Hitchhiker's Guide To The Taliban

From being locked in a cell to feeding the Taliban banana chips, Maheen S. has left no stone unturned in Afghanistan

- Rahul Devulapalli

In a spacious room with an intricately patterned ceiling recline four or five armed members of the Taliban. They might be ruling Afghanistan with an iron hand, but right now they are relaxed and ready to try a Kerala snack—banana chips. YouTuber Maheen S. from Kerala passes around a bowl. The men take a chip each, taste it and grin widely. They all give it a thumbs-up. The chips have passed the test, and so has Maheen.

Maheen’s video of him feeding the Taliban banana chips has clocked more than nine lakh views; it is one of his most popular ones. “Wherever I go, I promote Kerala,” he says. “Most of the people outside India only know about bigger cities like Mumbai. So I explain to them the culture and people of Kerala.” He is a college dropout, and his YouTube channel, ‘Hitchhiking Nomad’, has over five lakh subscribers. Maheen got hooked to travelling after reading travelogues as a child. Now 22, he has been hitting the road for three years. In school, he would take KSRTC buses to places that caught his fancy. Today, he has progressed to hitching rides in cars and trucks in foreign countries like Nepal, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. And now, Afghanistan.

“I always wanted to visit Afghanistan and west Africa,” says Maheen, who has always been attracted to conflict zones. “I thought I would be proud of having visited them when I looked back at the age of 40 or 50.”