Travel in Afghanistan: the hippie trail's cities under the Taliban

How many foreign visitors come

Tourism is small and its figures come mostly from the government that promotes it. Visitor numbers peaked in 1977, the year before the Saur coup opened decades of war. Between 2013 and 2016 Afghan embassies issued 15,000 to 20,000 tourist visas a year, and about 20,000 foreign tourists were counted in 2016.

The Taliban have set out to raise the numbers. In June 2022 their spokesman said "anyone" could visit, and the Ministry of Information and Culture began promoting the country; at least 350 tourism companies were operating that year. The deputy minister told the AP in 2025 that tourism was bringing in considerable revenue and that he hoped it would grow into a large sector. A training institute has been set up for hospitality work, and it admits only men.

Afghans travel inside their own country in far larger numbers: about 371,000 did so in 2022, according to the Wikipedia article on the economy.

Which route the overland travellers took

From the mid-1950s to the late 1970s Afghanistan was a stop on the hippie trail, the overland route from Europe to India and Nepal. Coming from Iran, travellers entered at Herat, went south to Kandahar and north-east to Kabul, and left through the Khyber toward northern Pakistan and India.

That route is still the backbone of travel by land, because the mountains leave no other. Highway 1, the Ring Road, runs 2,210 kilometres round the Hindu Kush and joins Kabul, Ghazni, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-e Sharif, with spurs to Kunduz and Jalalabad and the border crossings. The Salang Tunnel, finished in 1964, carries it through the range between Kabul and the north. The Wikipedia country article records serious accidents as common on the Kabul to Kandahar and Kabul to Jalalabad roads and describes bus travel as dangerous because of militant activity.

Most visitors now arrive by air. Flights from Dubai and Istanbul, two of the main transit hubs, run several times a week. International airports serve Kabul, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-e Sharif, and the economy article adds Khost; a dozen smaller airports, Bamyan, Fayzabad and Jalalabad among them, take domestic flights. There is no passenger rail.

Guest houses and hotels are found in every city, and the bigger towns have bus terminals with mosques, restaurants and small shops, several of them being moved to the outskirts. The Wikipedia tourism article notes that in Afghan custom a traveller, a musafir, is treated almost as a diplomat and given protection, and that every mosque is regarded as a place of refuge; it also notes that kidnapping for ransom still happens. Food on the road is the country's everyday food: naan, rice, kebabs and tea, which is offered to every guest. Alcohol is prohibited.

What Herat and the far west hold

Herat was Alexander's Alexandria Ariana, the Timurid capital under Shah Rukh from 1405 and the city Babur wrote of in the 16th century as having no equal. The citadel attributed to Alexander has been renovated, and the Great Mosque and the Herat National Museum are among the listed sights. The City of Herat has been on UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list since 2004. Herat has traditionally held poetry evenings on Thursdays.

The provincial list runs well beyond the citadel: the Gawhar Shad Mausoleum and the Musalla complex, the shrine of Khwaja Abd Allah, the garden of Takht-e Safar and a Jihad Museum on the Soviet war. Britannica names the Herat oasis and the Harirud valley as one of the country's concentrations of population, and the winters are mild enough that in three years out of four the city cannot store ice. Islam Qala, on the road west, is the border town facing Iran.

About 215 kilometres east of the city, at 1,900 metres and far from any town, the Minaret of Jam stands where the Jam river meets the Harirud. It was built in 1194 by the Ghurid sultan Ghiyas-od-din, rises 65 metres from an octagonal base 9 metres across and is covered in brick relief with a Kufic inscription in turquoise tile. It was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2002 and is on UNESCO's list of World Heritage in Danger.

What the Bamiyan valley and the centre hold

The Bamiyan valley lies between the high mountains of the Hindu Kush in the central highlands, opening into a wide basin under a long line of cliffs. UNESCO's listing of 2003 covers eight separate sites in the valley and its side valleys, among them the Buddhist monasteries and chapels cut into the cliffs and fortified buildings of the Islamic period. The two niches of the standing Buddhas, 55 and 38 metres high, have been empty since the Taliban destroyed the statues in March 2001. UNESCO has led work since 2003 to stabilise the niches, keep the surviving fragments and clear the site of mines. The ruins of Shahr-e Gholghola are also in the province.

The valley was already a destination fourteen centuries ago. The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang passed through between 629 and 645 and described the Buddhas, and the Mongols razed the town in 1221 after Genghis Khan's grandson was killed in the siege. In March 2011 Afghan officials and international experts meeting under UNESCO judged that the site might be ready to leave the danger list by 2013, subject to progress on security, the stability of the niches and conservation; it is still listed as in danger.

Band-e Amir National Park, also in Bamyan province, protects the five Amir lakes, coloured from milky white to dark green by the rock under them. Some visitors come in winter to ski. Bamiyan town has several modern hotels and a domestic airport. In May 2024 gunmen killed six people there, three of them Spanish tourists, in an attack claimed by the local Islamic State affiliate.

What Kabul and Kandahar hold for visitors

Kabul's museums and gardens carry the long history, and the city has most of the country's hotels and guest houses. The National Museum holds Buddhist, Bactrian Greek and early Islamic antiquities and has been restoring its collection since the early 2000s after the damage of the civil war. The Gardens of Babur, where the first Mughal emperor was buried when his body was brought to Kabul nine years after his death in 1530, are on UNESCO's tentative list, as are the lakes of Band-e Amir and the ancient city of Balkh. The Victory Arch at Paghman and the Darul Aman Palace were built in a European style in the 1920s, and Istalif, north of the city, makes turquoise and green pottery.

The gardens were laid out in the 16th century, when Babur ordered an avenue garden that he described in his memoirs, the Baburnama. Paghman, northwest of the city, was long a summer retreat, and the Qargha picnic area lies on the way. Ghazi Stadium, built in Amanullah's reign, was used by the first Taliban government for public executions and now holds football matches; the Kabul Zoo keeps about 280 animals. The Panjshir valley, north of the capital, holds the mausoleum of Ahmad Shah Massoud at Bazarak.

Kandahar was the first capital of the Durrani state from 1747. Ahmad Shah Durrani is buried beside the Shrine of the Cloak, which keeps a cloak said to have been worn by the Prophet Muhammad, and Babur's inscriptions are carved in the rock at Chil Zena. The Wikipedia article on tourism notes that foreign visitors long avoided the province, although a number have come in recent years. The mausoleum of Mirwais Hotak, whose revolt of 1709 began Afghan rule at Kandahar, stands in the west of the city, and the Dahla Dam lies about half an hour's drive north. Jalalabad, east of Kabul on the road to the Khyber, holds the Nangarhar Provincial Museum and the mausoleum of Amanullah Khan.

What the north holds for visitors

In the north, the Shrine of Ali, believed by many to be the burial place of the caliph Ali, stands in the centre of Mazar-e Sharif; the Red Flower Festival is held there at Nowruz. The ancient town of Balkh lies about 20 kilometres northwest, with the Green Mosque and, nearby, the Zadian Minaret; the fortress of Qala-i-Jangi is also in the province. From Mazar many visitors go on to Hairatan, the border town on the Amu Darya facing Uzbekistan. Further east the Greek city of Ai-Khanoum lies in Takhar, the archaeological site of Surkh Kotal in Baghlan, and Takht-e Rostam in Samangan.

South of Kabul, Ghazni keeps the mausoleums of the Ghaznavid rulers, including that of Mahmud, and its minarets and citadel.

When the seasons allow travel

The climate sets the calendar more firmly than anything else. Most precipitation falls between December and April, as snow in the highlands from December to March, and the passes that matter for travel lie between 3,600 and 4,600 metres. Summers are hot, dry and cloudless nearly everywhere: Jalalabad has recorded 49 °C in July and the southwestern plateau regularly passes 35 °C, while Kabul, at 1,800 metres, gets cool breezes off the Hindu Kush and usually cool nights. At Ghazni snow has been known to lie well past the spring equinox, while in Herat a strong northwest wind blows from May to September. Spring brings Nowruz at the equinox, kept with music, dance and buzkashi matches, and the Red Flower Festival at Mazar-e Sharif. Nowruz is the country's official new year.

The far northeast is the hardest to reach. Travellers fly or drive to Fayzabad, the capital of Badakhshan, go on to Ishkashim on the Tajik border and continue into Wakhan National Park, as far as Baza'i Gonbad or the Wakhjir Pass on the border with China; the Wikipedia tourism article calls the Wakhan one of the coldest and most isolated districts of the country.

What rules visitors travel under

A foreign tourist needs written permission from the Taliban to visit tourist sites and to photograph or film encounters with Afghans and Taliban fighters. People the Taliban consider to be foreign journalists or rights activists are barred. Drugs are prohibited as well as alcohol. Foreign women must wear a headscarf in public but, the AP found, are rarely asked to cover their faces and are more often admitted to places such as parks that are closed to Afghan women. Some foreigners have been arrested; an English YouTuber was detained on 2 March 2023 on his third visit.

Several governments advise their citizens against travel to Afghanistan, and unexploded ordnance and landmines remain in the countryside. Foreign tourists have been kidnapped and killed in the past. Whether to go at all is argued over. The founder of the Afghan Peace Foundation, quoted in the Wikipedia tourism article, said that travelling there "risks normalising and legitimising" a government widely condemned for its abuses; the deputy minister of tourism describes security across the country as comprehensive.