Venturing Out

Twice already planned trips outside Kabul have been scratched, at least for me. On my second day in the office I was going to go to Helmand Province, where things are, as they say, "kinetic." But that was postponed for security reasons. A trip to Kandahar a couple of days later happened, but without me, for less exciting reasons. I had to cover a series of meetings and never had a chance to leave the main building. But on the third night we did go into real Kabul to a restaurant. Chaotic traffic, check; chaotic amalgamation of shops, check, though it wasn't easy to see what each sold by the scant lighting, even with the nearly full moon; road blocks by Afghan security forces, check. None of this made much of an impression on me. What did were the potholes. I've seen sinkholes that were smaller. I thought a couple of my teeth had come loose by the time we had gone there and back.
The restaurant itself was fine, nothing extraordinary in terms of food; its walls were lined with oil paintings and carpets for sale. I didn't buy any.
We'll try our luck with more visits - Helmand is back on for early next week.
Helmand - I'm no Afghanistan expert, but I'm pretty sure that's the place where they make all the mayonnaise.