She landed in Kabul on a flight full of Afghan workers going home.
No tourists in sight.
Just her.
And a plan to spend two weeks somewhere almost nobody visits anymore.
Meet Sharanya Iyer — Indian travel vlogger, ex-corporate employee, and the woman who just walked through Taliban-ruled Afghanistan with a camera and an open mind.
₹2.1 lakh.
12-13 days.
Kabul. Bamiyan. Panjshir. Ghazni. Kandahar — the Taliban's own stronghold.
Every province needed a permit.
Every checkpoint needed a guide.
Every stop needed her passport, shown, checked, cleared.
Not exactly a vacation.
More like a negotiation with a government that controls everything you see.
Warm people.
Ancient ruins — including the empty niches where the world's tallest Buddha statues once stood, before the Taliban blew them up.
Hosts who refused to let her pay for anything.
And right alongside it —
Outside Kabul, she says, she barely saw a woman unescorted.
Not one.
Fathers pulled her aside.
Not for photos.
For help.
One man told her he was saving every rupee-equivalent he had — just to get his two daughters out of the country.
Others simply wanted a visa. Any visa.
Yet many locals told her something that complicates the whole picture:
for the first time in decades, there are no bombs.
No civil war. No invasion. Just an uneasy, oppressive kind of peace.
Boycotts feel righteous.
But they hit the wrong people, she argues.
"You cannot boycott an entire country because of its regime," she said — however horrific its laws may be.
Cut off tourism, and you don't punish the Taliban.
You punish the driver, the guide, the shopkeeper who wouldn't take her money.
She's not defending the regime.
She's asking a harder question:
Who actually pays the price when the world looks away.
That's all for now!
