A friend who is serving in the Canadian Armed Forces is currently in Afghanistan and sends this photo of Camp Julien.
Lots of stories to tell. I have used two disposable camera. I did not want to bring my digital camera here, since I had heard so many stories. Next time. I am going to download a disk of pictures the guys took here. The sights are unbelievable. How the people live. We are situated between the King’s and Queen’s palaces. “
update – This panoramic view was sent by another reader. Very cool. (And very wide)
“On this first visit to it [Kabul], in the spring of 1832, he [Sir Alexander Burnes] was to fall in love with the city, likening it to paradise. Its many gardens, so abundant in fruit-trees and song-birds, reminded him of England. ‘There were peaches, plums, apricots, pears, apples, quinces, cherries, walnuts, mulberries, pomegranates and vines,’ he wrote, ‘all growing in one garden. There were also nightingales, blackbirds, thrushes and doves…and chattering magpies on almost every tree.'”
-Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game (1992), at p. 142.
Was Sandy Burnes simply homesick, or propagandising the East India Company? Who knows. Plainly, time has not been kind to Kabul.