We then go to see the workshop where the tiles for the restoration of the mosque have been made since the beginning of last century:
After this we went to Sultan Hamidy's shop, where we saw Farouk's bargaining skills at their finest. We all got some (supposedly famous) Herat glass and then went to see it blown next door to the shop:
After hours of purchases and negotiation, we sat down with Sultan Hamidy for tea and silliness, which included his insistence that Farouk dress up for a photo
We then tried our hand at a carpet shop.
Finally it was time to head to the airport. We apparently arrived too early and so waited near a small empty office for an hour. After passing layer 1 of screening, we again were chased by the boys with wheelbarrows who wanted to take our luggage. After walking 300 meters to the actual terminal (and after having had our luggage hand-checked) we went through a metal detector. In the bizarre logic of this place, the 12 inch knife Francisco had bought raised no eyebrows, but they insisted that we check our Herat glass, ensuring its destruction in-flight (update: miraculously only 2 cups shattered, on this flight at least).
The flight was a predictable hour late and we were sad to leave Herat. Before doing so, we met a somewhat sketchy British fellow who had written the companion guide for Herat but was now in the fuel business. He detailed the many ways he had to pay the Taliban and government officials to get fuel to places like Kandahar Air Base. He estimated the total demand in Afghanistan to be 4.7bn liters (making it one of the largest fuel markets in the world), guessed that the security logistics premium was 100%+ over the fuel price, and explained that fuel prices in Afghanistan are generally uncorrelated to world markets because of smuggling from the Stans and Iran than pushes prices down.
A bit sad to land in dry, dusty Kabul after a nice weekend in Herat, but very glad we got to see some of the country (and one of its nice cities).
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