http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Afghanistan/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Asia , Afghanistan en-us Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:20:00 BST Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:20:00 BST Hey. I was reading The Atlantic and they had an ad for the Templeton foundation. They caught you by putting the first half of numerous essays regarding whether the universe has a purpose. They are quite good. The link is httpwww.templeton.orgquestionspurpose. If it just goes straight to templeton.org the first time add the purpose after that. Here is something else There I was http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/East/Bamyian/blog-216350.html When people hear that Irsquom going to spend a month in Afghanistan they usually have a bunch of questions namely Why Because Irsquove answered this question about a dozen times already and never really to anyonersquos satisfaction Irsquove decided to try to explain it here. So here in the form of a FAQs page is all the information I think anyone could want on the topic and my r http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/East/Bamyian/blog-214438.html Getting off a bus after sunset in the middle of Herat with absolutely no information neither map nor directions nor knowledge of prices unable to speak the language and with my enormous backpack and khareji clothes clearly a very stupid westerner in a country with an emerging appetite for kidnapping foreigners... no probably not the most intelligent move I've made. It's not like I was t http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/blog-210871.html In going to Afghanistan I wanted to do several things such as better understand Afghan culture learn some Dari and show Afghans that Westerners and Americans specifically are capable of visiting other countries in capacities other than in the military. While I did all of these things to at least a certain extent the thing that sticks out in my mind was how crazy the security situat http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/East/Kabul/blog-210586.html On the off chance extremely unlikely that there are people out there calling embassies and desperate to get news from me like I said very unlikely I'm alive and doing well although I still don't know what the penalty is for being a Khareji in Herat...I've been adopted by two really cool Hazara guys one with an amazing life story and pretty good english and the other who is just return http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/blog-209394.html And a short trip it was... I wanted to go up North for two weeks or so but I stayed only for 4 days... Plans change... Anyway I went up to Mazare Sharif to look at Afghanistanrsquos holiest shrine the tomb of Imam Ali the son in law of the prophet Mohammed... It is all a bit confusing as according to most Muslims he is buried in Najaf in Iraq which is one of the most important pilgrimage s http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/East/Kabul/blog-191684.html So as you can see from this update I am still alive after crossing through the centre of Afghanistan from Herat to Kabul. First Herat a bustling city and a good place to get accustomed to Afghanistan. It has some interesting and beautiful sights like the Jameh Mosque the Musalla complex and views from the citadel in the old town are superb. I stayed in Herat for 3 days checking with the tour http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/East/Kabul/blog-191646.html I lost all of this year's entries in the server crash. I never trust the internet however and luckily made backup copies of everything I had published. I did lose two saved entries though. That will probably further set my story timeline a few days off the actual timeline so you won't know how it ends until about a week and some. Sorry for the inconvenience. I'll reuplod the lost pictur http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/blog-188203.html this blog is far too ugly here's my new prettier one. http4trees.tumblr.com http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/East/Kabul/blog-177579.html November 2004 Perhaps foolishly I thought that that the transport to Herat would only take one day however after thirteen hours cramped in to a toyota pickup truck with ten other people the sun had begun and finished its descent to the west and we were still in the wilderness. We had been driving since 3AM the previous morning through rivers and over mountains. we had endured two punctures http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/blog-136736.html I have never seen a border like the Torkham border before. I suppose it is because it is the tribal areas and not strictly Pakistan but anyway there were hundreds of people wandering back and forth everywhere. Loads of children dragging sacks this way and that trying to avoid the policemen's sticks and of course a huge queue of trucks. To top it all off we were all up to our ankles in liquid m http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/East/Kabul/blog-130204.html One of the coolest shots I have ever seen was taken by CPT Dykstra somewhere near Kabul... http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/East/Kabul/blog-103113.html Sept 3Note to self....I reek After breaki it was off to the embassy though due to usual ineffiviency it was closed for another hour or so After standing around and seeing several nervous american patrols come through as well as some NGO workers with their own bodyguards we discovered that we would not be given visa's for pakistan as our old ones had not expired yet this meant that we would have http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/East/Kabul/blog-101953.html Sept 2After a paranoid night of restless sleep...including a lame attempt at barakading the door with the nightstand it was off to the usual place for milk tea and deepfried dough of some kind. Today since the embassy is closed we have decided to head to west Kabul to see some of the destruction caused by the heavy fighting that took place there over the recent years. This also brought us to the http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/East/Kabul/blog-101951.html Sept 1 2006The first of the third month traveling seems to be a fitting day to wake up in Kabul. This city is surreal in any sense tensions are always high foreigners are rarely ever seen and we've become quite the tourist attraction for the locals. The hotel we stayed in was an absolute disaster though not many accomadations in Kabul went for less than 10 usd a night. The day started out wit http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/East/Kabul/blog-100604.html August 31THE ROAD TO KABUL..VIA JALALABADTorkham the border crossing and its very few buildings was packed with people. Shortly before the bus came to the crowds of men burqas and wheelbarrows transporting all sorts of goods also the elderly that weren..t able to walk other people in the bus wanted us to pull up the curtains so that nobody would see our pasty white faces. Torkham witnesses v http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Afghanistan/blog-94907.html