The road to Pul-i-Khumri

The past week has flown by. After some significant weekend down time, partly inspired by an unhappy stomach, we have gone head-long into what will be a week and a half of meetings and travel. Our program requires a serious overhaul. In other words, structure. For two very long and tedious days, the program's upper management team duked it out in the Kabul makeshift conference room in order to first figure out how decisions, design and project implementation has worked (or not) up until now. I will spare the reader the gory details, but no lives were lost, though perhaps a bit of sanity.

With a project cycle in place, corresponding forms developed, and a rudimentary training plan at the ready, we headed out Tuesday on the 5 hr long drive to Pul-i-Khumri, Baghlan Province for the first of two trainings. First stop (for the food-minded) was lunch at a road-side shack where we ate giant, flat, deep-fried potato/leek samosas dipped in a thin salsa.

In someways it was a very nice drive...for the most part paved, and very scenic. The mountains I had seen from the plane, I was now driving up and through. The road is fairly well traveled especially by the most pimped out Pakistani (I'm told) cargo trucks. I wish our semis in America sported similar flare. Tuk-tuks have nothing on these gaudy art installations on wheels. The downside (figuratively) of driving through the mountains was the winter weather road protection. Really, really long man-made tunnels. Sure they keep the elements off the road, but they also prevent road repair and hold in the diesel fumes from the glamor trucks. On one particularly long stretch of tunnel, with no vents, the fumes were overwhelming. Had there been a breakdown in the tunnel, a) I would have feared for fire, but more concerning b) feared aphyxiation. And since the road condition is particularly bad, and it's pitch dark, you frequently see headlights coming straight at you while cars (fortunately, slowly) navigate around slow trucks, rivets and potholes.

On the brighter side, sort of, there were numerous reminders of the Soviets littered along the way. Abandoned tank hulls, tank tread, and roofless barracks.