The Wakhan corridor is the remotest part of Afghanistan, which today rivals North Korea for the title of the world’s least-visited country. To go there takes intention. Effort. A concerted decision, not without its qualms.

The Wakhan corridor is so-called because it is a thin strip of land controlled by Afghanistan, which ends in a border with China. To the north Tajikistan, to the south, Pakistan. The Taliban government would like to develop the area as a means to interact with China on the geopolitical stage.

Theo Blindow and Olf (just Olf, like Ronaldinho) went to Wakhan in 2025, joining an expedition conceived and led by their friends Alexander Niklass and Ruben Meersman. While Alex and Ruben had prior experience with the Wakhan corridor, for Theo and Olf this was entirely new territory.

Together, they rode from Takjikistan, over the land border into Afghanistan, then made a loop inside the corridor itself. It was a five-week odyssey, with about 12 days spent in the Wakhan.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, their trip can be divided into the moments before and after the Tajik-Afghan border crossing.

In Tajikistan the group wanted to meet and learn about the Kyrgyz people. While primarily located in modern Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz are nomadic, living often in yurts and moving around the region, reaching as far as China. Hospitality is a central pillar of the culture, and the group was able to enjoy a prolonged spell in a Kyrgyz settlement spending three days, “Just getting to know their lives there. One of these days was my best day of the trip,” remembers Blindow.

Naturally, in any consideration of Afghanistan the Taliban regime looms large.

“It’s so isolated, this country,” says Blindow. “You can read some blog posts about it, experiences from others, but in the end you just have to go there, and see what happens.

“This was quite a big mental barrier: whether I personally consider it morally justifiable to travel to a country where more than half of the population is structurally oppressed.

“Throughout the planning process, this thought kept coming back. More than once, I considered simply calling the whole thing off. But each time, the adventure managed to pull me back in.”

In the end, the opportunity to see the country in deeper context won out over the concerns they felt. 

“For more than 30 years, this country has been reported on almost exclusively in the context of war. On the ground, however, we were able to experience a different reality as well. It’s hard to see what people there have to deal with and we only ever see the tip of the iceberg.”

The women who were stamping their passports on the way out of Tajikistan were among the last the group saw on their journey. In Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, women are banished from public life. The cyclists saw plenty of men and children, but no women. 

“It’s surreal to shake hands with people who are kind and polite to you because you are men, while at the same time women are being killed simply for being women,” adds Blindow. 

As the quartet continued their journey, they began to understand just how unusual of a sight they were in this country. 

Crowds would gather round them any time they stopped. The same questions in English would be repeated time and again. “Where are you from?” and “Where are you going?” are familiar refrains to bike tourers across the world, with Afghanistan no different. Perhaps less common globally, but frequently asked on their way to Wakhan: “Are you married?”

People were also fascinated by the bikes: “We spawned like aliens with this modern technic.”

Although they spent weeks beforehand, riding through Tajikistan, staying with nomadic Kyrgyz people, the Wakhan corridor was “the main mission” of this trip. On arriving there, Theo, Olf, Ruben and Alex experienced another transformation, one that threw their best-laid plans out the window. 

“Once we began in the Wakhan, it was really slow. Our timetable was completely impossible,” says Olf. 

“The roads were really bad: big rocks, sandy. Some sections where you just have to pull your bike,” adds Blindow.

“And then some days, the headwind was so strong that you can’t move. That was the flat parts. Once it started to get hilly, there were days where we had to make every step in two parts. First we’d carry the bike, then come back and collect the luggage.”

On the way back out of the Wakhan corridor, the riders were to experience one of the finest and most deeply-held traditions of the Wakhi culture. Indeed, the culture of this whole region.

“We took a wrong turn on the way down off the mountain pass. Then everything went bad; we had a little fight between each of us,” says Olf. “It was a really bad, intense situation. And then we took the wrong turn and we went the wrong way for two days. Eventually we realised there was no way through, we had run out of food and had a small amount of water left.”

The crew split up, with Theo and Ruben going in search of help and Olf and Alex staying to portage their bikes and kit up to a higher potential path. The pair left behind spent a night there, while the other returned a day later with two men, a couple of donkeys and armfuls of loaves of bread. 

While they were doubtless in a precarious place, there was never any doubt in Blindow’s mind that they would receive help from the people of the valley. 

“It’s part of the culture of these areas to help. In the mountains, you need to help each other.”

With the assistance of the porters (and their donkeys) the crew made it back down from the Wakhan corridor. They jumped into taxis to make the final dash to Kabul and flew home from there. Months in the planning, five weeks of riding and experiencing everything the region had to offer, and all of a sudden it was coming to a close. 

Back in Germany, the group experienced the post-adventure blues, a phenomenon common to many long-distance cyclists who’ve reached the end of their road. 

“I think for me [the biggest lesson] was the contrast to how we live here. And, for me, I just felt really, really privileged. I felt a really bad mood in the days after the trip. It was a hard time to get in this reflection. 

“Everything you hear about this country is about war: and now for me personally, there are people giving this place its character. I have a better feeling about this country, while at the same time you are more aware of the conditions they are living in. That they have a really tough life.”