Charikar

Charikar is the capital of Parwan Province, a market town at the northern edge of the Shomali plain about 65 km north of Kabul. It stands at around 1,600 metres where the plain meets the first ridges of the Hindu Kush, and the main highway from Kabul to the Salang and northern Afghanistan runs straight through it, giving the town its long, busy main street. Charikar is a working town rather than a place of monuments. Its life revolves around the bazaar, the highway and the surrounding vineyards: shops sell farm tools, cloth, household goods and the dried fruit of the Shomali, while trucks, minibuses and shared taxis stop to load and unload. Residential quarters of walled houses and gardens spread up the slopes behind the main road, and vineyards and orchards begin at the edge of town. For a visitor Charikar is a convenient stop on the way north, a base for exploring the Shomali vineyards, the ancient site near Bagram and the mouths of the Salang and Ghorband valleys, and a good place to see an Afghan provincial town going about its daily business. In late summer, when grapes and raisins fill the market, it is at its liveliest.

Charikar grew up as a market and staging post on the route between Kabul and the passes of the Hindu Kush, at the point where travellers and caravans left the plain for the mountains. The fertile country around it, part of the region historically known as the Kohistan, supplied Kabul with fruit and grain for centuries. The town appears in accounts of the First Anglo-Afghan War, when a British-led garrison stationed there was besieged and overwhelmed in 1841 during the uprising that spread across the region. In the 20th century Charikar became the administrative centre of Parwan and grew with the building of the paved highway north. Like much of the Shomali, it suffered in the fighting of the 1990s and has been rebuilt since.

Dari is the main language of Charikar, and Pashto is widely understood, especially among traders and travellers from the south and east. The town is predominantly Sunni Muslim, and its mosques fill for Friday prayers. As a highway town Charikar mixes local farming families with drivers, traders and travellers from across the country, and its tea houses are places to hear news from the road. Weddings, often held after the harvest, are large gatherings of family and neighbours. At Nowruz and on holidays families head out to the vineyards and orchards around the town to picnic, and buzkashi matches are sometimes staged on fields near the town in the cold season, drawing crowds from the surrounding villages.

Charikar sits on gently rising ground at the foot of the mountains, with the Hindu Kush rising steeply to the north and west and the flat, green Shomali plain spreading south and east towards Bagram and Kabul. On clear days snow-covered peaks are visible above the town for much of the year. The town is surrounded by vineyards, many of them planted in the traditional way along long earthen ridges, and by orchards of mulberry, apricot and walnut watered by channels from mountain streams. Tall drying houses for raisins, their walls pierced with rows of ventilation holes, stand among the vines. A short drive to the north, the Salang and Ghorband rivers emerge from their valleys onto the plain.

Charikar's food is the food of the highway and the vineyard. Eating houses along the main street serve kebab grilled over charcoal, qabuli palaw, bolani and fresh tandoor bread to drivers and passengers stopping on the way north or south, and tea is poured from big kettles throughout the day. The market is the place to taste the Shomali's produce. Fresh mulberries arrive in early summer, followed by apricots; in late summer and autumn grapes of many kinds are piled high on carts and stalls, and green and red raisins, dried mulberries and walnuts are sold all year round. Yoghurt and qurut, dried balls of salted yoghurt, come in from the villages and are used in sauces and soups.

Charikar is not a centre for fine crafts. Its bazaar is a practical market selling cloth, ready-made clothing, shoes, household utensils, farm tools and the dried fruit and nuts of the Shomali, much of it packed in boxes and sacks for the journey to Kabul and other cities. Small workshops off the main street make and repair metal goods such as stoves, buckets and tools, and tailors sew shalwar kameez and waistcoats to order. Embroidered caps and simple woven goods from the surrounding villages occasionally appear in the market, especially before the major holidays. Visitors looking for carpets, pottery or jewellery usually shop in Kabul or in Istalif, a short drive to the south.

Charikar is pleasant from April to June, when the vineyards come into leaf and the days are warm but not yet hot, and again from late August to October, the season of the grape harvest and raisin-making, when the market is full and the town is at its busiest. July and early August are hot in the afternoons, and dust can blow across the plain. Winters are cold, with snow most years and short days; the town stays reachable from Kabul, but travel beyond it towards the Salang depends on the weather. Nowruz, around 21 March, is a festive time, when families picnic in the orchards as the first blossom appears.

Charikar lies on the main highway north from Kabul, about 65 km and roughly an hour and a half away by road. The route leaves Kabul through its northern suburbs, crosses the Koh-e Daman and the Shomali plain, and enters Charikar from the south. From Charikar the highway continues north to Jabal Saraj and the Salang, reaching Pul-e Khumri in Baghlan in three to four hours and Mazar-e Sharif in roughly six to seven. Mahmud-i-Raqi, the capital of Kapisa, is a short drive to the east across the plain, and Gulbahar, at the entrance to the Panjshir valley, is about half an hour away. Road conditions and local circumstances change, so travellers should check current conditions before setting out.

Charikar has a small number of modest hotels and guesthouses, mostly on or near the main highway and around the central bazaar. They are used mainly by Afghan traders, officials and travellers, and facilities are simple: shared bathrooms are common, and hot water and heating may depend on the season and the power supply. Because Kabul is so close, many visitors prefer to stay in the capital and visit Charikar for the day. Those who want to spend longer in the Shomali, for the grape harvest for example, often stay with local families or arrange accommodation in advance through contacts. Roadside tea houses on the highway beyond the town also offer very basic overnight places.

Charikar is compact enough to walk around the centre, and the bazaar along the main road is best seen on foot. Auto-rickshaws (zaranj) and local taxis cover longer trips within the town and out to nearby villages. Minibuses and shared taxis to Kabul leave regularly from the town's stands and depart when full; others run north to Jabal Saraj and on towards Gulbahar and the Salang, and west into the Ghorband. Shared pick-ups serve outlying villages. A car hired with a driver is the easiest way to explore the vineyards, the Bagram area and the mouths of the mountain valleys in a single day.