Kabul winter

Kabul's fresh, clean and cool, quite unlike in the spring, winter or autumn. Everything is much more pleasant except, perhaps, for the two suspected suicide bombers that some Belgian and American troops said were being hunted about town. Or perhaps it's just bad intel.

I had never before flown in to Afghanistan with such clear skies. The planes and the Hindu Kush looked amazing from the plane, really the first time I truly got what they mean when they say Moon-like landscapes. The lower slopes of the mountains looked just like the sea, waves upon waves upon waves, or rolling dunes, first I even thought they were clouds, only a very odd colour, a bit like sand, only more metallic, darker and harsher, and with these small dark dots speckled about, like craters almost. And no signs of life anywhere, no roads, no towns, nothing, only the ever-deeper scars of the mountains rising up towards the Pamir, with these massive gorges and canyons among them. Truly the ends of the Earth. Very dramatic.

And here is to Rupert Hamer of the Sunday Mirror who was killed last Saturday when his vehicle hit an explosive device down in Helmand. Philip Coburn, his photographer colleague, is, I am told, in a critical but stable condition. Let's hope he pulls through.