RANSVESTIA

building was sort of strange. Spread across the front of the building was a long board with a slogan something like "Long Live the Peo- ples Republic of Afghanistan." That alone wasn't too surprising since we'd seen such before in Socialist countries, but then we got closer and began to notice a lot of soldiers around, each with a rifle over his back and others on the roof of the building. They were all wearing grey uniforms with a familiar peaked cap and black jack boots. I thought, "Gee, this looks more like Nazi Germany than a Peoples Republic." Commenting about it to our tour leader, he informed me that they were indeed German uniforms. Quantities of them had been captured at the end of World War II and they had been sold to Afghan- istan. About 1972, the then-prime minister who was a cousin of the king, threw the king out and took over. His complaint was that the king was just leading a feudal king's life and wasn't doing anything for the people so the prime minister became president and has ap- parently been doing a good deal for the people ever since with the limited facilites he has. He is, however, handily situated on the borders of China, India, Pakistan, Russia and Iran, and with ties to England, France and the U.S. Since the international game is "don't let anything worthwhile fall under the control of your enemy," every- body is in there pitching to gain advantage. The country has a great deal of undeveloped natural resources so the new president walks an interesting tightrope trying to get as much as he can from the various interested foreign governments without giving up any more than he has to.

The city has a couple of big hotels - we stayed at the Intercon- tinental which is as modern as you'd want - a university, and other ac- cessories of a modern city but it also has miles of run-down, dusty streets lined with all kinds of beaten-up shacks and stores. A real native quarter which in this case is more like a three-quarters. Next morning we had to get up about 4 a.m. to get to the airport for a 6:30 flight in a little DeHaviland Otter which carries about 20 people. We flew to Bamyan and the reason for the early departure was again the heat of the day and the altitude. We got up to 14,000 feet going over the Hindu-Kush Mountains. This is 2,500 feet higher than the FAA says you have to have oxygen if you are going to stay up very long. Well we didn't have to stay up very long and we didn't have oxygen but we did have a number of people with headaches and other symp- toms of oxygen deprivations. Since we had a lot of people in their 70's and three in their 80's it was fortunate that we didn't have anything more than discomfort.

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