Before Joshua Boyle took his pregnant wife into Afghanistan on a backpacking trip he called a pilgrimage, a former Canadian diplomat and federal minister did it first.
Chris Alexander and his wife, Hedvig Christine, were living and working in Afghanistan in 2009. He was serving in the Canadian foreign service and she – also a diplomat -- was working on nation building in the war torn country.
The couple were preparing to head back to Canada and Christine was seven months pregnant but they wanted one last adventure in the region before coming home.
“We wanted to make the experience of leaving after such a long time special and memorable,” Alexander told Newstalk 580 CFRA's Evan Solomon on The Evan Solomon Show.
So Alexander and Christine embarked on a two-week roadtrip from Kabul to Moscow. The couple spent two days of the trip driving through Afghanistan.
"She was dead set on it so I felt as the husband of an amazing woman – and we’d just been married the year before and we’re having our first child—that I owed her this adventure if we could make it happen, and we did,” Alexander said.
Alexander says the expecting couple stayed out of areas where attacks had occurred and that their biggest obstacle was not the threat of terrorism or kidnapping, but an avalanche and resulting traffic affecting the region at the time.
Despite his positive experience, Alexander says nobody should go to these regions today as a tourist.
LISTEN NOW: WHO TAKES THEIR PREGNANT WIFE THROUGH WAR-TORN AFGHANISTAN?
Bell Media's Evan Solomon speaks with former diplomat and politician Chris Alexander about his trip through Afghanistan with his wife who was seven months pregnant
