An intermizable journey
The rickety train from Samarkand to Termiz left on time but arrived half an hour late because we had to wait for a passenger train on the single-line track coming out of Termiz. I didn't care – my mind was already in Afghanistan.
I had planned to stop in Termiz overnight but once there I found that I had the bit between my teeth so I just kept going. My guidebook used Yubileny Bazaar as its point of reference for transport, but, incredibly, never told me where that was. After a detour far into the suburbs I eventually tracked the Bazaar down at the clock tower in the middle of town.
The problem now was that marshrutkas (fixed-route minivans with seats) left from all the streets in the vicinity and I had no idea where to catch the one I needed – #21 according to my guidebook. Then I saw a #21 turn the nearest corner and drive away from me. I cunningly went around the corner to lie in wait for the next one. It was a long while coming.
I flagged it down but the driver only trundled me back to the Bazaar – for free – and there loaded me into another-numbered marshrutka which eventually dropped me off at the military checkpoint before the border. I was on foot from here.
Crossing into Afghanistan
The duty soldier phoned my details ahead and there were no objections to my crossing the border, so I was waved through. This had by no means been assured – my guidebook contained a warning that the guards at the border often interpreted the rules in their own way and might turn travellers back if they lacked a (totally unnecessary) permit for the border area.
From the check point I had to walk about a kilometre in the sun to reach Uzbek Customs. There I had to fill out two more customs forms – the one I had completed when entering the country was deemed insufficient – and my luggage was subjected to an inch by inch examination. They counted my Euros and US Dollars. They found and counted my small stashes of Kyrgyz and Tajik money, which I hadn't declared, but they were uninterested in them. They didn't find my collection of souvenir notes from all the countries I've passed through, but probably wouldn't have cared about them if they had. My carefully-hoarded hotel registration slips they did not ask for. I waited for the subtle request for a bribe, but it never came.
From Customs I continued to Passport control. The booths were located in the roadway beside Customs. Inevitably I tried to go the wrong way (towards the bridge prematurely) but the guard at the gate simply sent me back because I didn't have a "Kontrol" slip.
After that I finally got to walk across the Friendship Bridge, which wasn't all it was cracked up to be. In fact it was cracking up. They were welding it back together when I passed through. But I enjoyed the views up and down the Amu-Darya – here a wide brown flood.
On the Afghan side they welcomed me with smiles, stamped me in, and hustled me through Customs without a glance at my baggage. It was professional and efficient. One official did tail me out of the building. When I asked where the taxis waited, he pulled out a mobile phone and offered to call one for me. I declined this service. He told me cabs were $3 for a seat or $15 for the whole cab, and I'm quite sure that if I'd taken advantage of his help it would indeed have cost me $15.
Instead I walked about 10 minutes down a straight road and found the yellow-and-white taxis waiting. The price was just "Dah" dollars – ten dollars – for a charter to Mazar-i-Sharif, with a drop-off outside my chosen hotel.
Mazar-i-sharif
I stayed at the Barat Hotel. My room had a fan and shared a toilet/shower. It also had a serious heat problem. The fan was in the centre of the ceiling, but the bed was near the window, out of the breeze. I solved this by pulling the mattress off the bed so that I could sleep under the fan. This measure also stopped periodic sinking feelings when the wooden slats of the bed would fall out. I was always careful to put the mattress back on the bed in the morning, but as they didn't service my room while I was there this precaution was wasted.
On the bright side, my laundry dried in no time.
The lashings of hot water promised by my guidebook had evaporated – there was only cold water available in the bathroom. Fortunately, in the heat, cold was enough. However, I quickly learned to carry a torch with me in case the electricity failed in the middle of my shower.
The town's electricity supply was poor – a permanent slight brown-out, with complete outages a couple of times per day. Most shops and hotels had diesel generators to cope with the failures. To give you some idea of the situation, when my hotel's generator cut in the power supply improved so much that I had to get up and turn down the setting on the ceiling fan! However the mains supply was fine for charging phones and other gadgets, though it took longer than usual.
Mazar was a compact city with everything squashed together, making it incredibly bustling for its size. It was also decrepit and picturesque beyond belief, like something plucked out of the middle ages and just updated with trucks and cars instead of donkey carts. Pavement vendors and artisans thrived. In fact the pavement seemed to be treated as a common living room – the unemployed would accumulate in any shady or breezy spot and laze the day away.
However, at dusk the bustle died quickly. Men with AK47s appeared on the street corners, the dealers packed up their stalls and wheeled them away or bound them with rope and canvas, and silence descended – except that when I was there it was Ramadan, so first everyone congregated around the stalls selling somosas, soup, tea, and meat-stuffed pancaky things. It was a very convivial time of day, if brief.
Just north of the square, in an east-west alley I bought a couple of plain shalwar kameez (they didn't call them that but the Afghan name for them escapes me) for about 25% more than they were worth. A fisherman's jacket cum journalist's vest knocked me back almost as much as the two kameez and I regretted it immediately – too hot, too heavy. I'd seen people wearing smaller and lighter ones so soon I was again eying the goods on offer in the shops I passed. My shoes, thankfully, were nondescript enough and looked similar to those worn by some locals, though my socks might have given me away.
There were election posters everywhere and megaphone trucks on the streets. Nobody appeared remotely interested. Later in my time in Afghanistan the interest level did rise as the election approached, but I got the impression that until election day actually arrived, most people had better things to do with their time.
Safety
Heck, what am I supposed to say? Mazar was one of the safest places in Afghanistan. The only guns I saw there were carried by people whose job was to help keep it that way. The locals were friendly; but by the time I spotted an unfriendly one it would probably be too late to do much except bend over and kiss my – toes – goodbye. My main hope for leaving Afghanistan in one piece was to keep a low profile and avoid encountering anyone of that sort. So I dressed local, walked a different route each time I left the hotel, and stayed off the streets after dark.
Balkh
A seat in a shared cab between Balkh and Mazar cost 30 Afghanis – about 75 cents – so by a simple calculation the whole cab should cost about 150 Afghanis. The drivers on the outward trip from Mazar started by demanding 300 Afghanis and I had no luck getting them below 200, even using walk-away tactics. I finally assumed that the price had gone up and so I paid 200; but when the shared taxi on the return leg cost me 30 Afghanis I knew I'd been "had".
Balkh was pretty much as described in my guidebook. The modern town is laid out on an octagonal plan with the Shrine of Rab'ia Bakhri at the centre. The shrine was closed tight and nobody knew where the guardian was. Two nearby eateries were also closed, presumably due to Ramazan. However, simple food and drink was available at the market stalls nearby.
The former fortress, the Bala Hissar, dominates the north half of the town. I climbed the Bala Hissar (recommended – the views are superb) but there was no shade there and I sweated buckets. Fortunately there were no locals around there so I could drink freely without risking offense. The walls of the fort are still more or less standing but there are no recognisable ruins inside them.
Coming back down, a strap on my cheap Chinese-made sandals ripped free and I found myself stuck in the middle of a scorching street with unwearable footwear. Fortunately some local boys saw my plight and directed me to a street-side cobbler. He quickly put some stitches in the offending strap, fixing it so well that the makeshift repair was still holding weeks later when other straps gave way and I discarded the sandals.
Many of Balkh's streets are tree-shaded so I wasn't in the sun all day. The fountain near the shrine had some nice concrete thrones around it. It was a cool spot, good for people-watching. Still, I didn't hang around. Long before the sun began to get low I walked south to the main road and hopped in a shared taxi to get back to Mazar.
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