Our first speaker was Rory Maclean, “The magic bus”, Istanbul to India. Rory set out to visit the places along the classic overland route to India. Starting in Istanbul at the Pudding shop, visiting the spectacular Hagia Sofia, then using mainly public buses to travel through Iran and into Afghanistan, where at one point he landed up at the now infamous Bagram airbase with a group of NGO’s. Along the way Rory bumped into a few of the people who travelled along this way in the 1960’s and never quite made the return journey. Rory’s journey took 5 months, alas “the Magic bus” no longer runs and Afghanistan is once again off limits to all but the most intrepid.

Our second Speaker was Sheila Paine, another of the intrepid bunch who does venture in Afghanistan due to her interest in embroidery and despite being hindered by having to wear a burka to get into the country and travel around managed to capture some great photos of life. Sheila took us to Kandahar, a Taliban town, where the buildings are in ruins and shops have opened inside old shipping containers. At Mazar-I- Sharif we saw some of the beautiful tiled mosques. In the capital Kabul she showed us Chicken Street, a tourist haunt, where a photographer with an old fashioned camera still managed to ply his trade. A fascinating insight into a country we hear only bad news about.

By Padmassana

Coming next: Saturday 4th November 2006

Martin Featherstone will be giving a talk entitled Morocco Off Road. Martin drives into the desert makes discoveries and has adventures. The second talk is to be arranged as David Atkinson’s talk about has been postponed until February.

London meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden at 2.30pm the first Saturday of each month. There is no London meeting in August, but we will be back in September. For more information, you can contact the Globetrotters Info line on +44 (0) 20 8674 6229, or visit the website: www.globetrotters.co.uk