A video of Indian solo traveller and content creator Ankita Kumar has gone viral after she shared her experience of travelling through Afghanistan on Instagram.
Kumar undertook the journey between May 11 and May 23 after four failed attempts, multiple visa applications and months of setbacks. Earlier this year, she finally crossed into Afghanistan through a remote land border from Tajikistan, embarking on a solo journey that would take her through Taliban checkpoints, conversations over chai with Taliban officials and encounters with Afghan women navigating life under severe restrictions.
Kumar, who documents her travels on Instagram under the name Monkey Inc, drew widespread attention through a series of videos chronicling her journey across Afghanistan. But the trip itself was years in the making.
She had already gone through four Afghan visas before finally making it across the border.
“One trip was cancelled because of a family health emergency. Another fell through after my flight was cancelled. The third and fourth attempts were derailed by regional tensions and airspace closures,” Kumar told The Tribune. “By the time I finally got the opportunity, I had only 13 days left on my visa.”
Determined not to let another opportunity slip away, she entered Afghanistan through a land crossing from Tajikistan — a moment she describes as being “fifth time lucky”.
“My heart was in my mouth,” she recalled. “If they didn’t allow me into Afghanistan, then what? I couldn’t enter back into Tajikistan either, and I couldn’t even be deported because deported to what?”
The successful crossing marked the beginning of a journey through Kunduz, Kabul, Bamyan, Band-e-Amir, Ghor, Minaret-e-Jam, Herat, Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif.
Images courtesy: Ankita Kumar
Waiting on the other side of the border was Mohammad, one of the guides who would accompany her through much of the journey.
During her travels, she was accompanied by guides Mohammad and Noor, while Naveed drove her across vast stretches of the country. In Herat, she was joined by 23-year-old guide Faiqa, whose perspective offered a rare glimpse into the lives of Afghan women.
Despite travelling through a country many outsiders view through the lens of conflict, Kumar said she rarely felt abandoned to uncertainty.
Ankita Kumar with Kaka Zaman, an iconic figure best known as the legendary box-camera photographer of Kabul. Image credit/Ankita Kumar.
“I was very well taken care of,” she said. “I had this gut feeling that I’d be okay.”
One of the moments that stayed with her came shortly after she entered Afghanistan. While having lunch, an elderly man joined her table and struck up a conversation. Kumar assumed he was another traveller until she took out her phone to photograph her food.
“He suddenly ducked out of the frame. That’s when I realised he was a Talib,” she said.
According to Kumar, the official appeared more curious than suspicious and repeatedly asked whether anyone had taken a bribe from her and why she was travelling through Afghanistan alone.
Later in the trip, she found herself sharing tea with around 15 Taliban members.
“We had chai, discussed geopolitics, India-Pakistan relations and India-Afghanistan relations,” she said.
Yet it was her conversations with Afghan women that left the deepest impression.
Among those she met were women working as guides, educators and entrepreneurs, including a 21-year-old woman running an online university serving around 12,000 girls.
“They want women to study beyond a certain limit. They want online universities. They want to work as guides. They want to drive,” Kumar said. “These big changes people talk about aren’t where they are right now. They want independence in the ways they can get it.”
Only Kumar’s brother knew she had travelled to Afghanistan. Her parents believed she was extending her stay in Tajikistan.
The secret later became a recurring theme in her Instagram videos, including one in which she held up a handwritten placard reading: “Mummy, Papa, I am fine.”
When her parents eventually watched the videos after she returned home, the reaction was emotional.
“They couldn’t talk for almost an hour,” Kumar recalled. “There were tears. My dad came to me and said, ‘You don’t know what you’ve done.’”
Reflecting on the journey, Kumar said Afghanistan challenged many of her assumptions.
“Afghan women are not one entity,” she said. “They’re living a reality we know nothing about. We can empathise, but we can never really feel what it’s like.”
