Year of the Tiger

Twenty six days is a long time to be on the road. I've been away longer, but never without the most essential of traveling tools - my computer. Just one week into the trip my faithful HP gave up the ghost. No skype, no movies, no hulu, no NPR, no scriptures, no facebook, no blogging, no pre-flight planning or schedule updates; everything done by phone, my cell phone bill was not pretty. Aside from the computer problems the trip was very cool.

We were in Shanghai for the Chinese lunar new year. I witnessed one of the best fireworks displays of my life out the window of my 35th floor hotel room window.

For more than 4 hours the people of Shanghai set off fireworks all over the city. Just before midnight it started to snow and the visibility went down but you could still hear explosions from every quarter.

When we flew back to Abu Dhabi the next night, every city large and small were still celebrating. The city of Kungming: most of the lights in this picture are fireworks.

We also had the opportunity to fly to Kabul, Afghanistan (my first time, so a new pin on the map!). This normal looking Land cruiser is almost 12,000 pounds, armored and very cramped inside. The official who ordered it didn't spring for the blast shield under the vehicle - might not be the smartest decision in a IED rich environment. We took two of these cars up to Kabul.

We landed in Kabul right before the sun went down. It was nice to fly in when we could see the mountains. About three hours on the ground and we were off (with no lights on) to Karachi, Pakistan (another garden spot and a new pin!).

On our return, Abu Dhabi was fogged in. We wanted to land at Sharjah, but they had no place for us to park, so we ended up in Dubai.

After six hours of rest we flew back to Abu Dhabi. We got a great view of the palm island and the tallest building (not being used) in the world.

Another beautiful sunrise over a troubled part to the world.

Pearl Tower in Shanghai.

Vertigo inducing mall in Shanghai.

All I could think about for 26 days, was how much snow I was missing.