A steamy trip to the Salang Tunnel

It's just become something we do, Stuart and I. It's a kind of pilgrimage I suppose. Although today it also had the ulterior motive of being able to find out about some people we may need to interview on future visits here.

And so off, out of the smog-filled bowl that is Kabul - and over the silent snowfields of the Shomali Plain. The vineyards are all back and flourishing.

Except that they are not, of course, vineyards. The area grows some of the most delicious sultanas on the planet and that's why you see acres of grapevines here. Nothing so un-Islamic as wine of course. They seem to do well in the fiercely cold, dry Afghan climate or fiercely hot, dry Afghan climate.

Just like Mahmood.

Nothing would do him but he'd drive us up to the Salang Tunnel - one of the highest road-tunnels in the world, built by the Russians to connect Mazar-e-Sharif in the north with Kabul. Or really, to connect The Red Army with Kabul and beyond.

Anyhow: "Tunnel - we go! Friday! Holiday! Everybody go Kabul to Salang! Everybody!" You see Mahmood speaks only in exclamations, even in his native Dari or acquired Russian.

We stop briefly in Jabal-os-Saraj where I lived for several weeks with the northern warlords' army before they became the Government of Afghanistan - or something like that.

The plan was to put on snow chains. However, Mahmood seemed to bore easily with this tedious detail. I think we took one chain, though I'm not sure. We never saw it again.

What we did see - at around 10,000 feet - was steam. The famous Salang natural hot springs perhance? No. There aren't any. The famous leaking radiator of Mahmood's Hiace van? Why yes!

So what does he do? Obviously, he gathers as much snow as possible, rams it into the top of the engine, shuts the cover and stares into space. Hethen hires a couple of local children to gather and ram some more.

And he exclaims: "Tunnel no problem! Salang no problem!" a lot. Then gets the children to stuff even more snow in.

I had my doubts. Off we went. Only for the whole thing to boil over again. This time inside an avalanche tunnel. These are curious half tunnels open to one side. The effect of that seems to be simply to let the show in and diggers were scooping it all up as we sat there, steaming.

We eventually achieved an 18-point push and got the thing turned down the mountains. Then we freewheeled. As we got up to around fifty or so, I asked Mahmood if the brakes were working?

"No problem!" he yelled, declining to show me if this was true or not.

This all worked pretty well whilst we freewheeled down the sides of the Hindu Kush. But on the flat or up-hill we came to a halt. At one point Mahmood tried to push as the van rolled back and was seconds away from managing to run himself over with his own van. Impressive.

Only Stuart diving from the back of the van to shove it into Park saved Mahmood from his very own suicide van attack.

Of course when we got back down to Jabal you just stopped at the first mechanic's shack and an hour later everything was fine again.

Needless to add, Mahmood was all for trying to make it up to the pass - regardless of the mechanic who quietly said the van now needs a new diesel pump. Oh - and a new windscreen - after Mahmood careered into the back of a helpful bunch of heavily-armed mujahed types who had stopped to try and help. Really, no way to treat Afghanistan's fourth emergency service.

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