Castles, Pods, and Chicken Boti...

Oct 9 found me on the way to Frankfurt for a conference. I had to speak at the request of my boss, not a desire of my own, but I'm always up for a free trip to Germany. After 4 days of a boring conference I had a few days to kill before my flight to Afghanistan so I thought I would rent a car and go to Heidelberg to do some shopping. After an address mix up I ended up with a 72 Euro taxi fare and a super reduced rate on a Mercedes C-class rental. Shopping was fun, I even found some time to find a Geocache above the Heidelberg castle (in picture) before taking a long roundabout drive through the German countryside back to Frankfurt for my flight out.

To get to Afghanistan you can either take the UN Humanitarian Air Service flight in from Dubai, Tashkent, or Islamabad. I had a ticket for the flight in from Dubai on Sunday Oct 15, the flights are on Sundays and Wednesdays. I imagined the UNHAS flight to be on some dingy recycled aircraft, but to my surprise it was actually very nice. The flight even had stewardesses and fresh food! The flight in took us over Iran. Everything was smooth and normal coming into Kabul airport until you get out of the plane... there are no terminals so you climb out on the tarmac amongst a crowd of expediters/greeters there to meet each of the different groups on the plane, all surrounded by armed guards/military/special forces.

I found my contact and we made our way to the front of the airport and our armored Landcruiser parked next to signs saying "No tactical gear or weapons past this point," nevermind my cadre of armed guards completely decked out in their tactical gear. Guess the sign doesn't count for them. I put on my body armor and jumped in the Landcruiser and we were off into the city. It's a quick drive to the embassy and the living compound where I then spent the next four days. Living quarters are cramped, I was lucky to share a Pod with only one other smelly dude instead of sleeping in open bay barracks, ugh.

On the second day I was supposed to head down to the airport but about ten minutes before we were to leave a suicide bomber blew himself and his car up where we were supposed to drive by so the embassy was locked down the rest of the day. We made it out the next day, all that was left of the previous day's explosion was a huge crater causing a traffic jam. While in Kabul, I was able to see Vince Dreyer from our church ward in Virginia, he is stationed there with his Army Ranger detachment. My work was done on Wednesday so I hopped a UNHAS flight to Islamabad, Pakistan. I saw more of Kabul from the air than I did from the ground.

Islamabad is a great city, clean, well laid out, and the food was excellent. Food in Pakistan is a mix of the Middle East, Afghanistan, and India...lots of spice and flavor. I stayed in a guest house called Capital Grande which cost $32 per night and was really very nice. Dinner at the guest house cost between $3-5 and consisted of enough food to feed a family of four. I felt badly every night leaving so much food to waste, I wonder what the house staff thought...they average around $200 US per month for salary and here some scrawny young American comes and spends $5 US on every meal and only eats 1/3 at most. I tried over and over to get them to produce less food for the same amount of money, they laughed at me...oh well. The best meal they made was Chicken Boti, it looked really quite boring but the mix of spices was amazing, I ordered it so many times that the cook started suggesting other things to try. I tried their suggestions to be nice, but still ordered some Boti on the side...I loved this country, not usually fond of these places but the people are really nice, food is wonderful, and culture quite rich... if it wasn't for all the danger of getting blown up, kidnapped, and beheaded.

I hiked into the mountains above Ibad on one afternoon, a place called Pir Sowha, beautiful mountains. The guide book said they are home to jaguar, monkeys, bears, and a host of other exotic animals. I saw some big monkeys and some parrots. I also found a Geocache at the very top of one of the peaks, it took about 3 hours to find and was surrounded by a pack of wild goats and some disheveled Pakistani soldiers camping out. Work took up most of my time while there so I didn't get to see as much as I would have liked, but I did get down to Karachi and Lahore. Very different places. Karachi is just dangerous, Lahore, on the other hand, was pleasant, with a completely different type of lifestyle and cuisine.

It was a fun trip, but it's always nice to get home. ~ Zachariah