Vicente Pledel and Marián Ocaña, two of the great travelers in Spain, they wrote in 2015 A story about what they themselves describe in the text as "one of the most shameful outrage to the cultural heritage of humanity". The story that links with Herodotus and Alejandro, With the Silk and Genghis Khan route, It is a letter lesson: knowing.
Open the exit door Acceptance It is not an easy task, an SUV is needed to navigate the dusty roads slanted by rivers, blocked with rocks and drilled with adits. Waisidin it was our salvation to be able to leave Kabul. Sitting in a chair in the lobby of the historic Mustapha Hotel, he waits for someone to need a vehicle.. During the war and immediately after, the barrage of western journalists made it impossible to find a vehicle. Today Afghanistan has gone into the background and there are hardly any journalists left; the capricious look of the west now drifts to other places. Waisidin is excited that independent travelers, far from the version offered by war journalists, want to get to know their tortured country in order to show the world an indefatigable people and some natural beauties that, maybe soon, can be enjoyed by more travelers.
the south and southeast, taliban fiefdom, suffers the harassment and the repeated attacks that the fundamentalists continue to exert on the local and foreign population. who would have told Alexander the Great that Alexandroupoli, that city that he founded twenty-four centuries ago during his Asian campaign, was going to become, under the name of Kandahar, in the capital of the territory of such a wicked and bloody group. north lies, artificially, free of Taliban but dominated by Warlords, with their exclusive fiefdoms of action and by sporadic groups of "outlaws" (highwaymen).
Afghanistan has faded into the background and there are hardly any journalists left; the capricious look of the west now drifts to other places
We left for the north one blurred dawn following two slogans: register in the pensions where we stay to leave a trace and never travel at night under any circumstances. But how to meet that last maxim in a country where it is unpredictable to know what can happen in the course of a simple walk? The two occasions that twilight surprised us due to involuntary delays filled our hosts with nervousness, more concerned than ourselves because of the Afghan sense of honor that does not allow anything harmful to happen to guests under their protection.
The stretch of paved road to Charikar It was a bunch of endless nonsense. The slalom of potholes and suicide vehicles that were overtaking in the opposite direction disappeared as soon as we moved away from the main road to roll on stony tracks, dusty and zigzagging roads on the outskirts of the Hindu Kush. An incessant string of abandoned carcasses of tanks and tanks accompany us throughout the journey, evoking an aberrant past., not so far, What did its inhabitants suffer?. The specters of various medieval forts set in dreamlike landscapes impregnate paradisiacal valleys full of crops with history. When the remnants of the war disappear we feel in Shangri-La, the mythical himalayan lost valley of eternal bliss.
We left for the north one blurred dawn following two slogans: enroll in pensions to leave a trace and never travel at night
The 1.800 meters to which Kabul is located became an inconsequential height compared to the 3.000 meters of altitude that we reached when we entered the valle de Bamiyan. On a hill the ambiguous silhouette of the Red fortress, Shahr-e-Zohak, stands as a sentinel of the prodigious valley, once a vital section of the mythical Silk Road. Now, the peasants return to their humble homes with carts pulled by donkeys loaded with sacks of potatoes. After each collection, the field is flooded by a hullabaloo of children harboring the strange hope of finding among the beaten fields some forgotten tuber. when they find it, It is as if they have found the most precious treasure. Children with shy smiles and oblique glances that show their Hazara ancestry, descendants of the Mongol tribes of the s. XIII. Further off the track are the opium crops that make Afghanistan the world's leading producer and exporter of the raw material for heroin..
When the last rays of the setting sun predict the sunset of the day, The remains of the involuntary protagonists of one of the most shameful outrages against the cultural heritage of humanity appear before us.. A destruction that symbolized the culmination, ultimately, of the bloody massacres that the Taliban forces had carried out among the Afghan population and that ended with these silent stone victims.
When the last rays of the sun predict the sunset of the day, the remains of the Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban appear before us
As wildly emptied eyes, the mutilated and dry basin of the great Bamiyan Buddhas his tears of dust have coagulated under his amputated feet. The rubble that piled up at its base once gave shape to colossal Buddha figures, the greatest of 53 meters. With them a milestone was marked in the history of world iconography. For the first time it was expressed, between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD., a human sculpture of Buddha after centuries of symbolic representations.
Over 1.500 years the Buddhas were capable of resisting the wounds that history and time were making a dent in their weathered physiognomy, they even managed to survive the devastating visit of Genghis Khan, but religious intolerance and a lot of explosives and cannonades violently annihilated its millennial existence together with the hope of the Afghan people to live in peace.
As wildly emptied eyes, the mutilated and dry socket has coagulated its tears of dust under its amputated feet.
Ascending through the outskirts of the powerful Hindu Kush mountain range, we begin to ride through a confusing tangle of tracks that will take us to a place where serenity and beauty are masterfully combined., the Band-e-Amir lakes.
Tearing the monotonous layer of brown tones, Nature has lavishly staggered five lakes of varied turquoise tones so that they pour their waters into its immediate successor, configuring a kaleidoscope of colors in their respective canyons.. the last of them, a tame lagoon captured by a natural dam with high earthen walls, lets its waters escape in small cascades where there is again room for popular superstition. Husseini, a Hazara with a generous smile, He assured us that drinking its waters can heal any ailment you suffer. We want to continue on our way but the margins of the track point to mines everywhere and further north… the Warlords are marking their positions with bullets and blood.
The margins of the track point to mines everywhere and further north… the Warlords are marking their positions with bullets and blood
Thus, a new door to the world has been forced shut by the wicked power of foolishness, guns and bombs. But we promised, before the idyllic vision of the lakes, that one day we would return to the amazing and fascinating Central Asia to continue fraternizing with its people and exploring its infinite paths, as we have been doing for more than half a century following the example of herodotus… traveling to tell what we have seen, heard and lived...
