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2022-04-08, 10:01 PM
(This post was last modified: 2022-04-09, 10:45 AM by netllama.
Edit Reason: use non-paywall link
)
Its been about 14 months since I spent time in Afghanistan, yet I still think of it often.
This article from a few days ago covers the infamous Salang Pass. The second from last photo that I shared in the first post was taken on the pass. That pass, and the road passing through it was absolutely insane at the time. From the article, it sounds like little and everything has changed in the intervening months.
For anyone interested in seeing more of my photos from the drive over Salang Pass, see the last row
here, and most of the photos
here. It includes a photo from inside one of the infamous tunnels.
While new problems have captured much of the world's attention, Afghanistan remains in a perilous state, politically and economically.
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Couldn't get past the NYT paywall to read the article but I'm glad you did not meet this rig halfway through the tunnel at 12,723 feet of elevation!
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Salang_Tunnel
Life begins in Death Valley
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When one travels a lot, as you do, netlama, one becomes more connected with the world. Places are no longer abstract, photos or names on a map, but locations that you have experienced first a hand. When those places show up in the news or commentary, it impacts you much more. It is a place you care about. I spent three months in Afghanistan, mostly is hard to reach places, in the 70s, and so I feel (and have felt) some of its pain over the last decades. As I spent 5 years wandering in my youth, I have many places which elicit such responses. I don't think that is a bad thing, right?
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(2022-04-09, 02:46 AM)DeathValleyDazed Wrote: Couldn't get past the NYT paywall to read the article but I'm glad you did not meet this rig halfway through the tunnel at 12,723 feet of elevation!
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Salang_Tunnel
Sorry, I updated the original post to use a non paywall version of the article:
https://archive.ph/b612k
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(2022-04-09, 06:57 AM)MojaveGeek Wrote: When one travels a lot, as you do, netlama, one becomes more connected with the world. Places are no longer abstract, photos or names on a map, but locations that you have experienced first a hand. When those places show up in the news or commentary, it impacts you much more. It is a place you care about. I spent three months in Afghanistan, mostly is hard to reach places, in the 70s, and so I feel (and have felt) some of its pain over the last decades. As I spent 5 years wandering in my youth, I have many places which elicit such responses. I don't think that is a bad thing, right?
Absolutely not a bad thing. Its just heart breaking when the places that I've visited experience misfortune.
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(2022-04-09, 10:47 AM)netllama Wrote: Absolutely not a bad thing. Its just heart breaking when the places that I've visited experience misfortune.
Agree. First time it really struck me was looking at a photo in National Geo (?) of a bombed out street scene in a western Uganda town. When I'd been there it had been a busy market street. This happens again, and again, and again.
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2022-08-15, 06:37 PM
(This post was last modified: 2022-08-16, 08:09 PM by netllama.)
Beating this not quite dead horse, because I feel it should not be forgotten, amongst the world's more recent tragedies...
This week marks the first anniversary since Afghanistan was recaptured by the Taliban. There are a decent smattering of reviews and think pieces circulating covering the topic. But one of the more in depth, thought provoking in all of the coverage in this past Sunday's NY Times Magazine, here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/08/magaz...istan.html
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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/08/magazine/taliban-afghanistan.html ]
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I had to twiddle with the text of that URL a bit to get the page, but I did find it. Not surprising at all, is it? Afghanistan is an enigma in the modern world. For a while it was coming out of that, though only in the urban areas. Now, it's not. Time will tell. Time moves slowly in Afghanistan. My own history there goes back 50 years. I wonder how much it has really changed? The guns are much more deadly now, and I really didn't interact with women, even back then. It was poor, but not starving, in the 70s.
