Gandamack Lodge

Inexplicably I forgot to mention Gandamack Lodge when I wrote about eccentric hotels in 2016: Room With a View.

Its name is derived from another British defeat, this time in the First Afghan War, and was adopted by Brig. Gen. Sir Harry Paget Flashman as the name of his hunting box in Leicestershire – good cheese and good hunting country. If I may briefly digress a friend of mine was asked by a minor Royal what he’d been hunting – “hares”, she hazarded. “I only hunt hairs of the pubic variety Ma’am ” he replied insouciantly and modestly looked down to HRH’s waist.

It was a bugger to get to Kabul in 2008. We went BA economy to Dubai and spent the night perched on stools at Hagen Daz in the terminal. In the morning we got a flight to Kabul full of contractors. The Gandamack Lodge pre-arranged meet and greet let us down so we had to get a taxi. Peter Jouvenal happened to be in the hall when we arrived and owned up to forgetting to send his car. He was curious how much our taxi cost. “Well done, only twice the real fare.”

My room was next to the hall and noisy as there were comings and goings all night. It had an immensely heavy bed, one that Flashman had probably bounced around on, and no bathroom. There was a much better room opening onto the garden and with bathroom but it didn’t have a bed so we dismantled the bed and moved it.

The garden was an oasis where drinks were served and Peter’s children  played after school. When the weather got chilly the action shifted to The Hare and Hounds, a recreation of an English pub in the basement. We were def the only tourists; everyone else were journalists or working for charities. In a way I was the latter as I’d come to visit Afghan Action’s school in Karte Se.

I read in The Times, Peter’s Afghan wife is back in the UK. I wonder what will become of Gandamack Lodge? It had belonged to Osama bin Laden’s fourth wife but she fell behind with the rent.