, Shore and Grant stayed four days in a hotel room that had hot showers and cost them 30 Afs each. Quite apart from the beauty of the city itself, they remembered a card game, played with the locals, whose rules seemed unflinchingly opaque. “There were tricks and certain cards had power,” Shore recalled, “but this kept changing. One hand, having a queen was good; the next hand, not. I’d slam my cards down in triumph, but instead of excitement, the locals just looked at me puzzled.”

From Mazar-i-Sharif, Bruce Shore and Brenda Grant travelled south to Bamiyan. The trip, for which they paid 80 Afs, was supposed to take only eight hours, but night came and they were forced to stay in the tiny mountain village of Tala, still several hours from Bamiyan. They were at first going to bed down in a teahouse, along with other passengers from the bus, that was run by some of the local people. But a very persistent policeman kept badgering Shore and finally took him to the chief of police, who told him, “Those guys are no good. You can’t stay there for the night, it’s too dangerous. Go back and get your family and come.” The police chief then escorted Shore, Grant, and their “family” (that is, the rest of the group) to the house of a schoolteacher who spoke some English. And that’s where they spent the night, joined by some local musicians who arrived and played music for them.

Shore’s story reminds me of my earlier experience in Herat when Ferooq warned me of the possible danger that the young American woman faced, dancing provocatively in the way she did. Such expressions of concern were not unusual, though rarely as dramatic as that which Bruce Shore and Brenda Grant experienced.

The next day, Bruce and Benda continued their journey to Bamiyan. Their transportation was a truck of open-box military design, much like the one in which Rainer, Maude, and I travelled from Kabul. The box had a metal frame, but the canvas was down. Shore’s description of their trip likewise rings a chord with me:

The truck carried forty to fifty people. Sometimes, it would load up cargo and then everybody got on top of the load. Every three hundred metres or so, the driver stopped to pick someone up or drop someone off, so that the journey was slow. At one point we picked up a hunter, a guy with a rifle. We were following the river valley a lot of the time and he spotted a duck swimming. The truck stopped, he got off, shot the duck, and brought it back to the truck. Then we started again.

Few travellers visited Bamiyan in 1976, though certainly more than in 1968, when Trish Flindall went. She and her sister stayed at a small hotel and drew a tourist map in English for the hotel keeper to give to tourists just beginning to visit the valley. In return, the keeper let them stay at the hotel for free.

She has fond memories of Bamiyan. One day, she took part in a volleyball game against one of the local villages. The Afghan players were flying about in their long-sleeved coats. Afterwards, she and some other travellers were invited to eat, although it was Ramadan and the villagers themselves could not. The village’s chief brought out his beautiful stallion and proudly put on a horse display.

Nino Gualtieri and his family also visited Bamiyan, which he said they found “enchanting.” At the same time, he was reminded that pride can at times be a source of misunderstanding, as it can be difficult to predict where it resides.

There were a number of little restaurants and places to sleep on the main road. We chose one at random and had to sort of crawl in; it was just a packed mud shelter. You had to step over the sill of an open window to get in, and then step down several ledges inside. It cost twenty-five cents a night for the six of us.

A night or two later we made the mistake of walking down the street to try another little restaurant. But where we stayed, the proprietor—a very handsome man and a great musician, actually—had prepared a meal on his little charcoal burner on the street, and I didn’t realize part of the understanding is you stay there, you eat there. I gave him some money for the accommodation, but I remember the disdain with which he threw the money into the street. One of us had to retrieve it. After that, we ate our meals there and became friends. But his pride had been injured.

“It is easy to give offence,” Gualtieri remarked, “when you don’t understand the culture.” I had similar experiences along the way. Bargaining, as I have mentioned, can be enjoyable, but both parties must feel that the exchange is fair. Pushing too far could result in a purchase falling through or only grudgingly being accepted, as conveyed by a bitter look and a quick grabbing of the cash. My own sensitivity to not giving offence lay behind my eating somewhat recklessly of the meal Wyhet had prepared for me as I left Herat. But offence could occur in different ways. Some Westerners, certainly not all, could be loud or dress inappropriately. I made a point of speaking quietly and being respectful regarding any, even small, gesture of kindness, such as someone bringing me a cup of tea.

Despite, or perhaps because of, its moonlike appearance, Bamiyan was beautiful and intensely moving in its simplicity. The people of the city were going about their work, unsurprised and perhaps unimpressed by us. Bamiyan, and the province of the same name, is an agricultural area but it was late October when we arrived, and the land was drying and the weather chilly. I wore a jacket and jeans, Rainer a grey Afghan vest over a long shirt and jeans, and Maude a woven sweater, also with jeans. We slowly picked our steps through the village’s dry and rocky cemetery whose graves were arrayed with tiny flags, bearers via the wind of prayers to God.

The truck we were travelling in allowed us only a short time in Bamiyan, just long enough for Rainer, Maude, and me to walk its sand-blown streets and to make our way to the foot of the two giant Buddhas for which the area was famed, one 53 metres in height, the other 40 metres. They had been carved into the sandstone cliffs during the mid-to-late sixth century and had survived largely intact through the centuries that followed, presiding over the Bamiyan Valley. The sheer size of the statues left us in awe. We entered a narrow tunnel in the cliff that spiralled upward to an opening above the smaller Buddha’s head from where we gazed out for a few minutes at the sprawling valley below. We then returned the way we came. Looking up at them again, I thought of drawing the Buddhas but realized my skills were not up to the task. We returned to the truck and the driver, who seemed anxious to depart.

Years later, in 2001, I read about the destruction of the Buddhas at the hands of the Taliban. The word came out first in rumours and vague news clips. Impossible, I thought, as did many others. But then photographs confirmed the news. The destruction of the Buddhas was a senseless loss to the entire world, but especially so for Afghanistan and its people. In 2003, the Bamiyan Valley was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since then, measures have been undertaken to prevent the vacant niches from collapsing and to protect the site from vandalism, and there has been talk in some quarters of trying to reconstruct the Buddhas. Following its return to power in 2021, the Taliban government professed a commitment to preserving the country’s heritage and has made efforts to promote the Bamiyan Valley as a tourist destination. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this apparent change of heart has met with a certain skepticism.¹

Lake Band-e Amir is a series of six connected lakes high in the Hindu Kush. The sapphire-blue water—the result of its high mineral content—is clear, allowing one to see deep into it where plankton grows and fish swim. We stayed there several days, during which I wrote the following, rather overwrought description:

There are places on this earth where all at once, the Gods took only perfect steps, and Band-e Amir is one of them. From the palisading cliffs, gently eroding, and rolling to silt in the valleys long plain; to the languid soul-aching blue waters as they make their cool southward descent, till leaping off the mossy cascades and into the revolving wheels of a primitive flour mill, then moving on: through every search by eye and foot (and at each for the latter a new aspect configured so much so as to make each scene not only a new perspective but a new vision!) a voice hollers out between and beyond the canyons, that here is a glimpse into the universe; that nature has exposed her dearest flanks, and left man revealed as an insignificant speck indeed! Eternity is grandeur.

In the evening, darkness falling about 5:30 p.m., after a short walk out under the dark, muddy skies, we sat—thirty or forty of us—in the carpeted back room of the Band-e Amir restaurant, some of us reading, some carrying on quiet conversation, a group of six Japanese young people playing a card game. The heat of the wood stove filled the tiny room, making us all sleepy, but it was too early to sleep. The kerosene lamps glowed white and pure, save one that flicked and sputtered, in and out, and was constantly under repair. A young boy, the manager’s son, roamed about the foreigners, throwing hats at them and hitting them, and generally having a good time. The travellers didn’t seem to mind; it was all very quiet and easy.

The following morning, Rainer, Maude, and I walked out to see the lakes at first hand. We stood amid the bulrushes and autumn trees gazing out on one lake, with its intensely blue mirror-like surface. The reflections stretched across the water to the line on the far side where the base of the sheer cliffs collided with itself, mirage meeting reality. We crossed a stream, dancing barefoot from stepping stone to stepping stone.

On the opposite side of the lake, we goat-stepped our way around the turreted cliffs, before clambering up to a dusty plateau, where we stared down at the glassy surface of the lake and the series of ragged travertine palisades that held it in. I found a large flat piece of stone that I raised on its edge and then rolled over the side of the cliff, where it crashed downward with a cannonading boom, hurling shattered fragments into the water. It was a carefree time.

We encountered few locals until, passing around the edge of a shallow lake, we ran into a goatherd squatting on the ground, minding his mottled flock. He offered us bread, which we gratefully accepted. Thinking to return the favour, we offered him some nuts and raisins that Rainer had, but he gently refused. He scraped up some cold water into his acrylic glass and drank, while we moved on.

The next day, after a breakfast of porridge and chai, Maude, Rainer, and I began our hike to and up the mountain. We crossed a series of trickling streams and passed by some flour mills around the bottom of the falls. I recall slipping on a rock and having to hang my wet sock over my waistbelt to dry. We had to stop several times on the way up, as it was a steep climb, and the altitude got to us. But it was worth it for every glance at the panoramic views that surrounded us. “The lake, a pink and blue mirror of the mountains at lower heights,” I wrote at the time, “asserted itself, took on the dark blue of the sky. To our right, the mountains were cleft by a valley and another village, with the white spine-tips of the Hindu Kush stretching up some 5,000 metres in the far distance. On the left, steep palisading cliffs paraded out in a march to the south.”

We saw several fields along the way and wondered what the Afghans farmed, for although the earth was tilled, all that survived were the sparsest weeds, some looking like frost-covered porcupines, along with a few withered sticks and stems.

As we neared the end of our climb, we paused for a moment to recover. When my heart finally stopped racing and settled back into a steady beat, I made a dash for the summit and gazed out into the distance. There, before me, was “the wide, wide earth,” I wrote. “I walked, even pranced, unthinking of the cold wind that funnelled over the plateau, standing at the apex of a great topographic map.”

It was after four by the time we got back home. I lay on my sleeping bag for two hours, not so much tired as hopelessly stoned by the altitude. Later, we played cards and then went to sleep.

On another day, Rainer, Maude, and I rented horses and rode around the lesser lakes and villages of Band-e Amir. It was not a cold day as we forded a narrow stream rounding a mountain top. Rainer and Maude gained distance as we went, while I and my horse loped behind. I was singing a made-up cowboy song when we entered an alleyway blocked by burrows and a brace of children who began throwing rocks. At this my horse, which was of a singularly stubborn disposition, began belligerently rearing its head. A group of men were watching and their actions at that moment suggested they knew my horse and didn’t like its character, although my poor horsemanship probably didn’t help its reputation. Steering past, I forded a nearby creek before doing a slow gallop across the sodden plain to where my companions were. They suggested we exchange horses, as Rainer was clearly a more experienced rider. My new horse was old and at least as stubborn as the first, but even slower afoot. The result was a thankfully slow shuffle throughout the rest of the ride, punctuated by moments when my steed refused to move at all.

Sadly, such languid days were bound to end, and soon we found ourselves back in travel mode, first making our way back to Kabul and from there on to Pakistan and India. But when I see photographs of Band-e Amir today, I am still transported back to that time. In my mind, it remains one of the most beautiful and serene places I have ever visited.

1. See Rick Noack, “Cash-Strapped Taliban Selling Tickets to Ruins of Buddhas It Blew Up,” Washington Post, June 15, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/15/afghan-buddhas-taliban-bamian/. Regarding efforts to preserve the site, see “Commemorating 20 Years Since the Destruction of Two Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan,” UNESCO, news release, March 11, 2021, https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/2253. See also “Bamiyan Buddhas,” Whose Culture? The Creation and Management of World Heritage, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University, accessed May 26, 2025, https://whoseculture.hsites.harvard.edu/bamiyan-buddhas, which offers a thought-provoking argument against the notion of reconstructing the Buddhas.