hi,
1. actually we asians look like a minority tribe, either the Hazarans or the Tajik tribe of the Afghans. I saw a few of the people and I said to myself "wah, you and I could be having a beer in Dempsey, if not for the fact that you have turban and a blanket wrapped over your shoulder". Needless to say, alot of the girls there are very chio also, like some Nepalese mountain tribe, but i leave that for another story.
2. My biggest fear was being kidnapped and my company not paying the random (quite el cheapo HR policy) and then the kidnappers have to cut off my ear or a finger demand respect. That was my biggest fear. I made friends with Head of the Kuchi tribe so that i can hedge my bets in case any thing happened. That was the only time I had an armed bodyguard sitting in front of me with an AK-47.
3. The Afghans are interesting people: Proud, enterprising, rugged natural born fighers, they have never been beaten before, they fought the british twice and won. Remember India history where the Mogul invaded and ruled Pakistan and India. The Afghans WERE the Moguls; Babur the ruler of india whose lineage could be traced to Genghis Khan was buried in Kabul. They have this concept of the CODE, this CODE is a tribal code of conduct. This sacred code is above family and religion, and part of the problem is that there are 16 tribes in Afghanistan trying to move from the CODE into something which is workable for everybody.
4. Camera-wise. I had a Olympus 35SP slung across my shoulder. Half the shots were in AE and half manual. The EV difference between Sunlight and shadows was about 5 to 7. In retrospect, I should not have pushed to 1600 (800 + Yellow filter), instead,I should have considered either 800 for indoors or 400 outdoors+ Yellow Filter (1 stop compensation). The camera worked very well in sub-zero condition (5 to -2).
5. For my next trip there, I would bring the XA4 as a backup, the 28mm lens works very well and I used it flawlessly in my Nepal trip in December. A lot of picture taking took place in the car while moving about with my half-body sticking out of the car, so alot of 1/500 + Infinity shooting, so perhaps autofocus isn't a good idea. Also, for the bazaar pictures, I had to depend on DOF shooting, ie. narrow aperture to capture people + background.
cheers!
raytoei
some of the bazzar are atmospheric and scenes from another world.
