Planes, Trains, . . . Ahh, You Get the Idea

We're done with our meetings, so it's time to go, right? Well, not exactly. The Embassy has hired a South African outfit to run regular flights out to the various PRTs, named, aptly enough, PRT Air. PRT Air is supposed to run to Bamyan twice a week. The day before we are supposed to leave, PRT Air announced, quite quaintly, that it was having "engine issues."

So I'm stuck. I know there are tons of military aircraft up at Bagram Air Base, a stone's throw from Kabul, but it's pretty clear that on the Military Great Chain of Being, little ol' me does not rank up there enough to warrant aircraft of SOME kind.

The UN rides to the rescue again. UNHAS also runs flights out to Bamyan, just a few days later. I manage to get a seat (which, given the size of the puddle jumper they use, is actually saying something). The travel office tells us to be ready to leave for 9:00 a.m. for an 11:00 flight. Because of my own travel paranoia, I pack the night before.

7 a.m. the day of the flight, after a casual breakfast, I walk out and notice a vehicle convoy ready to head to the airport. "What are you doing?" they ask me. "We were supposed to leave 20 minutes ago!" Well, so much for my plans to knock out some more logistics. I run to my trailer, grab my stuff (including some seriously heavy body armor), and lug all of it out to the cars, which take off immediately. I am now on the most frightening ride in a vehicle I have EVER experienced. The drivers are taught not to stop for anything, and they don't, not oncoming traffic, not donkeys, probably not even humans unlucky or unwise enough to get in the way. We bob and weave in a drunken convoy like mad boxers that are hoping to make it past the seventh round. Nauseous, you say? Hah.

We arrive breathless at the airport. $45 bucks later (my tickets are paid for, but apparently my luggage for a year isn't), we are ready to board. Too bad the plane isn't. Now we have 5 hours of waiting. While waiting, I commit my first cultural faux pas. I grab my toothbrush to clean up, and head for the room marked "W.C." That's universal, right? Perhaps not. Some babushka-wearing Afghan woman shrieks at me and waves a stubby finger 3 inches from my nose, spouting some foul-sounding syllables in Dari at me. Maybe it is a girls' bathroom? I don't know. Either way, the teeth will have to wait. Thank goodness for Listerine breath strips.

They finally give us the call. We roll up to what could generously be called a Cessna, and get ourselves in place. Airlines differentiate between twin aisle and triple aisle planes. This is a single aisle wonder. The co-pilot leans back to tell us the pre-flight safety info, and zoom! We're off.

We follow a valley, and get up to 18,000 feet as our cruising altitude. Apparently this is a great altitude for turbulence. Think about what happens to the inside of an egg if you shake it too much. Fortunately, when the plane is not playing hop-scotch, I realize that the scenery is stunning. My only experience with anything similar is the Colorado rockies, but these are older, harsher, more primal somehow. There are probably better adjectives, but suffice to say that its a heluva view.

I was pretty scrambled (remember the egg analogy? clever continuation, huh) 30 minutes later when we started our descent. We can make out the runway a few miles ahead, but since this is a fluid security environment, as they say, we have to do a flyover first. It's my first time to bank into a roll with g's like that in place. Ugh. Have I mentioned how glad I am by then that I took dramamine 2 hours ago? Woof. One more bank, and we're level . . . and the dust and rocks start to kick up as we land on the airstrip. I am now in Bamyan. Home sweet home for the next year.