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Afghan reading list

This is a selection of books I'm taking to Afghanistan, apart from the excellent The Afghan Connection by George Pottinger (which I will read again and again), I haven't read any of them.

First (from top to bottom) is Afghanistan by Lonely Planet. This slim little edition printed in 2007 proves once and for all that parts of Afghanistan are reasonably safe: if the good people over at LP publish a traveller's guide about it, it must be. Best bits are pieces about shopping, eating, and yes - drinking - in Kabul itself.

George Pottinger is a direct descendant of Major Eldred Pottinger, the  legendary "Hero of Herat". Eldred Pottinger was a young Ulsterman who joined the Bombay Artillery as a subaltern, travelled disguised as an Afghan tribesman to Herat where, almost singlehandedly, he organised the city defences and fought off a huge Russian-backed Persian army in a brutal siege that lasted one whole year. Pottinger also was one of the hostages held in Kabul during the catastrophic Retreat from Kabul, during the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1842. This book is an understated little gem and a must for anyone remotely interested in Afghanistan, it is also decorated with fine period sketches and maps, giving you a real feel of those tempestuous and ultimately, for the British anyway, traumatic times.

Third on the list is Dust of the Saints by Radek Sikorski. Sikorski travels to Herat in 1987, where severe fighting between the Red Army and the Mujahideen fighters had virtually levelled the ancient city. This should be a great companion piece to Pottinger's book, and will I'm sure give further proof that in Afghanistan history has a horrible way of repeating itself.

Cabool by Sir Alexander 'Bokhara' Burnes, is a snapshot of Kabul under British rule just before they were annihilated in 1842. Scotsman "Sekundar" Burnes was, by all accounts, a philanderer and rogue and paid the ultimate price in the 1842 uprising when he was caught trying to hide in the Afghan mob disguised; he was then beaten and beheaded, his head stuck on a pike and paraded in front of the terrified British garrison. Should be a good read.

Afghanistan: A Companion and Guide is a huge guidebook, it's so large and heavy you'd need another backpack to carry it around Kabul. It is packed full of information though on the history and culture of Afghanistan, and it was first published in 2005 although the book's artwork looks as though it dates from the 1980's. I may leave it at home and attempt to bring it out on my second trip out - I would have to book an extra seat for the bloody thing too - honestly, it's that big and unwieldly.

Last in the pile is John Parker's The Gurkhas. Not strictly about Afghanistan per se, but these tough little Nepali soldiers have been in and out of Afghanistan many times during the United Kingdom's great expeditional follies there down through the years, so they are well suited to the rugged altitudes of the Afghan deserts.

So, if I have a lot of time on my hands I have plenty to read during the long nights in Kabul, any suggestions for reading material on any subject would be appreciated. Thanks.

Afghanistan Awaits

I'm flying to Kabul in the next few days, and if all goes well I should be working there on and off for a long time to come. I've been sat twiddling my thumbs at home for a long time now, it's good to actually be going back to honest employment.

The nature of my job dictates that I can't and won't say a lot about it on the blog, but I still can report on what I see and hear away from my work, hopefully I will get a chance to see much of this supposedly beautiful country. I will post as many pictures as security and safety dictates.

I've been meaning to visit Afghanistan for a very long time now, it was one of the countries I wanted to include in a possible trek along the ancient Silk Road, having already travelled the length of China from Shanghai to Kashgar by bus and train, but now I'm going not as a traveller but an expat worker. It is still exciting though and should be a great experience. Watch this space.

A Tale of Two Parades

Phew! It's been a while since I last posted on here! Many things have happened since returning from our around the world trip. First off V and I and Big J visited Northern Ireland, where the two limeys got to see their first Glorious Twelth parade in Ballymena. It was a funny drunken day, and we met a few nutters that I grew up with, including this one:

We also visited Giant's Causeway on the north Antim coast, and it was a glorious summer day. Not often you can say that about Northern Ireland.

Back to England for August and V and I rented a new flat in Brighton, right next to Preston Park. The Brighton Gay Pride parade literally marched past our front window, and we got a load of beers in, watched the parade then went to the park which was heaving with people. These photos are great.

As for the future - V and I are living back at her Mum's house for a while. We're both out of work, although I've been doing a few security jobs here and there. I'm  waiting on word for a security job in Uganda/DRC in Africa, but I'm not sure if it will happen at all. As for adventure and travel - who knows what 2008 will bring. If it happens it will be detailed here, Insh'allah.

All the best and Good Luck for '08

The Monumental and the Chocolate Box

This is the last day of our big trip, and we are finishing off in style. Yesterday I visited El Monumental (the Monumental), River Plate's home ground in the Nuñez district of Buenos Aires. I was lucky getting there for 2pm, as there was a guided tour of the stadium just starting. Jorge, our guide, strapped on his megaphone and we were off on our walk down River's past and present, all in Spanish and costing ARG$3.

Jorge guided us around the stands, the Salon de Honor executive box, the trophy room and the press box, where I got the chance to play manager in front of the microphones. For a club dubbed Los Milonarios (the millionaires), River's place is very decrepit. The old stands are crumbling and in need of paint, and the dusty old trophies haven't seen a good cleaning in months, if not years. It's all in stark contrast to the glitz of British soccer grounds, but I could imagine the noise on match days, tumbling down from the 70,000 seats, with fireworks and huge banners, and all sorts of chaos going on.

After the visit I hailed a cab back into town, and right on cue my cabbie Carlos asked to put on his Boca Juniors CD. We sped through the crazy Buenos Aires traffic, chatting about football, our families and the political situation in Northern Ireland, all to the soundtrack of about 100 drunken Boca fans chanting footy tunes from the speakers. I bid  Carlos farewell at the Plaza del Congresso, where I got out for a few pics before heading back to our hotel and V with her new hairdo (looks great).

Today we both rounded off the football theme with a trip down south to working class Boca, and La Bombonera (the Chocolate Box), home of arch-rivals and present day superclub, Boca Juniors. The contrast between these two giants of South American football couldn't be more marked. El Monumental is set among the leafy northern suburbs of Buenos Aires, surrounded by parks and rich neighbourhoods, but the stadium itself is old, and the money seemingly scarce nowadays. In Boca, La Bombonera sits on waste ground in the heart of rough and ready La Boca Barrio, and although it's no San Siro, or Old Trafford, it positively reeks of recent glory and success.

A visit to Boca costs ARG$12 for a stadium tour (in English) alone, and an extra ARG$12 to see the museum (which has fewer, if cleaner, trophies - ha). Everything here is better organised, busier, and with just that little bit more pizazz than the old stadium in Nuñez. La Bombonera was getting an new paint job as we walked around it, and hordes of fans were hanging around the museum and excellent shop, or strolling along the Maradona/Boca themed bars and shops in the narrow little streets surrounding the place. We got to see a lot more than at River, visiting the changing rooms and warming up areas and tunnels. But I still prefer River, and I think the underdog title should be swapped around pronto from Boca to River, with the former the most deserving of the title "Los Milonarios".

So here we are, last day. Tonight V and I will put on our best clothes (which doesn't say much after six months on the road) and are heading to a Tango show. But before we do we're trying to meet up with the three lads we met from Brighton in La Serena, Chile, for a drink. Before we go, we'll pack up one last time, and maybe reflect on how far we've come. We'll think of these names- Kho Phangan, Kuala Lumpur, Darwin, Sydney, Alice, Nimbin, Auckland, Milford Sound, Santiago, Valparaiso, San Pedro, Salta, Colonia, and of course Buenos Aires, which has been one of the main highlights of the whole thing. Next time I post I should hopefully be safe and sound back in England, but don't despair, we have a week in Ulster in July to get through and hopefully write about. Thanks for the visits, Hasta luego.

La Recoleta

I've put the remainder of our photos from Colonia in Uruguay at the bottom of this post.

Yesterday V and I decided to go see La Recoleta cemetery, in the north of Buenos Aires city centre. It's here that the great and good (or thiefs and cheats) of Argentinian high society, as well as the not so high class Eva Peron are buried. Presidents, Captains of Industry, scoundrels, and even British seafaring mercenaries lie cheek by jowl in a huge collection of OTT crypts and sepulchres, most of which are huge vanity projects so that the  greatly missed deceased would be remembered by the less fortunate, and the old buggers can still peer down in perpetuity on the rest of us lesser mortals.

To be fair it's an interesting place, if a bit ghoulish - many of the coffins are housed above ground in crypts, some are in such a state of disrepair that you could probably put your hands in and open the crumbling coffins, if you were sick that is. But the competitiveness of the ruling classes never ceases to amaze me, some of these tombs are so over-pious and over-styled they make you dizzy walking along the narrow lanes of La Recoleta.

Of course we had to find Evita's resting place, which is thankfully rather modest compared to some tombs. There was a handful of visitors crammed into the narrow lane, trying to read her inscriptions, I expected it to be a lot busier, with those pious old Argentine ladies that venerate Evita as a Saint one hears so much about. But no, it was  pretty low key.

I'm pretty ambivalent towards Argentina's self appointed saint. She was a bit of a loose woman who slept her way into Argentine high society from poverty. She and her husband ran a pretty well-oiled personality cult that kept the country enthralled, until she did as all good saints do, and died aged 33. My problem is the Nazi sympathies she and Peron obviously held (many nazi war criminals were welcomed to Argentina with open arms after 1945), and the fact that that old slapper Madonna took such an interest in her, eventually playing her in "Evita". This latter fact almost caused meltdown in Buenos Aires, with protests and vicious grafitti on the streets, another reason I have nothing but admiration for Porteños' good taste. Peron himself had to sneak Evita's embalmed corpse - which had been kept in Europe - into La Recoleta in the dead of night to stop protests from the rich classes of Buenos Aires. This cemetery is exclusive real estate, and if you end up in here you've made it in Argentina. Peron himself had to make do with the decidedly less opulent La Chacarita cemetery down the road, when he popped his clogs after three terms as Argentina's president.

So that was La Recoleta, interesting and controversial, but well worth a visit. Today, the missus is getting her hair done again, and I'm off to see El Monumental, home of River Plate AC and the Argentina national football team.

Colonia del Sacramento

So we took the fast ferry over to Uruguay on the 21st. The weather was fine and crossing the River Plate took one hour. Colonia itself is remarkably different from Buenos Aires, and is a UNESCO world heritage site. The old town is steeped in history, and because of it's strategic location on the north shore of the River Plate, it has been fought over, looted, burned and bombed at one time or the other by the Spanish, Portuguese, Argentinians and Brazilians, and even the British have been intriguing in and around the old port at different points in history.

We spent the first night in Colonia chilling out in the wonderful little hotel we found in the heart of the historic centre. That night the weather took a turn for the worse and the next day V woke up in poor way, so much so that we had to call a doctor. She diagnosed a chest infection and scripted a course of antibiotics, recommending V spend the day resting in bed. With the weather being foggy and damp, and with no company on my walk, I headed out to explore the town.

I took so many photgraphs of this place that I'll only put some up on this post, keeping the rest for my next post from Buenos Aires. But the first day here the skies were grey, and the pictures are a bit drab compared to the later ones. Colonia is such a photogenic place that I had to curb my enthusiasm for wanting to take a photo on every street corner.

The highlight of this small excursion to Uruguay was dining in Gibellini, a crazy-arsed looking restaurant 50 metres from our hotel, Posada de la Flor. I had to take these pictures of the interior to show you how eclectic and weird this place is. The tiny room had seating for eight people (one table for four and two tables for two diners), although we never saw anyone else eat in there. The chef - El Patio - was an eccentric young Albert Einstein lookalike, complete with huge red chef's hat and apron and he always wore surgical gloves. The menu was two pages long and half of one of those consisted of the drinks list; to be honest the food wasn't great, but the service, the setting and the theatrical Mr Patio more than made up for any culinary shortcomings. Just look at the stuff this guy has decorated his place with - a hairdresser's dummy, telescopes, goats' horns, and battered old pieces of odd  bric-a-brac litters every corner of the dining room. This stuff doesn't belong in a restaurant but we both loved the atmosphere, and even the loud jazz he loved belting out from his modern ghetto-blaster. A wonderfully bohemian little eatery, it was a welcome change from the sour-faced staff in the diners on the main road which catered for the steady stream of Gringo and Porteño tourists.

The 23rd and yesterday the sun came out and showed Colonia in all it's glory. It is a gorgeous little place to wile away the hours, stroll about, watch the ships and boats in the port and just hang out. We took a hike up the Faro, or lighthouse, and ate great parillada (barbecue) in full view of the sailing boats in the bay, a wonderful place. But, like all good things, it had to come to an end and we sailed back to Buenos Aires late yesterday afternoon, and back into the hustle and bustle of Avenida de Mayo. 

Our time is nearly up and we're due back in England on the 29th, both of us are a bit tense at that fact and nervous about picking up our lives where we left off back in January.

Witnessing the birth of an Argentine legend

We are off to Uruguay this afternoon, but before we go I had to write about the Copa Libertadores soccer final last night. V and I were pretty tired and decided to watch the game in bed at the hotel. This is a picture of Juan Roman Riquelme, this guy is one of the best footballers I've ever had the pleasure to watch. Boca Juniors won the game easily 2-0, making the aggregate score over the two legs 5-0 to Boca. Riquelme scored three of those and had a hand in the others, not bad for a player once rejected by the mighty Barcelona.

Seriously, this guy was getting kicked all round the park by the Brazilian players, who did't know what to do with him. He just got up without complaining and thumped in two beauties of goals. Boca even missed a penalty, which surely they should have let Riquelme take to get his hat-trick, but it didn't matter, Boca were sublime.

Lying in bed we heard the crowds in the bars in downtown Buenos Aires cheer when he did score, and when the final whistle went and Boca lifted the cup all hell broke loose. Our hotel is centrally located on the Avenida de Mayo, in about five minutes from the end of the match a huge cacophony of sound reached us on our fourth floor balcony. Explosions, fireworks, car horns, shouting, and loud drums accompanied huge numbers of cars, taxis, and vans with flag-waving Boca fans hanging out their doors and windows streaming down the street on their way on a lap of the city centre. Police crusiers were speeding alongside the wildly weaving cars, whether they were escorting or joining in with the madness we'll never know because of the sheer volume of noise.

At 2am the noise began to grate on us, but eventually we both nodded off as cars still sped around below us and off into the night. I thought the British were the most fervent football fans on earth - forget it boys - you have nothing on this lot, Argentina would die without her football.

Marking time in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is one hell of a big city. Think New York or Shanghai. V and I have traipsed around the city centre during the day and cruised the bars and nightclubs after dark. The shopping here is excellent, cheap and varied - but we've very little room to fit any more stuff in our bags.

The drama on the bus has been forgotten and Porteños are fairly friendly people, if a bit brasher than the Chileans and north Argentinians. We've had a street newspaper seller mouth off about "Falklands No!!" but he's just one dickhead among a city of pretty cool and stylish people. I can see why Buenos Aires is reckoned to be the most European of Latin American cities, it's restaurants rival any city I've visited.

Yesterday V and I booked our return tickets on the Buquebus high-speed catamaran, which will speed us across the River Plate tomorrow afternoon and dump us in the reputably beautiful Colonia del Sacramento, in Uruguay. I'm looking forward to getting out of the bustle of Buenos Aires for three days.

Thunderstorms and abysmal showers awoke us today in the early afternoon, after a big night out with Bebe and some Geordie lads who are travelling around South America sampling the beer and women. If the place we ended up in is indicative of Buenos Aires' nightlife in general then it's pretty laidback. The best bit is when all the smokers have to stand outside and puff - it's where you meet all kinds of Porteños, and all the blokes ever want to talk about is football.

Today we've packed up a small bag to take to Uruguay tomorrow and are waiting for the second leg of the Copa Libertadores 2007 to be played tonight, where surely Boca Juniors will take home the trophy from Porto Alegre, the home of Brazilians Gremio - they stuffed them 3-0 in Buenos Aires last week. I suspect seats in cafes with TV's will be pretty scarce in Buenos Aires tonight around 10pm, but we'll be in there somewhere.

I should be posting next from Uruguay, country number 8 on our trip.

The Bad, the Good and the Ugly of Argentina

V and I are finally in Buenos Aires, the last stop on our six month journey. We had a bit of a drama on the overnight bus from Cordoba on the 16/17th, hence the title of this post.

The 16th started innocuous enough, with V, Bebe our German friend, and myself marking time in Cordoba city centre and watching Pirates of the Carribbean 3 (total pants it was) at the cinema. We also read this display commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War, which was entitled "The Malvinas are Argentinian" - no room for discussion there then.  The bus at 10pm was half full and we quickly fell asleep on our three seats one row from the back on the top deck. I always carry my little Billingham camera bag on me, with passports, valuables and tickets etc in it. I put this above my head in the rack. V has a bigger laptop-type bag in which she put her iPod and little breakable presents for people back home. This bag was too big to put above us, and too bulky at our feet, so, as there was no-one behind us in the rear seats I suggested V put her bag on the floor behind us.

I awoke in the early hours as the bus stopped briefly in Rosario to drop off a handful of people. In the morning about 7am we pulled into Buenos Aires. V noticed some stamps she had bought for her Mum lying on the seat behind us, and a paper bag that held an ashtray from New Zealand on the floor. She checked her bag and her iPod was gone, GBP5 from her purse, an ashtray from Valparaiso, and everything else had been moved about - 3 feet from where we  slept. We told the bus inspector, a youngish guy who was very annoyed that we had been robbed on his bus, saying it was giving a bad impression of Argentina.

When the bus stopped, the driver refused to let anyone off until the inspector gave everyone a quick bag search, the cops were called too. I commented that the thief had probably gotten off at Rosario, and the inspector agreed but said he would get everyone checked anyway. Bebe said she had seen someone go into a seat behind her in the night, but thought it was a bus staffer getting some sleep on the 11 hour journey. On our level were a very ordinary looking guy who looked unfased, a distinguished looking woman of about 50 and two shifty looking little bastards in their twenties.

We got off and V was very upset, whilst I queued to get our bags. The two young guys from the bus were walking off fast when the inspector produced an ashtray with "Valparaiso" on it, "Is this yours?" he asked me, when I said it was he grabbed a police sergeant and collared the two young guys, just as they were disappearing fast into the terminal. The two idiots must have dropped it or left it behind them on their seats. The cops took them upstairs, pulled the curtains and strip-searched them - the iPod and charger were inside the meaner looking guy's socks. I was beginning to enjoy this now and the look on these two fuckers' faces was brightening up my morning rapidly.

V was shaken at being robbed, but I was amazed and happy the guys had been caught so easily by a very conscientious young bus official, and I told him so and thanked him, along with the cops and the driver. The cops nicked the pair and wished us well. Outside the bus terminal at the taxi rank the little woman from the bus was waiting for a ride - she was a Doctor and found the two guys suspicious from the start of the journey, as she told us in perfect English. She passed this on to the inspector when they locked us all in, along with the fact they were out of their seats many times in the night and wearing gloves in the heated bus. She wished us well too, and apologised for Argentina's petty thieving class - I assured her that Argentina was not alone in producing shitbirds like these two.

So, here was the bad and the very, very, good sides of Argentina - all played out in a small drama on a very cold early morning bus terminal platform in Buenos Aires. It was a valuable lesson for us all, but although these thieves were daring, they had obviously been beaten very hard with the stupid stick at some point in their pathetic lives - had they not left a few little things on the seat behind us, we would not have realised that we had been robbed at all and would still be searching for the iPod even now cursing each others' stupidity at leaving it lost somewhere. A lucky outcome, but V was still understandably shaken up and it left a bad taste in the mouth on our first day in the capital.

The ugly occured when I finally stood in a big juicy South American dog shit. It happened last night, as we went out for a walk from our Avenida de Mayo hotel room. It had to happen, the odds are stacked against anyone walking along a street here. I had to wash the offending boot in the bidet when we got home.

So, today we're just checking out the city centre. Buenos Aires is a huge place and should be good to spend time in before hopefully jumping on a ferry in a few days' time to visit Uruguay for a day or two on the 21st.

Football fever in Cordoba

V and I have been in Cordoba for a couple of days now. To be honest there's not a lot here of interest - it's basically a big, grubby city with little aesthetic value. Added to that it's very damp and cold, so to keep us entertained we've been traipsing the shopping streets which are pretty good to be fair, and embarassingly cheap.

For a laugh V and I each bought an Argentine football shirt. I've always liked River Plate and their distinctive red diagonal stripes; just to be different V opted for Boca Juniors - the pikey mob from the working class La Boca  Barrio of Buenos Aires and Maradona's home club. It's a bit like us walking about wearing a Rangers and Celtic jersey respectively, only probably a lot worse. We actually bought the shirts in Salta where every other teenager was sporting either a River or (more likely) a Boca shirt. In Cordoba the populace seem not to approve too much of the two big Buenos Aires clubs; I put this down to the traditional rivalry between Argentina's two biggest cities, and the fact that Cordoba has their own giants in Club Atletico Belgrano.

Last night Boca were playing the first leg of the Copa Libertadores against Gremio of Brazil. As we walked home about 8pm in the dismal cold after a meal near Cordoba's Plaza San Martin, every single cafe or burger joint with a TV had the match blaring light onto ranks of stony faced diners; and I do mean every single place. V and I rushed home to watch a so-so match where Gremio let in a very un-Brazilian soft goal, had a player red-carded then got duffed 3-0. The highlight was the Boca fans in the stands of La Bombonera, these nutty fanatics make our UK soccer fans look like a knitting club gathering. The pitch was so awash with blue and yellow scraps of paper that you could hardly tell where the blue and yellow ball was for most of the match. When V went down to grab a drink from the hotel reception after the match she decided to wear her Boca jersey for a laugh. The hotel staff just snorted their derision at the affrontery of parading a Buenos Aires football shirt in their hotel lobby - I guess they were either expat Brazilians or more likely local Belgrano enthusiasts. Football is such a funny sport, but I love every bit of it and Argentina is one of those countries where it really is, as Bill Shankly said - "more important than life or death".

Bitten by the football fever here, V has agreed (after a placatory shopping spree in Cordoba) to go to Buenos Aires early to see if we can get tickets for River Plate's last game of the season at El Monumental. Thing is, after checking the web I'm not sure whether they're playing on Friday, Saturday or Sunday! If we miss it, we miss it, but I'm sure any game among Argentina's crazy fans would have been some experience.

Bebe, our German friend whom we hung out with in San Pedro and Salta, is in Cordoba for a few days, so we're meeting her tonight for some food and wine, but I am missing the sunny though cool climes of both Salta and Chile.