Central Route

Cosmopolitan Men (2006): Menapaki Sejarah Panjang Negeri Afghan

December 2006 COSMOPOLITAN MEN 2006 ADVENTURE Lintas Tengah Afghanistan: Menapaki Sejarah Panjang Negeri Afghan Sebuah jalan membentang sepanjang 1000 km antara Herat dan Kabul. Jalan ini sepi. Jalan ini bisu. Tapi dia menyimpan lebih banyak cerita dari pendongeng terbaik di dunia. Mari kita berjalan dan mendengar ceritanya. Ada sebuah jalan di Afghanistan. Jalan yang sepi, berteman debu, panas dan matahari. Tanpa aspal, berbukit tandus, bergunung tinggi, tanpa peradaban dan tanpa hidup. Kontras dengan kenyataan bahwa jalan ini menyimpan 800 tahun cerita. Cerita tentang Hulagu Khan yang membawa 120 ribu pasukan dalam perang. Yang bertanggung jawab atas pembunuhan peradaban Islam di Irak. Atau legenda tentang si Pincang Timur Lenk, keturunan marga Khan yang mencoba ulangi kejayaan leluhurnya. Herat, Angin Sejarah yang Berlalu Kota Herat di bagian barat Afghanistan dulunya adalah ibukota kerajaan Timur Lenk. Di kota ini kebudayaan Persia berharmoni dengan indahnya dengan kebudayaan Afghan. Arsitektur Masjid Jum’at-nya, kolosal. Benteng lkhtiyaruddin berdiri dengan angkuhnya di atas pasar-pasar tradisional yang sibuk, yang hampir semua orangnya mengenakan surban. Dinasti-dinasti yang dulu berkuasa di sini banyak membangun menara-menara megah atau kompleks bangunan religius seperti masjid dan madrasah. Namun sayang, perang berkepanjangan sejak zaman Inggris hingga era Taliban telah menghancurkan hampir semua kekayaan Herat. Yang [...]

December 20, 2006 // 0 Comments

Kabul – The First Day of Ramazan

Fantastic breakfast: big bread and bean soup Yesterday people were not sure yet whether the fasting month of Ramazan would start today or the day after. “We are waiting for the announcement,” said Abdullah, a driver from Bamiyan. But today, it was clear that the Ramazan started officially. It is one day earlier than in Indonesia, as Afghanistan was following the trend in the Middle East. For travellers, fasting is not obligatory. Kebab restaurants still prepared their meat and actually you still can eat anything as usual, just not in open way. The restaurant owner made the kebab indoor so that the smell would not invite people who were fasting. The Hazaras are Shiite. Abdullah said that for Shiite it was OK not to fast when travelling, but the Sunni Afghans were very strict about religion and still maintained fasting even when travelling long distance. As Ramazan started, suddenly the number of travellers dropped dramatically. Usually it was easy to collect passengers to go to Kabul from the bazaar of Bamiyan. But today I had to wait up till two hours until the car filled up. It was a 10 hour journey to Kabul, and when the car reached Maidan [...]

September 23, 2006 // 0 Comments

Lal o Sar Jangal – Coach Day

They promised to take me along with their trucks Cheragh was his nickname, literally means ‘lamp’. I don’t really know why he was called like that. He was a fat Hazara truck driver whom I talked with yesterday. He was agree to give me a lift up till Panjao, in Bamiyan province. Cheragh had interesting history. He spent 2 weeks in an island near Jakarta, of which he ever didn’t know the name. North of Jakarta, there are hundreds of small islands which are called as ‘thousand islands’. He, together with other 400 Afghans, was in a ship to Australia from Malaysia, their adventure for getting a better life, a dream from their warring country, 6 years ago. “The Indonesian government didn’t give us permission. Australia also didn’t give us permission,” They failed to get refugee visas even from Indonesia, and the archipelago government just allowed them to stay in an isolated island for two months. The government provided them food anyway, and the Indonesians they saw were only army who sent the food to the island. Thus Cheragh had not much other impression of Indonesia but its good weather and abundant water. Cheragh was a truck driver, who got [...]

September 18, 2006 // 0 Comments

Chekhcheran – The Capital of Ghor Province

A boy from Chekhcheran selling bushes for fire. “We are the center of Afghanistan. But why we are so poor?” – a villager from Chekhcheran The capital of Ghor province was a famous arena in Afghan history pages. It was mentioned many times by Babur, the great Moghul emperor. It was also expecting to prosper much further in 1970’s when there was a plan to build road through the Central Route of Afghanistan, thus connecting the Europe as far as to New Delhi. But Chekhcheran today was an isolated town, far from both Herat and Kabul, suffering Taliban attacks in few years back, and now was desperate for further development. The road in the whole province was unpaved, and it was not lit by electricity at all. The whole province had to rely on private generators to produce local electricity to watch TV (no radio signal in the whole province), light the rooms, listen to Indian songs, and run businesses. At night, it was a complete dark. “We are the center of Afghanistan,” said a local man, “but why we are so poor? Why our life is so difficult?” Chekhcheran, geographically, located exactly at the center of Afghanistan. The man [...]

September 17, 2006 // 0 Comments

Garmao – The Journey to Jam

Travellers (musafirs) sleeping on the floor of restaurant along the central route of Afghanistan. The restaurants also serve as hotel for passengers. Along the isolated Central Route, the most common way of travelling is by hitchhiking a truck, like these. “Peida misha (it will be found)” – a passenger from Herat Same quote as a previous post from Iran, same story to be happened (again). After waiting for two days for transport heading east from Chisht, at last I found these two trucks. They were repairing the broken trucks when I came there out of the Chisht bazaar together with Abdurrahman, a boy from the village. Kalendar, one of the truck drivers, agreed to take me. But I had to wait 2 more hours until they finished repairing the broken truck. The night before, I had talked with another truck driver in the Iqbal restaurant to take me to Kamenj. The driver quoted astronomical price of 500 Af for the ride (normal price was 100 Af by truck). I bargained it down until 150 Af. He agreed and told me to be prepared at 8 a.m. But this was a Persian taarof culture, refusing but avoiding saying ‘no’. The truck [...]

September 13, 2006 // 0 Comments

Chisht-o-Sharif – The Journey through the Central Route

With s0 many locals with Mongoloid face, no wonder they also think I am part of them “Where in Afghanistan Indonesia is?” – a passenger from Obey My today had nothing to do with the remembrance of the September 11 accident. So was the life in this part of Afghanistan. Everything was just the same as it was in any other days. I started my journey to Kabul through the Central Route of Afghanistan, passing through the mountainous areas from Herat, Ghor, and Bamiyan provinces. I had heard that the bus to Obey, the first stop of the Central Route, departed from Darb-e-Khosh near the Friday Mosque. When I was there, there was no car at all. There was another old villager with big sack like that of Santa Claus, as confused as I was. After asking around, we found that we were waiting at the wrong place. The old man told me that we should take a rickshaw to the bus terminal. There was a mini bus going to Obey, 2 and half hours away from Herat. The ticket was 90 Af. The old man was still thinking I was a Hazara from Ghor province, as I told him [...]

September 11, 2006 // 0 Comments