Meshed, Iran: My hotel room is cold as the outdoors and there is snow out there.
I can’t get the kerosene stove going for heat so I ask the hotel man for some help. He stuffs some wads of newspaper into the stove, tosses in a cup of fuel oil and follows it with a lighted match. There is a small explosion and the air in my room is suddenly filled with minute greasy floating ashes. The hotel man shrugs and brings me a second mattress. I sleep warm as toast between the mattresses.
Next day, I pay the usual inflated tourist taxi fare to the coldest embassy on earth, the Embassy of Afghanistan where, after waiting two hours, I pay for the visa stamp in my passport. Isn’t it interesting how bureaucrats do the same thing all day every day but never know how to do it?
Here’s the bus depot, here’s the bus and some new travelers: Two Germans, a Finn, a Pakistani, three from France and a dozen natives.
It’s dark when we reach the Afghan border. We international travelers move into a mini-bus and the highway becomes a dirt road. This is the first unpaved main highway I’ve been on since Africa.
It is a short minibus trip for us to the...
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