Final Kabul diary

Thank you too for your prayers. We are now safely home in Perivale.
Tuesday morning we said farewell to the family in Kabul and after lunch Mark sent a driver to take us to the airport. This man had a permit to park close to the terminal and enter it but before we could get into the terminal we were told the flight was cancelled,. We were to return at 6 the next morning for a 8 am flight. So it was back to, the family for another night. In the evening we had a very good house-group and dinner with Marty and Elliot's colleagues and it was so good we did not feel our delay had been in vain.

Wednesday morning Elliott took us to the airport after we rose at 4.30. By 6 the road close to the airport was jammed. Katy and I took the cases and walked to the first security check where cases were being opened and examined. This was before the terminal building. I do believe there was some unofficial ethnic profiling. We, the only Europeans in the line were waived through bags unopened.

The rest of the story in the terminal was not good. several men wanted to help then demanded "baksheesh". This included porters and soldiers, one of whom expedited payment of departure tax . Then we had to pay to have cases sealed with plastic straps. I do nor know how much I doled out in total but it disposed of all my local currency plus some dollars and EAU dhirams. We were due to leave at 8 but took off at 9.30. No delay was announced and before we boarded a policeman said we had no departure stamp so a soldier took us back to get it. At least this proved departure was delayed so we may be able to make an insurance claim.

It was a 2 and a half hour flight to Dubai, all over differing kinds of brown deserts, plus the Gulf.. Ariana Airlines served the worse apology for breakfast we have ever been served. Dubai immigration was slow. Taxi to our hotel then we confirmed our desert safari trip. 4 to 9 we enjoyed a hair raising landcruiser trip in the desert. local driver did his best to scare us with a roller coaster ride in the dunes. A Nigerian couple were our other passengers but there were many 4WD vehicles on the route. We saw a camel farm, desert sunset then has a barbecue in the desert too. This included hubble bubble pipes but the belly dancing was cancelled due to Ramadan. It was hot and I was not comfortable.

Back at the hotel i did enjoy seeing the closing over of the W Indes defeating the Aussies in India.

Thursday morning we took a bus tour of Dubai on converted London open double deckers. You can hop on and of these as they do two routes with buses half an hour apart. Included in the ticket was entry to Dubai museum and an hour's cruise on the creek where we saw many tradition dhows which trade with Iran.

We broke our bus riding to check out of our room. have lunch and put cases in storage at the hotel. Then more bus riding to see the Burj El Arab, the world's only 7 star hotel. The beach was beautiful and the scale of nearby building work absolutely breathtaking. We had not believed it when told earlier that one fifth of the worl'd construction cranes were in Dubai. Bur seeing the scale of construction which makes the new Wembley stadium here us look like a drop in the bucket, we do believe the crane story. next we shopped for souvenirs and sadly misplace the bag with my camera. So all my images of Dubai are lost but we hope that our friends who copied our Kabul shots will be able to help us out .

In the evening we had booked a dhow dinner cruise . it was excellent around Dubai creek but it left us pushed for time, especially when the hotel look about half an hour to produce a driver for their courtesy car to the airport. Instead of checking in 3 hours before 1.10 am departure we got out the airport with only an hour to go to take off. We were last in a short queue with a notice saying the gate should be shut on us. But it was not as we found out later that the flight had had head winds from Brunei so was half an hour late landing. However the rush meant no shopping before boarding. We had a good light to London. landing 6.30 am with gratitude to God for his protection over our Afghan adventure.

Thank you too for your prayers.

Now we find Perivale at Diwali makes nights in Kabul seem quiet.