Driving Through Kabul

Here are a few photos I took today.  It was clear afternoon and I could easily see the snow covered mountains of the Hindu Kush range.  These mountains ring Kabul and the area is frequently subject to minor earthquakes and on occasion stronger more devastating quakes.  As you can see in some of these photos not much steel goes into construction here and when walls shake roofs collapse.  My colleagues tell me that its not always easy to see Kabul because of all the smog.  The breeze was just right today and it blew all the smoke and dust away. This is the view from my camp.

I took these photos from a moving vehicle so some of them might have been a bit shaky.

 

This last photo was taken closer to the center of Kabul.  The roads are better and traffic gets very heavy at all times of day.  Driving in Kabul is not for amateurs and the rules of the road are interpreted liberally.  There are no traffic lights that I've seen, just round-abouts and uncontrolled intersections.  Yet everybody seems to understand the flow and people get where they're going.  I feel bad for one of my colleagues on my deployment....he was assigned to mentor the Traffic Section.  He's got his work cut out for him.

Thanks for checking in.

Ken.