Wojciech Fedoruk

Poland - 18-Sep-24 -

Site visited in September 2024. Band-E-Amir is a complex of wonderful lakes, created by natural travertine dams on rivers flowing down from the mountains of Hindukush. The lakes have vivid colors and are very transparent. Their intense color contrasts with the grey-brown shade of the surrounding mountains, forming cliffs several dozen meters high. The whole thing creates a postcard landscape and is absolutely unique. All this at an altitude of 2,900 m above sea level, which makes walking around the lakes difficult.

Band-E-Amir is the first national park in Afghanistan and until recently was a very popular tourist destination, with a decent hotel and restaurant infrastructure. Unfortunately, after taking power, the Taliban issued an idiotic ban on women entering the national park. Even the women from our Polish group had problems with entry, but fortunately our fixer finally managed to let them go. This senseless law resulted in a significant decline in visits to the park, as well as the closure of hotels and restaurants (in order for us to eat, our fixer had to ask a former restaurateur friend to prepare lunch for us). On some lakes you can rent pedal boats.

The complex is available from spring to autumn. You can also visit it in winter, but the lakes are covered with snow and frozen, which makes the charm of this place disappear. It is located about 5 hours from Kabul.

I think Band-e-Amir lakes should have their place on the list. There is no other such complex in Central Asia. It is definitely a place worth visiting - we can only hope that it will be fully open also to women.