The road into Bamyan climbs for hours. Then it turns, the valley opens, and there they are — two enormous empty alcoves cut into a cliff of soft rock, holding the shape of what stood in them for fifteen hundred years.
Nobody says much at that point. Most people just stand there.
Afghanistan has a small number of places that do this to visitors, and a larger number that almost nobody has seen. Here is both lists.
What are the must-see places in Afghanistan?
Five destinations anchor almost every itinerary: Kabul, Bamyan, Band-e Amir, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat. Between them you get the capital, the Buddhist highlands, the country's first national park, the great shrine of the north, and its finest surviving architecture. Two weeks covers all five comfortably.
Kabul
Louder and more modern than expected. New towers going up alongside a bazaar that has been trading for centuries. Go to Bagh-e Babur, the terraced garden where the first Mughal emperor chose to be buried, and to the Ka Farushi bird market, a narrow lane of cages, whistling and haggling that is the most alive corner of the city. Darulaman Palace, restored after decades as a ruin, is worth the drive out.
Bamyan
The quiet heart of the country. The Buddha niches are the reason people come, but the ruins above the valley are what stay with them: Shahr-e Gholghola, the City of Screams, sacked by Genghis Khan, and Shahr-e Zuhak, a red mud-brick fortress on a ridge that looks invented. In winter, people ski here.
Band-e Amir
Six lakes held back by natural travertine dams, the water an unreasonable blue. Afghanistan's first national park, and the one place where photographs are routinely accused of being edited. In summer there are pedal boats, families picnicking, and swimming.
Mazar-e-Sharif
Built around the Blue Mosque — the Shrine of Hazrat Ali — which is exactly as good as it looks, tiled in a dozen blues and surrounded by white marble courtyards and thousands of white pigeons. The city has the best ice cream in Afghanistan and, in winter, Friday buzkashi.
Herat
The most Persian city in Afghanistan and the richest in architecture. The Citadel traces back to Alexander's campaign in 330 BC. The Friday Mosque is thirteenth century and still has a working tile workshop attached, where the mosaics are cut by hand exactly as they always were. The minarets stand out on the plain, leaning, astonishing.
Where do experienced travellers go instead?
This is where Afghanistan starts to feel like somewhere very few people have been — because very few have.
The Wakhan Corridor
A finger of land where the Hindu Kush meets the Pamirs, and the one part of the country the last forty years largely passed by. It receives perhaps 150 to 200 visitors a year. Trekking here means high passes, hot springs, Wakhi villages, and the nomadic Kyrgyz of the Little Pamir living much as they have for centuries. It is the finest trek in the country and it is not close.
Balkh
Twenty kilometres from Mazar-e-Sharif and four thousand years old — one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on earth, and the birthplace of Rumi. You can walk the ancient walls, see Buddhist stupas older than Islam in the region, the blue-tiled shrine of Khoja Parsa, and No Gombad, the oldest mosque in Afghanistan.
Takht-e Rostam
A fourth-century Buddhist monastery and stupa carved downwards into solid bedrock, near Samangan. Because it is cut into the ground rather than built on it, it survived intact where almost nothing else did. It sits beside the main Kabul–Mazar highway and nearly everybody drives past.
Nuristan
Dense alpine forest, timber houses stacked up steep valleys, rivers running clear. It looks like nowhere else in the country and confounds every expectation people arrive with. Hard to reach, which is exactly why it is intact.
The Minaret of Jam
Sixty-three metres of twelfth-century brickwork covered in Kufic inscription, standing alone in a river valley in Ghor. It is the world's second-tallest free-standing minaret and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it sits two hundred kilometres from any town down genuinely bad road. Only a handful of foreign travellers have stood at its base.
What if you only have a few days?
Two short trips out of Kabul repay a day each. Istalif is a village on a green hillside north of the city, known for generations of turquoise-glazed pottery you can watch being thrown. Paghman, to the north-west, was the summer retreat of Kabul's old elite — cool air, mountain water, rock pools fed by snowmelt.
How to fit it together
A rough guide to time:
- One week — Kabul and Bamyan, with Band-e Amir. Comfortable, no rushing.
- Two weeks — add Mazar-e-Sharif, Balkh and Herat along the northern route.
- Three weeks or more — the Wakhan, or Jam, or Nuristan. These need their own time and cannot be bolted on.
Domestic flights between Kabul, Herat and Mazar are cheap and save long road days on the bigger circuits.
Our itineraries run from four days to twenty-four, and a custom trip can be shaped around whichever of these you actually came for. If it is Jam, say so early — that one takes planning.
The country is more open than most people believe, and considerably more beautiful. The hard part is choosing.