Kabul’s presidential palace looking gloomy under a crisp winter’s day, January 2007
Chinese New Year 2007 saw Flashmen attempt to make up for the sequence of failures that had so lavishly accompanied the previous year’s travel efforts, with a driving holiday in Afghanistan.
“This highway of archangels,
this theatre of heaven,
the light garden of
the godforgiven angel king”
From the hills of Kabul
Starting at Dubai’s glamorous Terminal 2, Flashy flew into Kabul (bread roll and butter provided on board being requisitioned by central casting Afghan town chief in neighbouring seat) and pootled around for a few days, taking in this dusty city, covered in snow.
Sir Aurel Stein, the great Central Asian explorer, is buried in Kabul. in a cemetery underneath the battered Bala Hissar, or fort, scene of much contention during the periodical unpleasantnesses of nineteenth century British-Afghan relations.
Bala Hissar above, cemetery below. Kabul, 2007
Thence to Balkh, to the mosque only really ‘discovered’ by Bruce Chatwin in the 1960s, and around which one had to tread carefully (red painted stone marking areas not yet de-mined); up and over the Salang Pass (and tunnel) to Mazar-i-Sharif (‘noble shrine’) for buzkashi and a visit to the Blue Mosque, the shrine of Hazrat Ali.
The shrine of Hazrat Ali, known as the Blue Mosque (nod to Cambridge?), Mazar-i-Sharif, 2007
Flashy was potentially over-confident on driving conditions and possibilities in northern Afghanistan in winter and decided to cross the country back to Kabul to catch a flight in the afternoon. Predictably a snowstorm came in, meaning a frozen pause on the Salang Pass to fit chains. The flight out of Kabul International was made, however, with whole minutes to spare.
Flashmen 
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