Inside Afghanistan - getting around

My work does not call for much traveling, so it is usually just staying put in Kabul. But in the last few years some work did come up which required travel to some other major cities in the country. Last month when the travel issue came up, it was the second time. My first visit out of Kabul was to Gardez, in early 2005. Gardez is the capital of the Paktia province and is just 70 miles south of Kabul. A colleague and I made this journey in a Ford SUV. We were armed with a Thuraya satellite phone to keep in touch with our office, in case our cell phones didn't pick up the signal. My colleague was a former Mujahideen soldier and the trip was peppered with stories about the war. There isn't a single Afghan without a life story to keep you engrossed and usually at the edge of your seat. (Pic below: Road to Gardez). The security situation has since then worsened in most parts of the country and Gardez is now out of bounds for expats.



Last month the travel was to the north and west of the country. These are relatively safer than the south and east. But again, road travel has almost become impossible now, though it would have been the best way to see more of the countryside. So flights were the only option. The main Afghan city in the Northern region is the pilgrimage city of Mazar-i-Sharif. The Hazrat Ali (Prophet Mohammad's son-in-law) mosque or the Blue Mosque is the most popular landmark here. There are some commerical flights operating between Kabul and the regional headquarter towns. But we couldn't manage a ticket on that. Finally we had to use a special flight which was available for NGO staff, a 14 seater Beechcraft. Another Afghan colleague accompanied me on the trip. The flight passenger list mailed to us mentioned 7 other people from another NGO taking the flight - 4 of them heading for Kandahar and a the 3 others to Mazar-i-Sharif. There was also some cargo that had to be dropped off at Herat. Though we wanted to get to Mazar-i-Sharif, the flight would be giving us a tour of the country. It had to fly Kabul - Kandahar - Herat - Mazar.




It would take only 40 minutes if it were to fly directly to Mazar from Kabul but now it would take almost 6 hours on the circuitous route. When we finally reached the airport we learnt that the party of 7 had cancelled their plans of traveling. So it was just the 2 of us and the cargo to be flown. So Kandahar was taken out of schedule and that saved us almost 3 hours. It was an interesting flight, James Bond style. The co-pilot gave us the normal safety advices and we set off feeling like we were flying in our private airplane. (Below: inside the beechcraft).



We did not have a confirmed transport to our next destination which was Herat. But during the 2 days in Mazar we managed to get tickets on a local airline to Herat. Herat is on the Western part of the country that borders Iran, and in the past was the literary centre of the country. It was said that if one even just stretched his legs in Herat then he could be sure to kick a poet. The city was that infested with literary giants. Now Herat is limping back into its former glory. On the trip to Herat, there was no place at the Mazar airport enclosure to seat all the passengers after the security check was complete. We were led to an area beside the tarmac to under a huge tree. We were to sit here and wait for our flight. The entire place was infested with monstor locusts. It was like the plague of locusts that God brought upon the Egyptians when the Pharoah denied Moses's plea to free the Israelite slaves. After what seemed an endless wait fighting away these creatures, we finally boarded the flight to Herat.




We spent another 3 days in Herat before we got back to Kabul.

Kabul-Delhi-Kabul

A quick family visit took me back to Delhi last fortnight. Every trip home drives home the fact that the grass is literally greener on the other side. Though many parts of Afghanistan are very green, what you see around you in Kabul is brown all over; treeless hills, dusty roads and mud houses. Though Delhi may not be as green as we would like it to be, it is enough to soothe parched eyes. Surpisingly though, as we move along some of the roads leading away from the Kabul city towards to Paghman mountainside there is lot of green, with beautiful chinar and pine trees lining the entire route.

Though the journey to Delhi was only one hour and forty minutes in the air, over land I had spent another 4 hours just getting into the flight. A bottle of olive oil seen in the x-ray machine was mistaken to be liquor and the bag was asked to be opened up. The combination lock wouldnt open at the opportune moment and a struggle ensued. In the resulting melee or elsewhere in the numerous searches, I lost my pair of glasses. The rest of the journey was uneventful. Compared to what a trip out or into Kabul involved earlier, this was a cakewalk. At Delhi, I sit in the pre-paid taxi and say "salaam aleikum" to the hindu taxi driver and he looks at me as if i've landed from space. I grin and make up for the faux pas by saying - "kya karen bhaiya aadat ho gayi hai". The 'aadat' doesn't end there. On numerous occassions much to the embarrassment of onlooking family members i've stood with right hand on chest and bowed head while greeting people or thanked somebody saying "ta-shakur". Thankfully I wasn't back from a trip among the Maasai tribe or I would be spitting on people in greeting or farewell.

The other thing that I thanked God for was for the freedom that we had in India. There is a kind of relaxed feel which failed to come to me in Afghanistan. Small things which went unnoticed before made you feel good - the shopping complexes, the bright colors, the neon lights, the bustling restaurants, boys and girls sitting around laughing and chatting, the noisy parks. Every now and then I would turn to my wife and say, "I wish we had our Afghan friends over to see this". When I see a bollywood movie now I can see it with the eyes of an Afghan and understand completely, why he would love it.

All good things seem to end quickly and so did the Delhi trip. A week went by in a matter of hours. So I said "Khudafiz" to everybody and headed back to duty-station.