Word: taxi
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...find a taxi driver for the ride into Quetta, one I could trust to get me through the rioters. I settled on an old man who had possibly the worst cab in the parking lot. But he was a "Haji" - a Muslim who'd made the pilgrimage to Mecca - and he radiated a certain serenity. Besides, I thought the zealots in the mob would be impressed by his venerable white beard. Before he took my bags, he quizzed me: "Who is the Superpower? Allah, or America?" Allah, of course. "Get in," he says. "I'll get you into Quetta safely...
...mood to bargain for your own Chinese art, take a 10-minute taxi ride to the Dongtai Road antiques market, where crowded stalls offer everything from kitschy Mao memorabilia to exquisitely carved Qing dynasty wooden doors hauled from nearby mountain villages. For more modern fare, hail another taxi for a five-minute ride west to the small, sleek ShanghART Gallery, where avant-garde artists show off their best work. The gallery is nestled in Fuxing Park, a secluded green space where pensioners go through the dreamlike motions of Tai Chi or hone their falsettos to traditional Shanghai opera...
Thus rejuvenated, head west for 10 minutes in a taxi for a bite to eat at Le Garcon Chinois (Lane 9 off Hengshan Road). Its Chinese-French menu offers dishes like spicy duck-breast salad. Or head back on Lane 9 toward Yang's Kitchen for traditional Shanghai dishes like braised meatballs and drunken chicken. End your day with a drink at M on the Bund, a sumptuous bar and Mediterranean eatery on the Huangpu River. From the seventh-floor balcony overlooking the splendid stretch of Old World colonial trading houses, you can look across at the gleaming, futuristic towers...
...hired a taxi to take us to Kabul. After two days of inquiries, we learned that fighting around Bamiyan had stopped a month before and we would be the first foreign visitors since the Buddhas were destroyed. Ten hours north in the back of a truck brought us to a stop where a group of Taliban fighters escorted us to a stone-and-mud compound. In each corner stood a militiaman armed with a locally made AK-47 assault rifle and guarding piles of ammunition and missiles loosely stacked against a wall. We sat on the ground and tensely drank...
...hired a taxi to take us to Kabul that night, a journey breaking all curfews and punishable by summary execution for the driver. Nobody spoke. As we bribed our way through various checkpoints, festooned with confiscated and unspooled audio and videotape, our fear became oppressive. At 11:30 p.m., a couple of hours from Kabul, our driver informed us that the next few guard posts could not be bought off. With hundreds of traveling Afghans around us, we slept on the floor of a dust-blown restaurant until 3.30 a.m., the hour at which the Taliban allows travel to start...