Flowers at the Shrine

 Ok, so they're just flowers.  What you have to keep in mind is that this is a very arid and poor place, so it takes quite a bit of upkeep to keep these flowers watered and in bloom.  Nevertheless, the locals do it, because they want to keep the shrine area beautiful,

Goats in Khakrez

 This man lives in a mud house very near the shrine, and he keeps goats.  And they were very shaggy.  They kept in the shade as much as possible.

More from the Shrine

 From closer up.  We went walking "outside the wire," as they call it.  So we landed in the "strong point," a mini-base, about 150 yards or so from the shrine.  Then we walk to the gate, which is open, and one of the soldiers drags the barbed wire that is blocking the road off to one side, we walk past it and off we go up the hill toward the shrine.  That's outside the wire.  We spent about an hour walking around in the little town, and then walked back to the mini-base, the soldier dragged the barbed wire back into place, and we were back "inside the wire."  Unfortunately, I hadn't had coffee that morning, so I was not wired myself.

Khakrez Shrine

 It's called the Ziarat-e Shah mosque, though what you see here isn't really the mosque but rather the shrine, the burial place, itself.  It's pretty sparse.  We went there during the second day of Eid and there was practically no one else.  Believe it or not, this is a place for tourism within Afghanistan.  But nearly all the shops were closed because of the holiday, except for a handful selling nuts and candy and cheap plastic prayer beads.

Orchards

 Southwestern Afghanistan is extremely dry.  It's basically a desert, though it does have a thin river or two winding through it.  But the Afghans are exceptional at making the most of the scant water resources there, and nearly every time you see a patch of vegetation, you can bet that the green part is irrigated.  Here are orchards from a bit to the north of Kandahar city.  I couldn't have recognized the tree even at ground level, unless maybe it had fruit on it, so I sure couldn't tell from the air what they were.  This was maybe a couple of weeks after pomegranate harvest, though, so maybe many of these are pomegranate orchards.  There are probably some apple trees mixed in there as well.  At any rate, you can see the leaves have turned color, and the ruts and rows for regular vegetables and grains have long since been harvested.  It still is very hot in the daytime, in the 80s or so with a bright burning sun, but at night it dips into the low 40s, maybe even 30s F. 

Hueys

 Here are photos from the helicopter as we flew to Khakrez from Kandahar.  The mountains weren't very high and most of the time we were flying over fairly barren terrain.  It was about a 20-25 minute flight from the air field, once the mechanical difficulties were overcome.  We flew much, much lower on the way back; I assume there were safety reasons for the different tactics.  A bit before we landed in Khakrez the helicopters shot off flares to distract any possible incoming rockets.  When we flew from Khakrez into Kandahar city itself, we were skimming so low over the ground, maybe 400 feet, that you could see people's faces quite distinctly, and wave back to the kids who waved up to us.

From the Helicopter Pad

 We flew to Kandahar and then were supposed to take helicopters, tiny Hueys barely bigger than traffic helicopters, to Khakrez.  The three helicopters were lined up along the pad; we boarded, and we all took off, flying very low along the airport side runway, since it's important to avoid rising abruptly into the path of an F-16, a Blackhawk or a Warthog, all of which are significantly bigger than the Huey, as it lands or takes off.  Well, we had been skimming along the runway for about 45 seconds when we turned around, went back to the landing pad and disembarked.  Turns out the third helicopter had "a mechanical issue" that had made it rise about 20 feet off the ground and then come clunking down on the runway.  And Hueys don't have wheels; they have skids.  So it didn't land gently.  So they had to send a fourth helicopter to pick up the people from the third helo and then we did it all over again.  While we were waiting for them to take care of the third helicopter, we saw this bomb casing and cover to an outdoor grill, so I took a picture.  I don't like it when my flight is delayed because some jerk shows up at the last minute at the check-in gate.  I am miffed when the flight is delayed for weather in a distant city.  But I am always happy to wait out a flight if the aircraft in question has "a mechanical issue," because when I asked the pilot what, specifically, that issue might be, he replied, "It's fucked up and will crash if we try to fly it."