Taliban release ‘terrified’ Indian backpacker on her solo trip to Afghanistan

Arpan RaiWed, September 16, 2026 at 10:20 AM UTC

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An Indian content creator detained in Afghanistan for travelling alone as a woman in the hardline Islamic republic, was released after hours in Taliban custody.

Arunima IP, who has more than 1.2 million followers on her Instagram account and over 733,000 subscribers on YouTube, said on Monday she was detained by the Taliban as they do not allow women to travel alone in Afghanistan.

The Indian citizen from Palakkad city of the southern state of Kerala’s had embarked on “solo travel” to the war-battered nation around two weeks ago.

On Monday, her SOS message read: “Please help me connect to the Indian embassy”. Around 24 hours later, on Tuesday morning, she posted an Instagram update stating, “I am safe now”.

She has been posting daily YouTube videos of her travel to markets and remote villages in Afghanistan.

In one of her posts on Instagram, Ms Arunima said: “In Afghanistan, women are permitted to show only their eyes. I am able to show my face because I am a woman from another country; otherwise, I would have had to cover my face as well – though I still have to cover my head and body.”

A video shared last week by the content creator showed that she was stopped by armed gunmen claiming to be Taliban, who now control the government in the country.

“In Afghanistan, they question us at every single checkpoint like this,” she said in a video shared on her social media profiles. The men carrying rifles ask Ms Arunima for her documents and she is seen handing them her Indian passport.

She said people who stopped her on Monday could not read her travel documents and were advising her against travelling alone, insisting that she secure a special permit to cross the country’s various provinces.

“I spent several hours in tension that I felt I could have died. I was completely terrified. In the evening, I hitchhiked on a truck and reached Bamyan. 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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She is also seen travelling in the remote provinces of the country like Jalalabad and showing fully-covered Afghan women. She said people were stopping to look at her as they don’t see women outside at all.

She said she stopped at a roadside eatery where several armed local men came to question her.

“They are taking my photo,” she said.

“Now I feel like the main character.”

The content creator questioned why the Taliban gave her a visa despite knowing she was travelling alone and then detained her.

“According to their law, I had violated the rules. They told me that they were going to arrest me. Here, every Taliban member is like a police officer. They can do whatever they want. I asked them to deport me,” she said in her video.

“What was my crime? I had travelled alone as a woman in a country where women are not allowed to travel alone,” the content creator said.

She said she was waiting for her visa to travel to Iran but now will be leaving for Uzbekistan, which is 500km away. Ms Arunima said she was concerned about more checking and patrolling from the Taliban officials along the route.

The Taliban and the Indian embassy have not issued a comment on her case.

Most countries have advised citizens against travelling to Afghanistan as the situation is not conducive there. Most content creators have ignored the warnings to document their travel to one of the most restricted places in the world.

While restrictions are strictly enforced on Afghan women, they are generally more relaxed for foreigners.

Human rights experts and critics have in the past questioned the ethics of visiting Afghanistan for pleasure when its government discriminates so heavily against half the country’s population.

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Source: “AOL Breaking”