Snowbound in Kabul

Thursday's plane never arrive to take us out to Delhi. This morning the CNN and BBC weather for eastern Afghanistan was bang on - heavy snow.

Every half hour or so I call up the redoubtable Safir, or his mate Basir, at the Indian Airlines desk at Kabul Airport. Every half hour they ask me to call back in - you've got it - half an hour.

Five hundred yards from my hotel window an outrider of the Hindu Kusj mountains rises a thousand feet or so from the smog of Kabul.

Except you cannot see it today.

The thing to do is to put this fact with the other fact.

The other fact is that not long ago an airliner flew into a mountain approaching Kabul killling everyone. At least 100 people. So rather a lot of anxiety since then.

It's coming in that's tricky - lots of steep banking and flap noises and weird things going on with air pressure inside your ears.

Leaving is a doddle by all accounts.

But - and there's usually a but here - nobody will leave their planes overnight at Kabul Airport. Therefore you only get out if your plane gets in first. Kind of logical, no?

Right - time to call up the airport lads again. No doubt my holding pattern will continue. However, this is the worst winter in Afghanistan in years.

So if leaving's not an option we will, naturally, do a story on the weather.

And it is serious - amost 1,000 people known to have died. Large numbers of frostbite amputees. Goodness knows how many people are left frozen in the remote villages - and few countries on this planet do remote like Afghanistan does remote.

Will write more - either on this or from Delhi - or somewhere, sometime.

Salaams.

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