Aug 13, 2011
Flight: Kabul (KBL) to Bahrain (BAH), Gulf Air, 320, Economy
I had a much better sleep last night, sleeping from nearly 9PM through until 6AM. I spent awhile uploading my photos and had a quick cold shower before breakfast, which was a simple boiled egg and bread with tea. I met the owner of Afghan Tours, Muqim Jamshady. I had arranged the tour via email with him but hadn't met him yet. He surprised us when he said that our tour guide was actually his older brother; in fact the entire company was run by him and his brothers. They had big expansion plans, they were in the process of building a wing on the building which would hold their new offices, then convert the existing offices to more guestrooms, and add a rooftop restaurant. He also gave us two Afghan Tours shirts as a parting gift. They also have their own vehicle maintenance facility onsite, they had several armored SUVs.

We soon set off to go visit the TV mountain, which offers a great view out over Kabul. This was Saturday morning and traffic was much worse than it had been yesterday. It took about 40 minutes to drive the 7kms through town and up the hill, past the houses the cling to the side of the mountain. Several kids were here flying kites, that seems very popular here. We finally reached a stopping point.. the very top of the mountain is a military off-limits area. There was a ?? dirigible floating above the city, our guide mentioned it was for security, there was a camera onboard filming all the time. We headed back down the mountain then when we hit more traffic our driver turned us around and our guide took over driving.. he used to be a taxi driver during the Taliban period and knew all the back streets. There were a few schools nearby and we noticed many children on their way to class, including girls. During the Taliban all the girls' schools had been closed, so this was a positive development. We took the long way around TV mountain past the Intercontinental hotel and university before arriving at Darulaman Palace nearly an hour later.






The Darulaman Palace was a bombed-out ruin that was built in the 1920s. The area around the palace supposedly still has unexploded ordnance so our guide said not to walk up to the building. We got a few good shots before crossing the street to the Kabul museum. There was a rusted out locomotive at the entrance, the first (and last?) train in Afghanistan. A little further along was a shed holding armored Caddilacs that had definitely seen better times.. most of them had bullet impacts in the windows. We had to pay extra to use our cameras in the museum (400Afg). The museum held several Buddha statues (some had been smashed by the Taliban and reassembled), pottery fragments and photos of the Bactrian gold, a huge stash of Greek-period gold jewelry and artifacts that had been discovered in the 1960s.

After the museum, we headed towards Babur's gardens. Also taking a back road but still traffic took awhile. We noticed there were work teams cleaning the streets and gutters of garbage.. usually you don't see that in third world countries. We arrived at the gardens, but it would have been $12 to enter and we didn't have an even amount in $ or Afghans. We were also approaching the time to head to the airport, so we decided to go on to the bird market instead. I ended up just buying some postcards. The Babur Gardens were Mughal gardens, and would have been similar to the Shalamar gardens we had seen in Lahore anyway. The birly d market was our last stop before heading to the airport. Down a narrow alley, it was lined with cages holding all kinds of birds from the fighting partidges to parakeets and doves. A quick look and we were back in the car and heading to the airpo rt, where we arrived at 12:30. Our guard couldn't come in the airport area as weapons aren't allowed, we gave a small tip and said goodbye. Getting just to the terminal building involved several pat down searches (though no crotch-grabbing antics) and x-raying our bags, then we got on a shuttle bus and had to wait a few minutes before arriving at the terminal. Here there was another feel-up and bag x-ray. Checkin was very quick, and they tagged our bags all the way to Houston. We still had plenty of time and grabbed a couple cold drinks before going through immigration and security.


Kabul airport


Ariana Afghan airlines

We had a few hours to wait still, and our flight ended up departing an hour late. We finally took off and ended up circling over Kabul several times, gaining altitude and doing evasive manuvers. Our flight track led south, over Pakistan before turning southeast towards Iran.. mostly avoiding Afghan airspace apparently.

GF KBL-BAH meal