Bamiyan - Day One (Red City)

With the sun waning into warm light in the sky, Zabi and Nazir took us to our final destination of the day: the Red City. The Surf jostled past the golden sandstone of central Bamiyan city into a new mountain-scape of burnt red stone. At a check-point, we chatted briefly with a Hazara soldier named Hossein-Ali, who cautioned that if we wanted to climb the red hills, he should come along to make sure we didn’t step where any mines were. We shifted over and he hopped into the Surf to be our guide. After my cloistered life in Kabul, the climb up the red mountain amongst ancient palatial ruins was indescribable. The wind whistled over the stone as we climbed to the top-most peak.

I was amazed that our 60+ year old driver, Zabi, led the way like a nimble goat, while the rest of us huffed and puffed behind. While most of it was just us being out of shape, I comforted myself with the knowledge that we had traveled from 5876 feet elevation in Kabul to 8367 feet in Bamiyan and that the oxygen was probably thinner up here. Poor Eli, after constantly saying “You first!” on the climb, stopped at the half-way mark; which none of us let him forget for the rest of the trip. At the peak, we were rewarded with a close-up look at old Taliban war machinery, weathered blankets and stone dugouts (word) where Talibs crouched with machine guns to fight off the US-backed Northern Alliance as the Taliban regime came to a close seven years ago.

Seeing these relics, Tariq was in seventh-heaven. He racheted up his traditional black and white scarf into a turban and – I’m not sure how he did this – convinced our soldier-guide to lend him his gun to pose for a few action shots on the peak. The climb down was treacherous but exhilarating and on the drive home we were all overcome with wonder at the sights we had seen that day. We gave Hossein-Ali a handsome tip and dropped him off at his checkpoint. We stopped for some bolani (a fried pancake filled with leek), fries and Coke from a street-seller, and then it was back to the guest house for the night.