AP Kabul

They wandered through the museum, listening attentively as their gui­de explained the antiquities in display cabinets. It could have been any tour group, anywhere in the world. But there was something unusual about this one.

The group of foreigners visiting the National Museum of Afghanistan was made up only of women. Its guide was a woman, too — one of the first Afghan female tour guides in a country whose Taliban rulers impose the severest restrictions on girls and women anywhere in the world.

Somaya Moniry, 24, hadn’t known tour guides existed, as a profession or even as a concept. But while browsing the internet for help on improving her English language skills, she stumbled upon Couchsurfing, an app where travelers connect with locals and stay in their homes. After hosting a traveller, “I became passionate about it and it was interesting for me,” Moniry said.

As she showed first visitor around her hometown in western Afghanistan, she saw a new side to her country. “The focus of people, focus of the media, focus of headlines, all were the negativity,” Moniry said. While there are problems in a place recovering from decades of war and cha­os, there is another side to the complex, stunning country.

One of the visitors is Australian Suzanne Sandral. At 82, she was part of Moniry’s women-only tour group in Kabul. Afghanistan surprised her. “It’s not what I expected at all. I expected to feel rather fearful. But wherever you go in the streets, if you smile at someone and give them a little nod or say hello, you get a terrific response. So it’s different.”

Jackie Birov, a 35-year-old independent traveller from Chicago who was not part of the tour group, called the Afghan people “unbelievably hospitable”. However, “I’m very aware that I have a lot more freedom than local women,” she said.