Western adventure tourists ignore warnings against travelling to Afghanistan - sometimes, with fatal consequences. One German tourist, for instance, had been travelling for some time in Afghanistan, and his visa expired. He requested an extension in the western province of Ghor, but was informed by police that he needed to go to the capital.
Police advised the man to fly to Kabul, according to Ghor governor Abdullah Hawaid. But the traveller decided to take the more dangerous overland route, and he and his Afghan companion were shot dead by unknown assailants. There are few tourists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but some defy the precarious security situation to hit the old hippie trail there.
A few years ago at a hotel in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, a West European tour group astounded foreign correspondents over breakfast by inquiring where they might catch a bus to Kunduz. The no-longer-young tourists, who had just entered the country via southern ex-Soviet republics, were planning to hike in north-eastern Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor without having organised transport in advance.
In Pakistan a few months ago, a young European family was touring the countryside in their old Mercedes. They had entered Pakistan from Iran and were headed for Afghanistan. They never made it, though, because the local authorities did not allow them to travel there. The couple's child was less than a year old. The man said they sometimes slept on the roadside next to their car under the open sky.
Some travel agencies offer tours to Afghanistan. A package advertised by a British adventure travel company, for instance, offers a 16-day tour for the cost of about 7,560 dollars. The tour will take travellers to Kabul, Herat, the Panjshir Valley, Bamiyan and Mazar-i-Sharif - all basically safe places that can, however, turn dangerous without warning.
Just how quickly the security situation can change was illustrated a few weeks ago by the killing of two Germans working for an aid organisation in Kabul. The men were hiking in an area along the Hindu Kush range north of Kabul that had been considered safe. Individual tourists, in particular, are a nightmare for foreign diplomatic missions. They often ignore travel warnings that could not be clearer.
Those who travel to Afghanistan despite warnings "must be cognisant of the danger of terrorist or criminally motivated acts of violence," the German Foreign Ministry cautions, urging its nationals to exercise "the utmost caution." "This applies especially to overland trips - even in comparatively peaceful parts of the country - which should be undertaken only in a convoy" and preferably with guards, the ministry says.
However, tourists cannot be prohibited from going to Afghanistan. Embassies may then need to come to the aid of their countrymen - as if they did not already have enough to do in the crisis-torn region. When the worst happens, as with the recent shooting in Ghor, they see to it that the bodies are repatriated.
The German embassy in Kabul is currently occupied with another of its countrymen, a man sporting dreadlocks who is cruising around in a converted fire engine. It would be hard to travel more conspicuously in a conflict zone where foreigners from the West are urged to remain as unnoticeable as possible.
The tourist in the fire-red camper van rolled into Kabul while the capital was on alert during the funeral of former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was killed by a suicide bomber. "A crazy German drove a fire engine through Kabul, when all the streets were closed due to Rabbani's funeral," Kabul police chief Ayub Salangi told dpa. "We stopped him." The peculiar tourist has the German embassy to thank for escaping arrest. It called Salangi and asked him to "let the hippie go."