Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Feelin' hot, hot, hot
It is HOT in Mazar, in more ways that one.
There was a rocket attack in Mazar the night before last. The first time in two years. It’s down to the forthcoming parliamentary elections, the security update tells us. Luckily no one was hurt, but it puts dampers on things a bit. The Afghans are very nonchalant about it. As a woman in a recent IWPR report put it, “These bombs are like potatoes to us”.
My young bride and I, however, might take the weekend off and pop across the border to Uzbekistan. We have been looking for places to swim, and there is a choice of hotel swimming pools and limpid springs within easy reach of Mazar, but we are not entirely sure about a foreign lady stripping off and diving in yet, but I am told that close to Termez in southern Uzbekistan, there is a nice reservoir we can plunge into. It is very enticing. Last weekend we spent a fair amount of the time underwater anyway – in this weather you wake up and have a shower to cool down, then by the time you have finished your breakfast, you say to yourself, I will just have a quick hose-down before I do anything else, and the pattern is set for the day.
The hotel pool we found looks very inviting indeed. We have been a couple of times – to Hotel Kifayat (or Hotel ‘Enough’) to have a look. The first time we were with a potential employer for my young bride, and the place was filled with little chaps splashing and chattering. The management offered to throw them out to allow us to have a dip, but we left them to it, and carried on sipping our tinned banana juice. The last time we went, a couple of days ago, we brought our bathing suits, but it was shut up for some reason. Still, we sat down in the brightly lit bambi-style park that remained open to the public, had a pair of bubblegum-flavoured pakistani ice-creams on the cool grass and watched the illuminations.
There was a rocket attack in Mazar the night before last. The first time in two years. It’s down to the forthcoming parliamentary elections, the security update tells us. Luckily no one was hurt, but it puts dampers on things a bit. The Afghans are very nonchalant about it. As a woman in a recent IWPR report put it, “These bombs are like potatoes to us”.
My young bride and I, however, might take the weekend off and pop across the border to Uzbekistan. We have been looking for places to swim, and there is a choice of hotel swimming pools and limpid springs within easy reach of Mazar, but we are not entirely sure about a foreign lady stripping off and diving in yet, but I am told that close to Termez in southern Uzbekistan, there is a nice reservoir we can plunge into. It is very enticing. Last weekend we spent a fair amount of the time underwater anyway – in this weather you wake up and have a shower to cool down, then by the time you have finished your breakfast, you say to yourself, I will just have a quick hose-down before I do anything else, and the pattern is set for the day.
The hotel pool we found looks very inviting indeed. We have been a couple of times – to Hotel Kifayat (or Hotel ‘Enough’) to have a look. The first time we were with a potential employer for my young bride, and the place was filled with little chaps splashing and chattering. The management offered to throw them out to allow us to have a dip, but we left them to it, and carried on sipping our tinned banana juice. The last time we went, a couple of days ago, we brought our bathing suits, but it was shut up for some reason. Still, we sat down in the brightly lit bambi-style park that remained open to the public, had a pair of bubblegum-flavoured pakistani ice-creams on the cool grass and watched the illuminations.
# posted by Ed @ 1:48 pm 
