All direct flights to Afghanistan from the UK & Ireland

Destination summary

Trying to write a travel guide to Afghanistan in the first decade of the twenty-first century is somewhat like trying to write a travel guide to Neptune or Mars. The landscape of the Afghan nation has been altered irreparably by the invasion by US-led forces in the wake of September 11, 2001. Still, it may ever have been thus. Even back in 1972, Nancy Hatch Dupree was writing in her A Historical Guide to Kabul: 'This has been a frustrating time to attempt a guide to Kabul. Many are the paragraphs that have been written only to be deleted because of the sudden disappearance of the subject.' (And this was before the Soviet-backed invasion of Afghanistan in the early 1980s.)

Kabul, the capital city, formed an essential stop-off on the hippy trail towards enlightenment in the late 1960s. With peaceful dreams long since shattered, it is today a schizophrenic city: new buildings in the city centre, promising signs of post-invasion reconstruction, give way to rubble and ruins on the outskirts. Yet there are occasional outbreaks of tranquillity. Many mosques and mausoleums of interest remain standing, as do the lush Gardens of Babar, and - not a little ironically, given the strong British military presence in the region - the European Cemetery, established in the 1870s, provides further evidence of just how contested this land has been over the centuries.

Outside of the capital, the country's second city Kandahar - formerly a key Taliban base - remains a high security risk. To the north lie the stunning vistas of the Hindu Kush; it was here, at Bamiyan, that the Giant Buddhas - vast, man-made sculptures depicting the rotund religious deities - sat watching over their creators, until they were desecrated by the Taliban in 2001. Wherever one ventures, women are advised to dress conservatively, and travellers of both sexes would do well to have prior knowledge of local customs. There remains hope that, one day, a fuller and more welcoming guide to Afghanistan may be written; for the present time, the most sensible advice would be to tread carefully.