Jago 267| Day Trip to Balkh (Bactria), Afghanistan, One of the Largest Cities of Greater Khorasan

On the 138th day I set off from Mazar-i-Sarif for Balkh, the ancient city from which Bactria gets its name. Admirers of Alexander the Great know it as the hometown of Roxana, Alexander's wife.

Balkh is 20 kilometers west of Mazar. The shared-taxi stand was right in front of my hotel, the Rahat Hotel, and was relatively cheap, only 40 Afghanis ($0.5).

My friends and I alighted before Balkh’s city gate to visit the watchtower which until recently was a military base.

From there we walked to the ancient walls of Balkh.

Entering the city of Balkh, I admired the trading life in this city. Even though it is more than 2000 years old, this city is still very much alive with commercial activities.

In the middle of this modern city there is the Green Mosque, built during the Timurid Empire period. It is said that the architecture of this building was the prototype of the Taj Mahal in India.

This mosque is also the tomb of Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa (15th century), a Sufi master from the Naqshbandi sect.

Next to it is the tomb of Rabia Balkhi, the tenth-century first known female poet to write in Persian.

Walking north, I arrived at the ruins of the ancient city of Balkh which had been razed to the ground. It is said that many Greek-style archaeological remains were found in this place. Meanwhile, what I found here was a Talib who seemed to have been assigned to follow and guard us.

On the outskirts of the city walls that have decomposed into dirt there is cemetry whose origin I do not know.

From there I walked back outside the city of Balkh, to the south, where there is the Haji Piyada Mosque, the oldest Islamic structure in Afghanistan. According to carbon-dating and textual sources, this mosque was founded in 794. From what I saw, the style is exactly the same as the tomb of Ismail Samani in Bukhara. It is said that the Samani family came from Balkh, so perhaps the tomb imitates the style of this mosque.

After we were satisfied touring Balkh, we returned to Mazar by rickshaw (tuktuk/bajaj). The plan is that tomorrow we will return to Samangan to vist Takht-e-Rostam, an ancient Buddhist stupa that’s carved on a rock.


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Stage 1 Route - Sumatra (DONE!):
Jakarta - Bandar Lampung - Baturaja - Lahat - Pagar Alam - Bengkulu - Lebong Tandai - Kerinci - Jambi - Kuala Tungkal - Batam - Johor Bahru

Stage 2 Route - ASEAN Mainland (DONE!):
Johor Bahru - Kuala Tahan - Kota Bharu - Su-Ngai Kolok - Nakhon Si Thammarat - Chaiya - Nakhon Pathom - Bangkok - Nakhon Ratchasima - Phimai - Nong Khai - Vientiane - Vang Vieng - Luang Prabang - Chiang Rai - Chiang Mai - Pai - Chiang Mai - Chiang Rai - Boten - Kunming, China

Stage 3 Route - China (DONE!):
Kunming - Dali - Lijiang - Shangri-La - Shambala - Litang - Chengdu - Leshan - Chengdu - Xi'an - Zhangye - Jiayuguan - Dunhuang - Turpan - Urumqi - Almaty, Kazakhstan

Stage 4 Route - Central Asia (DONE!):
Almaty - Shymkent - Tashkent - Nukus - Muynak - Turtkul - Khiva - Bukhara - Samarkand - Tashkent - Khujand - Fann Mountains - Dushanbe - Kunduz, Afghanistan

Stage 5 Route - Afghanistan:
Kunduz - Samangan - Mazar-i-Sharif - Balkh - Kabul - Bamiyan - Band-e Amir - Yakawlang - Lal - Chagcharan - Herat - Mashhad, Iran

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Music Credits:
And Awaken - Stings by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/....