Freedom ride around Kabul

The BBC's Kate Clark takes a ride around Kabul

By Kate Clark BBC Kabul correspondent

Dervla Murphy recently said that of all the countries she had cycled in, Afghanistan was still her favourite.

She was here in the early 1960s, well before the civil war which started in 1978, but in many ways what Murphy loved about Afghanistan has not changed.

The landscape - the last outpouring of the Hindu Kush - is still spectacular. Afghans are still generous and open-hearted despite the long war.

Fragile peace

This should be a perfect country to cycle in, if you don't mind rough roads and steep slopes. The air is clean.

There's no industry and not much traffic - although what is on the roads tends to be driven maniacally.

There are places to drink tea and eat meat stew and bed down for the night in communal rooms on even the most remote roads.

But I couldn't recommend cyclists coming here - not yet.

Many women continue to wear the burqua

The US campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taleban has left a country awash with arms and with commanders empowered. The peace process in Afghanistan is still fragile.

However, I feel I could be the vanguard - or maybe the mudguard - of the revolution: the first woman, I think, to have cycled in the post-Taleban era.

In London, I bike daily every day - it's the cheapest and quickest way to get to Bush House and everywhere else.

'Sexually provocative'

In Kabul, as a woman working here for 18 months under the Taleban, I hardly dare imagine getting on a bike.

It was never formally banned, but the religious police would have deemed it sexually provocative and completely unacceptable.

Instead, I was stuck in a four-wheel drive land-cruiser - necessary for roads outside Kabul. Most of the time, I was driven and had to sit in the back seat: the Taleban's religious police objected to a women sitting next to a male driver.

The Taleban deemed cycling unacceptable for women

Occasionally I drove myself - one of maybe five or six women - all foreign - to do so in Kabul. People always looked at me with curiosity and amusement, as if I was a dancing monkey or a dog walking on its hind legs - very clever but entirely unnatural.

The response to seeing me cycling is hardly less amazed. It is easy to see why - there are plenty of women on bicycles in Kabul, but they all ride side-saddle, faces covered with burqas, while a husband or brother does the pedalling.

However, Kabul is now a place where boundaries are being pushed back. A few Afghan women are now to be seen with bare faces.

There are the first stirrings of a free press. A few clandestine political parties are declaring themselves openly.

Treasured possessions

Peddling myself took some courage. Men stare, stop what they're doing to watch and occasionally call out - this is still a deeply conservative country.

At one point on my first ride, my bag fell off directly in front of a commander's house where his fighters were milling around. I expected harassment, but overheard one fighter say, "I can't believe it. Development has truly come to Kabul".

Whole families of Afghans travel by bike - babes in arms, young children and large amounts of luggage.

A new top model bike costs about $50 - (£30) - about six month's salary for a teacher. They are basic - Chinese-made with no gears, but with some very appealing features, including built-in locks and chain guards.

Owners decorate their bikes lovingly with padded seats and coloured trinkets.

They're treasured possessions - none more so than the new BBC Kabul bureau bicycle.