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The patio of the one-floor ranch house was packed. Smoke driftedfrom the grill and everyone seemed to have a red Solo cup in his orher hand. Were it not for the babel of languages and high wallstopped with barbwire, it could have been a weekend BBQ anywhere inthe world. But this was Kabul, and the voices were those of aidworkers, security contractors and journalists. They only died downwhen one of the guests began talking about hitchhiking to Khost. A heated debate erupted between the Dutch tourist who uttered theremark and an aid worker who basically called the traveler crazy.With a mix of anger and shock in his voice, the aid worker tried toexplain that Khost — in the heartland of the dreaded Haqqaninetwork, the group that carried out the recent wave of coordinatedattacks in Kabul — is a war zone and not somewhere to wanderaround with no plan. "They'll shoot you," he said. To which theDutch traveler replied, "Why would [the Taliban] waste a bullet onme?" The Dutchman had gone to Afghanistan through couchsurfing.org,social media's answer to corporate travel sites. If you do not seeyourself as a tourist, want to live like a local for a while orsimply do not have the cash for a hotel, then couch surfing is theway to go. The website puts a face on a place by allowing travelersand hosts to set up profiles and swap messages about travelarrangements. Visiting Moscow and looking to meet up with a localfor a cappuccino and a chat? Hitting up Rio for Mardi Gras and needa free place to crash? These are the normal exchanges — andthey usually result in staying at a person's house. But when itcomes to couch surfing in Afghanistan, "usual" is out the window. The question is: Who would want to live like a local when local is Afghanistan? Of the more than 4 million "couch surfers" on thesite representing 251 countries and territories and 366 languages,the answer is, at the moment, around 381. That is the number ofpeople who are members of the Afghanistan group on the CouchSurfing site. As the website continues to grow, it has expandedinto stranger and stranger travel destinations: Afghanistan hasbecome one of these, representing what could be described asextreme couch surfing, with tourists with no experience of combatzones staying with hosts whose profiles are as likely to feature"armed guards" or "razor wire" (apart from the more usual caveatsof "no dogs" or "foldout couch"). Of those 381, few will actually make it — for good reason."I'm on the Afghanistan couch-surfing forum because I was thinkingof going to Afghanistan this summer, but due to recent events, itdoesn't seem like a good idea for a solo white woman to go now,"says Elisabet Sole, a Spanish member. But some still go —drawn by the beauty of the Hindu Kush mountains, the destroyedBuddhas of Bamiyan, natural wonders like the Band-e Amir lakes andthe remote Wakhan Corridor. Others are drawn by quasi-philosophicalcravings, want to find the truth behind the news, are attracted tothe danger or simply want to prove their own courage. Still, couch surfing in Afghanistan cannot be considered a 2.0version of the hippie trail of the 1960s and '70s. Today, fightinghas dragged much of the country's population to the depths ofpoverty and despair. A U.N. report released in February said that3,021 civilians were killed in 2011, representing an 8% increasefrom '10. This is the fifth consecutive year that the number ofdeaths has increased. The country is routinely ranked as one of themost dangerous in the world for violent death. The past months havenot been kind: a bombing in December left scores dead at areligious ceremony in central Kabul, and the burning of Korans andthe massacre of civilians in Kandahar has strained relationsbetween Westerners and locals to the breaking point. (MORE: Three Days in Afghanistan: The Making of a War Reporter) Years ago, the first time this correspondent looked at theAfghanistan Lonely Planet guide's "When to Go" section, the advice was blunt: "Never."Today, that's changed little. The latest edition's section on"Getting In" to Afghanistan from Pakistan advises: "Before leavingPeshawar you must go to the Khyber Political Agent [Stadium Road]to collect your gunman. Without him you'll be turned back at thefirst checkpoint. There's plenty to see as you drive through theKhyber." Though a tourist brochure that featured words like firefight , land mine , bad roads , poverty , kidnapping and insurgency would deter your average traveler, the couch surfers who do makeit are not your average travelers. They are the ones that haveLibya, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Syria, North Korea and Colombia listed asplaces they want to go to next on their Couch Surfing profilepages. "My first day in Kabul was September 13 [of 2011]. I was walkingpast Massoud Circle, around the corner and east of the U.S.embassy, when an Afghan man came up to me and said something thatsounded urgent, but that I didn't understand," says a couch surferfrom Alaska, who did not want to give his name because he did notwant his family to know he had gone to Afghanistan. "Moments laterI heard a small blast, followed by a huge explosion and thenautomatic gunfire as militants began an attack on the embassy andother targets in Wazir [Akbar Khan, a heavily fortifiedneighborhood of Western embassies and NATO bases]. I had to run forcover. If I had walked a few minutes more in the direction I wasgoing, I would have been in a world of trouble," he tells TIME. "Iwas petrified, mostly about the idea of abduction. After gettingcaught up in the attack in Kabul, in what was supposed to be one ofthe most secure areas of the country, I worried more about gettinginjured or killed." But, he adds, "Kabul was Kabul — how coulda tourist not be fascinated by the real thing? It's like theanti-Paris of tourism." (MORE: Inside the Kabul Firefight: Can Afghanistan Take On theTaliban Alone?) Most, however, have more prosaic experiences. "I wanted to talk topeople and hang out with them, get a sense of what it's like to bean Afghan," Tashi Bucinel, a European couch surfer, tells TIME. "Iwas scared the first couple of days. I wasn't sure what to expectand I didn't know how trustworthy the people are, so I was veryapprehensive." On her first morning in Kabul, she decided to walkto meet the Dutch couch surfer. "When I was walking down thestreet, I was looking at the people around me and my heart wasbeating fast. I thought of the warnings I'd heard before like,'Don't walk, take a taxi' or 'You never know who is a potentialsuicide bomber,' and regretted not taking a taxi. I saw everybearded man in a shalwar kameez [men's traditional clothing] as a suicide attacker and was justwaiting to hear a bomb blast somewhere. I was so scared!" After a few days, she wrote in an e-mail to TIME, she began torelax. "I was still apprehensive, but less scared than the firstday. I realized how friendly the locals are and that they areactually very honest and trustworthy people. After a few days Ilost my initial fear and felt like I was in any normal city inCentral Asia." In the end, she says there was not much to do inKabul — partially a result of more than three decades of war— and she ended up visiting a few tourist sites nearby andhanging out with some foreign workers. "Kabul is generally prettyboring. There's not much to do. I was lucky to have met wonderfulpeople, whom I had a lot of fun with. We spent many fun afternoonsand evenings together, but if it wasn't for them, I'd be prettybored I guess." Still, Bucinel's experience "outside the wire" — as NATOsoldiers call leaving a secured compound — is more interactionwith Afghanistan and its people than most foreign governmentemployees, soldiers and many aid workers will ever have. Most willremain hidden and safe behind their blast walls and barbwire duringtheir time in Afghanistan, impeding their ability to understandlife in the country and to effectively aid its development. At thesame time, it is hard to say what the benefit of Bucinel'sexperience is: since she is not in Afghanistan to work, is shesimply a goodwill ambassador? Indeed, when an Indian couch surfer wrote on the Afghanistan CouchSurfing forum that "I want to come to Afghanistan and I want to seethe war-affected areas. Which areas should I visit and what is theperfect time to come?" a storm of incredulous replies shouted himdown, including one surfer who wrote, "I can't believe what I amreading ... traveling to war affected areas??? Do you think it'sfunny? Do you want to prove how brave you are? I think it's verydisrespectful toward people who suffer under such conditions! Shameon you!" Couch surfers will have to begin questioning the wisdom of visitingAfghanistan as security worsens in parallel to the drawdown of U.S.and NATO troops that will be completed in 2014. But, for now, manywill continue coming to pursue their own particular brand oftourism. "I guess the principle of couch surfing is the samewherever you go. It has to do with trust, and trust always, andeverywhere, contains risk," says an Austrian hostess who spoke oncondition of anonymity because her organization did not give herpermission to speak. "And, if we finally give up on trust, thenconflict, war and distrust have already won." PHOTOS: TIME's Pictures of the Week. PHOTOS: Cartoons of the Week. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as China Bearing housing , Turbo Parts Manufacturer, and more. For more , please visit Repair kits today!
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