A travel vlogger from Keralam, named Arunima, left her followers and family worried on Monday (September 14) after revealing on social media that she’d been detained by the Taliban while travelling through Afghanistan.
The solo traveller popularly known as Backpacker Arunima, who hails from Ottapalam in Keralam’s Palakkad district, had posted a video on YouTube saying she was detained because she was travelling alone as a woman. She also appealed for help in connecting with the Indian Embassy.
However, on Tuesday morning (September 15), Arunima posted a brief message saying, “I am safe.”
Arunima reached Afghanistan last month and has been travelling alone since August 27. She said her presence had attracted considerable attention across the country, where women are rarely seen alone in public spaces.
‘Completely terrified’
In the video posted on Monday, Arunima said people stopped her because they couldn’t read her travel documents and questioned her decision to travel alone. She said they told her she needed a special permit to cross each province. Describing the incident, she said she hitchhiked on a truck after spending several hours in fear and reached Bamyan in the evening.
“The very moment I got down from the vehicle, people started coming towards me because a woman would not normally be alone in Afghanistan at night,” she said.
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According to Arunima, those who stopped her asked to see her passport and visa and told her that Afghan law did not permit women to travel alone. She said the authorities threatened to arrest her for violating the rules.
“I spent several hours in tension that I felt I could have died. I was completely terrified,” she said. Arunima said she asked to be deported but was told that she had violated the law and would instead be arrested. In another video, while travelling in an auto, she said all along the road, India-made autos could be seen.
She also recounted difficulties in obtaining permission to travel from Jalalabad. According to her, local authorities refused to issue a permit because she was travelling without a man. She said they told her she would either need a male companion or a guide.
Travelling solo since 2020
Arunima said she now planned to leave Afghanistan and travel to Uzbekistan, around 500 km away. However, she said she was concerned about crossing checkpoints along the route.
She has travelled extensively for the past six years, describing herself on social media as a solo traveller who hitchhikes through “wild, risky, and forgotten routes”. Before travelling internationally, she said, she covered the entire breadth of India in about one-and-a-half years.
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The adventurer from Palakkad has more than 7,00,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel and about 1.2 million followers on Instagram. She posts regular videos describing her journeys and experiences in less-explored parts of the world.
Arunima began travelling full time in 2020 after completing Class 12 and working a variety of jobs. She has said in earlier interviews that she had been passionate about travelling since childhood and chose a path different from the usual after school.