Sylvia's Journal

Captain Courtney flew us back to Kabul and invited me in the cockpit for the duration of the flight while Axel got pushed forward to sit in business class, right in front of the president of JEICA.

I flew on the navigator seat where one week before Oliver North (yup, from Contra fame) had made the same trip as the host of Fox News ‘War Stories.’

Courtney and his co-pilot explained every dial and gizmo in the cockpit and answered all the questions I had wanted to ask for so long. The 737 cockpit is just a little more complicated than the Piper Warrior cockpit am familiar with; a few more dials and doodads.

Contrary to the heavy rains that were predicted it was sunny all through the flight. It was neat to experience life in the cockpit for the two plus hours of the flight. I can see that it can get a bit boring after you are at cruising altitude and we talked about the two Northwest/Delta pilots who missed Minneapolis by 150 miles, last summer. It is easy to lose track of time high up in the big void.

As we came closer to Kabul I learned about the drones that fly over Kabul (and presumably Afghanistan) that are ‘driven’ from somewhere in Nevada and that have a wingspan between 3 and 22 feet. Some of them are armed with missiles. They do appear on the radar so that you don’t fly into them as you navigate into Kabul.

We were directed to the jetway upon arrival because we had some Japanese VIPs on board. Their security stopped us all in our tracks until they retrieved some of the Japanese travelers who were back in economy.

The celebrations for Afghanista’s Nao Roz (new year) were in full swing when we arrived which had clogged up the traffic big time. The only unclogged road was the one over Television Mountain which allowed us to see up close the people dressed in their finest going to and from the mosque.

At the house we found that the gardener had planted 10 more rose bushes. The grape vines are pruned and the pear tree is in full bloom. We had a sundowner on the terrace and sniffed the wild mountain zatar (thyme) that we had brought back from Lebanon in a futile attempt to hold on to this dream vacation we just finished.