Rare Air

The city of Kabul is surrounded by mountains, which is a handy way of preventing any local air pollution from leaving the immediate vicinity and degrading the air quality of the rest of the country. Sort of like one of those glassed-off smoking rooms I've seen at airports. It's quite a thoughtful touch, don't you think? The only bummer is I'm on the wrong side of that glass.

Western Mts

Yes, the air around here tends to be, let's say, a little on the gritty side. Actually, a lot on the gritty side. Almost chewy. When I'm feeling generous, I'd say it's "richly textured." I'm definitely getting my money's worth out of my built-in organic air filtration system (aka my nose), which is working overtime... but I guess we're all working overtime around here, aren't we?

On a serious note for a moment, the air quality in Kabul is just about the worst in the world. Air pollution is apparently one of the major causes of natural death in the city. Between the dust and dirt and sand, plus the fine particulates from all the various combustion events (cars, cook fires, generators, etc), those mountains I mentioned before tend to be pretty well obscured. As in, I had no idea they were there for the first few days I was in country.

And then one night it rained.

Southern Mts

I awoke to a gorgeous blue sky and made a startling discovery about how close the mountains really are. I can't believe that most days, they're almost completely invisible. The mountains were gorgeous snowcapped peaks to the west and reminded me of Colorado Springs. To the south, they're rugged and brown and reminescent of Albuquerque. Mountains to the north and east are a bit further away but similar to the southern view.

An interesting side note: that morning as my roomie was taking pictures of the mountains, we discovered that we both went to high school in Colorado Springs.

That's funny because we've had parallel AF careers and in almost every assignment, we've just barely missed meeting each other. We know a lot of the same people, had some of the same bosses, but never met until we went to CAST. To find out that our series of near-misses began in high school sort of blew my mind. And did I mention he went to college in Rochester NY? And that his first assignment was to Kirtland AFB, in Albuquerque... just like me? Yeah, that's apparently been going on our whole lives.

S/E (I think)

Anyway, he took these pictures. It's too bad the scenery isn't like this all the time. Most days, you'd never know the mountains are there at all.