Lonely Planet: Farah

Lieutenant Granola was in my office this afternoon and happened to mention that he thinks (for whatever reason) that he might eventually be posted to the Central African Republic. I mentioned that I know nothing about the C.A.R. -- not even its capital city -- and think of it only as the sort of place that Foreign Service Officers get sent to when they're being punished for something.

We did a little googling -- the capital is Bangui -- which then led to us looking at the WikiTravel page for Bangui, which doesn't actually look that horrible. From Bangui, we leapt over to the WikiTravel page for Afghanistan to see what sort of advice they might have. The guide is actually surprisingly extensive, but there are tons of blanks waiting to be filled in, and Farah (mentioned only as a province in Southern Afghanistan, which is not where it falls in the USG's geographic taxonomy) has no page whatsoever. Granola and I agreed that this is unacceptable, and are both hell-bent on filling in the information to try to attract a few tourists to sunny Farah.

In the mean time, this photo from the Southern Afghanistan page (and the caption, faithfully reproduced here) was easily our favorite part of the whole guide:



Typical Rural Scene in Southern Afghanistan