The "tuk tuk" chugged up the avenue of the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar, carrying this very tired, filthy and drained reporter. It was with immense relief that I had arrived "home" to the familiar surrounds of the "PC", after spending two frightening but exhilarating weeks across the border in Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan covering the war.
The roads around Jalalabad had become places of great danger. Bandits, isolated Taliban units and al-Qaeda Arabs were roaming the mountains. The tragic shooting dead of four journalists en route from Jalalabad to the capital, Kabul, had shocked and unnerved western media in the region. I had been staying in the Spinghar Hotel, where the murdered reporters had been based.
I left Jalalabad for the Pakistan border after waiting two days for a small convoy, with armed security, to be organised. During my stay in the city, (and when I journeyed through the tribal areas in Pakistan weeks earlier), I travelled with armed guards. There was something reassuring about having a man with a Kalashnikov by my side in this volatile place.
We encountered trouble crossing into Pakistan. I had no re-entry visa and despite the fact that the Pakistan government had ordered border officials to let journalists through regardless, it took a $50 bribe to get us across.
But parting with dollars had become a regular event during this conflict. Many $10 and $20 dollar notes were quietly slipped into the pockets of guards at security checkpoints and officials in government offices to speed passage and sort out paperwork.
Now, as I arrived at the door of the PC, laden down with a dusty rucksack, laptop and a satellite phone, the head porter, nicknamed Buddy, rushed towards me. I had spent four weeks in this peaceful oasis in this wild northern frontier city during the period when the Taliban still ruled Afghanistan.
"Welcome home, Miss Miriam. We were worried about you," he said. Two weeks earlier, when I left for Afghanistan, I had told him to expect me back in three days.
My time in Pakistan and Afghanistan can be charted through four hotels I stayed in - the swanky but sterile Marriott in Islamabad, the homely and warm PC in Peshawar, the forbidding Serena in Quetta near the southern Afghanistan border and, in Afghanistan, the wretched Spinghar Hotel in Jalalabad.
I arrived in the Marriott on a warm, muggy night on September 15th, just four days after the events in New York and Washington. The extent of what had happened had still not sunk in. Journalists from all over the world were descending on this four-star hotel. When I checked in, the room rate was $145 night. Two days later it had jumped to $250.
The hotel was quickly established as the unofficial media centre. The roof was commandeered by TV channels from all over the world, who were charged $1,000 a day for a 10-ft-square space from which to do live broadcasts.
The big guns were here: Lise Ducet of the BBC, Christine Amanpour from CNN, the eccentric Geraldo Rivera from Fox news, and high profile names from Time magazine, Newsweek and papers all over the world.
In those early weeks of America's campaign against terrorism, and anticipation of an attack on Afghanistan, it was tense in Pakistan. There were daily protests on the streets of Islamabad and in other cities. President Pervez Musharraf stood firm. In the face of rising criticism from Pakistan's Islamic community, he held his nerve, siding with the US and still managing to maintain domestic stability.
One week in the Marriot was enough. Despite its comfortable surroundings it was a cold, unfriendly place. And there were no human interest stories to be gleaned in this newly built capital city. It was time to move nearer the border with Afghanistan, to Peshawar, the capital of the Northern Frontier Province, with its packed bazaars and bustling streets, a place oozing humanity.
There was money to be made from this war, and the Peshawar vultures were out in force. In the reception of the PC, local English-speaking reporters and "fixers" offered their services as translators to newly arrived and innocent foreign journalists. It was impossible to operate without them.
The conflict was a bonanza for them. They charged between $100 and $200 a day for their services, the equivalent of a month's salary for a local doctor. Some of the better fixers were "poached" for even bigger money by the big news organisations.
The PC also increased its room rates from $140 to $200.
With the assistance of a "fixer" and a gun-wielding minder, we visited the refugee camps in Peshawar, where thousands of Afghans were living, victims of previous conflicts in their wartorn country. The scenes of desperation in Jalozai camp were unforgettable, long-time refugees mixing with new arrivals from Afghanistan who had fled their homes fearing the start of American bombing. Five children a week were dying from disease and malnutrition in Jalozai. The "lucky" ones still alive had distended tummies and festering sores all over their bodies.
The hospitals in Peshawar were gearing up to take wounded from the anticipated bombing. Sneaking through the back door of the city's Lady Reading Hospital late one night, I came across patients lying in filthy beds, people sleeping on the ground and seriously ill men, women and children clearly not getting the treatment they needed. There were hardly any medicines. I met one woman who had sold her gold ring to bring her ailing husband some tablets.
After the commencement of the US bombing on October 7th, I moved south for a week from Peshawar to Quetta and the Serena Hotel. We were virtually prisoners there. Pakistani intelligence service agents roamed the hotel undercover, trying to "befriend" unsuspecting journalists to find out their movements. Armed guards roamed the corridors. Early one morning, I opened the door of my room to find a big-bearded guard with a Kalashnikov standing there.
We were not allowed leave the grounds of the hotel without indicating where we were going. The US bombing had raised the stakes, and inflamed already strong passions. We witnessed the rising hostility ourselves one day at the border crossing at Chaman, a tough, three-hour drive from Quetta where thousands of refugees fleeing the bombing were pouring across. The UNHCR had opened a relief camp two kilometres from the crossing. It was harrowing to see families, hungry and thirsty, arriving with their worldly goods on their backs. Three of us, all women journalists, were stoned by protesting Taliban for no reason other than that we were women.
The first civilian victims of the bombing were brought to the local public health hospital in Quetta. Among them was a 12-month-old baby boy with shrapnel wounds who lay alongside his mother in a dirty hospital ward. Four of his brothers and sisters had been killed in the bomb attack.
The gradual collapse of the Taliban saw the first mass entry of journalists into Afghanistan. I headed for Jalalabad, and the Spinghar Hotel. Once a highly rated place, it was now falling apart, feeling the effects of 23 years of conflict. Bloodstained sheets and dirty blankets on the beds, inedible food, occasional electricity blackouts and sometimes no water were our lot. But while the conditions were atrocious, a close bond and camaraderie was built between reporters.
Half of the 100 or so media crew staying there left after the murders of the four journalists. Jalalabad was lawless and the time there nerve-wracking. The town was in the control of three tribal warlords and you never knew quite what to expect when you exited the hotel doors.
The news that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda fighters might be holed up in the mountains nearby in the village of Tora Bora provided extra menace.
One of the highlights was a Thanksgiving dinner organised by some American journalists, who purchased and killed eight turkeys in the bazaar. That was a magical meal I will never forget. After tense days chasing stories, there were nightly gatherings on the balcony outside my bedroom. An electric kettle had been purchased in the market. Cups of tea were drunk while stories were exchanged and anxieties aired.
There was wide-eyed Trent from Denver, whose assignment in Afghanistan represented his first ever time outside the United States, Chris from NBC, who wanted to be in Co Wexford on his annual pilgrimage to take photographs of wildlife, and Matt from Time magazine who insisted on playing his beloved hillbilly music on his laptop CD player.
Our chats were often interspersed with the crackle of gun-fire going off in the background and the sound of American B52 bombers flying overhead to offload bombs on al-Qaeda caves.
My lowest point every day was when these chats finished, and I crawled, freezing cold, into my sleeping bag, realising being in the room leading onto the balcony was not the safest place. Sleep always eventually came.
By early December, as I headed back to Pakistan, and safety, a new interim administration for Afghanistan was on the verge of being agreed in Bonn; the Taliban's last stronghold in Afghanistan, Kandahar, was on the brink of falling and end was in sight to this latest sorry chapter in the Afghan story.
I'd arrived in Islamabad an innocent, with no previous expertise in the region. Three months and four hotels later I was still no expert, but Id seen enough to know that there is nothing simple or straightforward about conflict.
And I was left deeply depressed about the future prospects for Afghanistan.