In October last year I quoted extracts from a journal I wrote when I was in Afghanistan in 2008, Two Nights in Kunduz. The BBC report that Kunduz has fallen to the Taliban.
Last week I went to a lunchtime lecture under the auspices of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. Two intrepid chaps who work in Afghanistan described a holiday in the Wakhan Corridor descending the headwaters of the Oxus in two rather insubstantial inflatable canoes. I drove up to Badakhshan from Kabul in 2008. They flew to Tajikistan and drove back into Afghanistan. However you look at it, the security situation has markedly deteriorated in the last eight years.
By train from Lyon to Annecy today. My first visit; it is picture postcard pretty with blue sky and an autumnal chill in the air when not in the sun. Although it is October there are still a lot of tourists, many from Australia and China. It is a long, long way from Afghanistan. Selfishly I wonder if it will ever be safe to go back there or to Syria or Libya for that matter.
