EXPLORING AFGHANISTAN'S ABANDONED JEWISH SITES (Herat Travel Vlog)

hello so we have just arrived in hayat the journey continues yeah thank you so much for coming along okay so we just left herrata airport and we're walking towards the car i guess the airport looks much newer than couple airports yeah this is this is and um it seems almost like security's tighter i see a lot of a lot of soldiers like in the terminal there weren't so many income in kabul it's like they're outside yeah here they're inside interesting okay it's all good i'm glad that you know they take security seriously i appreciate it they have the most dangerous job these guys okay so we just got to the hotel i'm exhausted i need to eat supper and get to sleep um this place is not bad it's a huge huge huge hotel and the rooms all overlook this big lobby check it out the hotel is practically empty there's almost nobody here which just tells you like how sad it is that this this really nice country with a lot of great people is just uh you know people are afraid to come and i understand them perfectly so you got these huge hotels that are empty anyway i'm going to get some work and get some sleep done so it's morning in herat i got up pretty early today about 2 30 or 3 am because i went to sleep pretty early did some work now i dab in chakras i prayed the morning prayers and now i'm having a calabasa wrapped in tortillas and then we're going to hit the streets and go see some jewish places so this hotel is really gigantic actually um we're just getting ready to leave and go on to herat this place is huge it's unfortunate that there aren't many guests here but perhaps the situation will get better and it will improve would never have thought that they have such big hotels here afghanistan is full of surprises let's check out this is the huge huge huge like bomb proof door over here and when you get dropped off at the hotel the car coming through this door it's basically like when someone gets dropped off at the hotel they have to first come in through the first set of doors that leads from the street to here and then through the metal detector into the next set of doors over there hello the streets [Music] do [Music] so we've just arrived to the blue mosque here in iraq and i don't know much about it but it's definitely a very beautiful building and it was built with many many thousands of tiles many different colors and a real work of art hello just very quickly we're in a tile factory and uh these are the ovens which cook the tiles at 900 degrees check out the stairs there are the tiles in the oven the oven's not on now but when it is it's 900 degrees and this is how they make tiles for the mosque [Music] what's interesting is they told me that every tile on the ground is actually the correct size for one person to pray on the tile so let me show you see these tiles each one is supposed to hold one person so it gives each person their private space and apparently across the entire mosque there is room for a total of 5 000 people to be praying at the same time so that's quite big so we're walking through this old woodworking area and we are soon going to be approaching the old jewish sites of herod [Applause] i am [Music] this way we're just walking through this area all the houses and buildings are made out of mud brick and it looks really really old how old is the area this area is like the very uh it's it's it's quite old it's the original part of herat you can see the walls and the traditional houses so what are we talking about a thousand years 500 years probably a thousand years wow unbelievable you guys are such an awesome country [Music] breaking is normally done after the 2001 like this house is built after 2001 but these are these are the original traditional houses the the mud the mud walls yeah but unfortunately this culture is dying day by day so we are right now approaching the ua synagogue which is who knows how old thank you thank you so much okay so we're about to enter the uof synagogue which is a really old synagogue here in afghanistan we go downstairs or upstairs downstairs okay let's do this i believe this is the synagogue in the background and we are going to go inside soon so this is in the basement of the you all synagogue in herat afghanistan and you're looking at the room which houses the mikvah the jewish ritual bath take a look down there this is where it is there's a little bit of water left not too much but uh i guess the water comes in from the rain from up here [Music] okay so this is the passageway that leads out of the mikvah area but it's unbelievable that we're here seeing these old synagogues that have not been used in many years really really special thank you thank you okay so this is where the people would put their shoes as it's customary in uh these parts of the world that when people pray they put their shoes away okay wow check it out you are synagogue herrat afghanistan unbelievable this is yeah this is uh where the arc was the iron kurdish yes [Music] so [Music] we're going back to the car now hopefully now we'll be able to go to the old jewish cemetery then we need to get some juice and some souvenirs and we're ready to go back to kabul [Music] do [Music] so this graveyard is not mixed this this is not only belongs to jewish it's uh it's mixed okay there's many people from iraq do you know where the jewish area is here i cannot find a single sign of any jewish lettering or identity over here but they say this is the spot so who am i to argue anyhow that wraps up pretty much everything we have to do in herat now it's time to get some juice and souvenirs okay so basically we uh we had a very hard time finding the cemetery but eventually we demanded to find the jewish one we went inside i started filming right away but then the man who lives there came out and said that it's his property he doesn't allow people to film so we just have to walk around and see it without filming but we did manage to get a couple couple photos quietly here are some of the photos that we took secretly we're in a juice house here in herat and we're about to get some fresh squeezed orange juice i am super excited and it's all kosher so that's awesome so we had an amazing time in herat everything worked out wonderful thanks to noor's amazing planning and now we're headed back to kabul so we just arrived at herrat airport and hopefully we'll be on time for our flight and get back to kabul easily and quickly you