Herat trip

Last Wednesday, I traveled to Herat, Afghanistan for a quick (two night) visit. Herat is in western Afghanistan and is where Regional Command (RC) - West is headquartered. RC-West is primarily ran by the Spanish and Italians. At the base, there was also a significant Albanian and Slovakian presence. It's always interesting to see how other countries run an operation (i.e. the Italian espresso stampede at 9am sharp or the Spanish dining hall being open for dinner from 8-9pm (just about past my bedtime)).

I flew out in a Spanish C-295, which is the aircraft in the picture below. It was a pretty short trip (especially compared to the Japan - U.S. flights I'm used to) and we had a short stop in Mazar e Sharif (in RC-North). One thing that was noticed immediately was the cleaner air. Quite a difference from the Kabul crud I'm used to. Another picture below is of one of the sunsets there at Herat. It was also nice to see a full sky of stars, as there's no city or base lights to get in the way (unlike here in Kabul).

The final picture is just a bit of proof that I actually work :) That's a picture of one of the fuel facilities we were there to see ('we' being Leo and I). It's also what I'm supposed to get excited about as part of my job - large, modern 'vertical tank' storage of fuel. Interesting, but still can't shake the feeling of a glorified gas station attendant.

Anyway, I think that's about it for now. These pictures take about 10 minutes each to load, as the wireless Internet in the room is nice, but extremely slow at night when everyone is on.