The World - One Chicken at a Time

Hi All,

Yes I know this is incredibly late. [ about four months really, but that's applied laziness for you! ] OK, I know I have a poor record for writing my "Homeward Bound" postings and this is no exception! When the wheels start rolling to bring me home, I get caught up in the excitement and just hang on.

Also, it's rarely as exciting as the adrenaline rush of going somewhere, so homeward bound postings get neglected. This time I'm on my way to my next adventure, so I have to finish the "No Sleep Till Kabul" postings first!

Sorry.

On with the story - as you remember, we had been in Kabul, working at the Kabul International Airport, working ridiculous hours, staying at the Park Palace Hotel.

How do I describe our last day in Kabul?  Well, we have a late start today. No "O-dark-hundred" wake ups for us. No! We start work at 1030 today (bear in mind that when I say "today", I'm travelling back in time 4 months. Erk!). What joy!

We get ourselves to the airport, with crew, luggage, equipment and (Thank-you Park Palace Hotel) lunch. Made at the last minute by the miracle-working kitchen.

Richard and I test the final navigational aid in a fast, smoothly coordinated, dusty effort; Watching Blackhawks, chinooks,C130 Hercules, MI-8 heli's and many other aircraft take off or land in between our aircraft passes. The Chinooks are just amazing. Noisy and huge. A plane spotters dream day.

Our departure is pretty uneventful - we slip through customs with barely a glance and have a normal take off - I guess that says that Kabul is a lot safer than the southern airports. We land in Fujairah and decide to drive north up the coast to see if we can find a nice place to stay. There has got to be some reward for working like slave and we've earned it.

JAL Fujairah Resort outside the small town of Dibba is where we end up. The place is a palace. It must be a 5 star [It turns out to be!]. Beautiful. Good for a couple of days for me! We soak up the swimming pool, Tiger Beers, huge included breakfasts, sun drenched Arabian sea beach and sumptuous rooms like depleted vampires. I drive into town and grab some Shawarmas and eat them, with chips and 7-up, in the bath, watching TV. Bliss. I'll get the Tiger Beers tomorrow! [I know you're thinking I'm a slob now!]

To quote from JAL Fujairah Resort website:

Hotel JAL Fujairah Resort & Spa delivers unparalleled level of guest service and individual attention for the discerning international traveler. Located just 90 minutes from the dynamic city of Dubai, between the Hajjar Mountains and the ocean, and only 40 minutes from Fujairah city. Set on more than 500 meters of private beach, all guest rooms and suites are spacious, and offer uninterrupted views over the azure waters of the ocean.

So now you know.

I am officially a discerning international traveler. Fwoar crikey!

My room is soooo good! I usually stay in backpackers or guest houses if I'm on my own, but after dusty Kabul, with no exploring, I need something more and this is it! Tasteful luxury.

 The travel home is pretty uneventful excluding a day in Singapore, between flights (which I recommend to anyone) so I'll just mention a couple of minor snippets:

If you go to the UAE, get out of Dubai, have a look around the place. I drove through the desert between Dubai and Fujairah a few times, a distance of about 90kms or so, through desert and the mountains. I was fascinated by the desert each time. I stopped at dusk and went for a walk, barefoot though the dunes. The fine, orange sand was soft and, like the Saharan sand, perfectly dry. I didn't have to go far before I couldn't hear the highway and I felt completely isolated in the silence. Very zen. Dubai is just a city but outside the city is wild, harsh and a complete contrast. Easy to drive through, but worth the minor delay to have a closer look.

One night in Kabul, we drank a few beers in a restaurant (as you do), ate our delicious meal, drank some more and then feeling the pressure, head out to the toilets, all seemed above-board so I lined up at the urinal and midway through my assault, I noticed that my sneakers feel warm. And wet. My consciousness drags itself reluctantly back to the surface through too many beers. Ahhh yes, despite my aim being true I was struck by the curse of the urinal with a disconnected outflow. GRRR. Quite funny looking back at it four months later, not quite so at the time.

Enough said, I think!

Take care out there and watch out for the next installment ins a couple of days.

Cheers,

Dale/BoriS

The Park Palace hotel is really nice.

Well, I think so. It's nicer than the places I usually book for myself when I travel. Single bed, TV, desk, my own toilet and shower, internet and most importantly: it is CLEAN! The layout of the hotel itself is something different:

If you can imagine a 2 storey square building with a large garden in the middle and a small single storey building in the middle of the garden. The entrance to the hotel is through sliding steel door, wide enough to easily get a van through, then a garage sized room, where the vehicles or people entering are searched for bombs and weapons and before being allowed through another sliding door into the centre space. Both the inside and outside doors have sandbagged security positions, with armed guards.

The hotel also has a "safe haven" a large, secure room, stocked with food and water, able to be locked against attackers to guard against attack and possible hostage taking. A good place to have your trusty sudoku book and a pen.

You would think that a hotel meeting UN security regulations for workers would be fairly grim; instead it is the opposite. The centre garden area has a lush lawn and beds of flowering roses all beautifully kept. It's peaceful and in itself a haven against the dusty, noisy, hustle and bustle of Kabul city outside.

We head out to dinner with Mike, an Australian, and Kenny, a Scot, working in Kabul. Mike has recommended the Zadar restaurant - Croatian food! We knock back a few beers and swap war stories as we eat. Fantastic food. The owner Saska is really hard-case, with a heart of gold. We book to come back the next night - that must definitely be a recommendation! If you are ever in Kabul, you won't go wrong at Zadar. Thanks Saska! [Article http://aunohita.blogspot.com/2008/04/weneews.html ]

Sadly, we have to leave and get some sleep. Unfortunately, only about 4 hours sleep. We are working long days here! Our first day starts at 03:00am, so we can start flying at the airport at 04:00am --Kabul International is a busy airport with around 250 flights on a quiet day and up to 350 flights when it gets busy. Ker-rikey!

We work a long day on the airfield, finishing work, dusty, dry, sweaty and exhausted around 6:30pm, quickly shower and head back to Zadar with the aircrew for a couple of well deserved beers and some more delicious food. Another great night.

When we travel around Kabul we use a company, recommended by Mike: Afghan Logistics (website http://www.afghanlogisticstours.com/) . They provide many services, but their taxi service is great - English speaking drivers and call centre. You book via cell phone and they call as they arrive (Kabul isn't a good place for foreigners to loiter on the streets). They aren't too expensive around US$15- per trip but are a much better way of getting around than the standard Afghan yellow taxi. Apparently plenty of people who have got into these yellow taxis have just disappeared. Important safety tip noted. The culprits? Taliban and their supporters or criminal gangs.

Take care out there,
Cheers,
Dale/BoriS

Here we are, flying the friendly skies again; We flew out of Fujairah at 05:30am , a bit rough because for some reason we still had to get up at 02:45am to get to the airport to wait to leave.

We are in another Antonov - and AN-26 this time. It is the shape as the others we have used but is a cargo model. That means it has no seats (apart from 2 installed especially for Richard and I - no seatbelts though!) and it also has big doors that open up below the tail to load pallets of cargo with a forklift. Actually we have 2 big fibreglass water tanks, a half pallet of orange Fanta and among other things mail for some of the defence forces serving in Afghanistan. There isn't too much spare room in the back for us. We christen the aircraft "Anna" - we are struggling to come up with Russian women's names after Gertrudeski and Olga, our last 2 Antonovs.

We flew out over the Gulf of Oman, over Pakistan/Iran and into Afghanistan. What a spectacular landscape(s)! It ranges from dunes and soft sand to gravel plains and dust to jagged mountain ranges to wide mountain plains and plateaus (or is that plateaux?)

It is spring in Afghanistan right now, which means that snow is largely melted, the weather is warmer (temps ranging from mid twenties at night to mid thirties -degreesC- during the day - just nice.), there is a touch of a green tinge to large parts of the plains and water flowing in the rivers and streams. Quite pretty at times.

The sheer ruggedness and isolation of these mountains is made even more extreme seeing tiny villages, some with 6 or 8 houses clustered in tiny sheltered valleys. All in an ongoing panorama of dry, jagged, rocky mountain ranges. These people are obviously tough!

We land in Tarin Kowt first of all, to drop off the cargo. We have a roller coaster, tactical approach and landing: low, fast with lots of turns and bumps, followed by an impossibly tight turn in and a firm but exhilarating landing. I mentally do a "high-fives-all-round" to celebrate surviving another wild landing. Some Aussies soldiers turn up and make short work of unloading Anna. The airport is my first view of Afghanistan from the ground. Dusty, dry, Spartan and khaki sum it up pretty well. There is plenty happening - troops -local and foreign- racing around in trucks, four wheel drives and even one on quad bike. Everybody is armed.

Serious stuff - this is the south of Afghanistan, rather dangerous and still plenty of fighting going on in this area. I have had a bit of advice from a mate who has been here recently who warned me to keep my eyes open for trouble. It makes me a little nervous about what we have got ourselves into. I send a few texts to let a few people know that safe so far. It is cool though being somewhere like this, off on another adventure. God knows what Kabul is like, I have read blogs saying that Kabul is safe and there is no danger, as well as the exact opposite. I'm excited to find out either way.

We have a tactical take-off, again, low, fast - the wheels are up just after we get off the ground, to go faster, I guess- and we're over the airport perimeter, turning, turning, turning. YEEEEEHAAAAAA!! It's not nice knowing that this is to avoid ground fire of SAMs (Surface to Air Missiles). That said, roller coasters have nothing compared to take-off's and landings like this. They are scary but safe.

The next stop is Kandahar to refuel before the last leg to Kabul. Same tactical landing as before. YEEEEHAAAAA! again Kandahar airport doesn't look like much fun; very heavily fortified, barbed wire and earth filled walls are the order of the day. We don;t stay too long - enough time for photos and the fuel then off for another one of those take-offs. Woo-Hoo!

Kabul is another hour and a half from Kandahar and the landscape is less mountainous and more vast flat plains, surrounded by mountains. There are quite a few larger villages and town and a pretty patchwork of fields looking like dusty camouflage patterns. The landing is a normal approach, a sign that things are much quieter here than in the south. Kabul city itself is a vast, sprawling patchwork of mud coloured buildings, surrounded by more mountains and covering a few hills and valleys. It looks ancient. I mean it looks modern-ish, but its big enough and laid out like an old city. Most of the buildings are single storey walled houses with courtyards, build in blocks with a few larger multi-storey apartment buildings.

It's great to get out of the plane and breath some nice warm, dry air again. The air has a dusty feel to it-we later find out that the amount of dust here is so high that after a few days everyone, even locals, have "Kabul cough". It starts out with coughing, running nose and eyes and progresses to infected nasal passages for a few days and then settles down to a persistent little cough. The dust is so fine, you can't feel it until a reasonable amount has settled on something, but it gets in everywhere. We are told that apparently 0.35% of the dust is "of human origin" -meaning poo.

Yuck.

I can feel the dust building up in my nose, drying and stuffing it up. Good one.

After a few meetings and meeting the local officials and engineers we catch a taxi to our hotel. The Park Palace hotel.

I'll tell you about the Pak Palace Hotel next time,

Cheers,
Dale/BoriS