"Baghdad is dying, we are all just waiting in line." Khaled -- not his real name to protect his life -- one of our Iraqi employees, said the words softy, his eyes glossing over.

It was during a conversation with our Bureau Chief Cal Perry, talking about work in the bureau, and I was helping out translating. But the conversation had quickly shifted from business to life.

"It's so hard for me Arwa. This skull won¹t absorb English," he said, smacking both palms against his head. "I just have too much on my mind. I'm supporting three families, most of them women, each time my phone rings my heart sinks thinking that one of them was killed."

Khaled is a well-built man, proud and softly spoken. But like too many others, utterly broken by the hardship of life in the capital. Helpless in the face of the violence. Moving mechanically through each day, just hoping to reach tomorrow.

There absolutely nothing to say. Reassuring words ring hollow. And so I just said "I know." And his eyes glazed over even more.

Iraqis are strong and proud. You won't often see their suffering in their actions or in their voices. You see it in their eyes. Baghdad is dying.

-- From CNN Correspondent Arwa Damon, Baghdad

I've just crawled into my sleeping bag but I can't imagine I'll be able to sleep. I can't even identify all of the different sounds I'm hearing. Right now some sort of flute seems to be playing over drums. Further away there is some female voice singing in Hindi over a really tin-sounding speaker system. Now a sitar. I'm not kidding -- each time I identify a sound -- a new one pops up.

Today we arrived at the Ardh Kumbh Mela in the north Indian city of Allahabad. For about 45 days this place is home to one of the largest gatherings of human beings on earth. Organizers say the "big" Kumbh Mela -- which happens every 12 years -- draws up to 60 or 70 million Hindu devotees. "Ardh" means "half" and this festival happens in the middle of the 12 year cycle. Organizers say tens of millions will make the pilgrimage here. And ... the Hajj? Well, that gets just over 2 million. It kind of puts it into perspective.

We're getting up before sunrise to see the devoted take a dip in the water here at the confluence of three rivers (one mystical) the other two are visible (Ganges and Yumena.) The Hindu belief is that a dip in the river at an auspicious time will wash their sins away and stop the process of reincarnation. The atomsphere here is a little carnival-esque and it is so spread out that it is hard to get a sense for it.

There are some wild scenes that unfold. Today we watched as a Sadhu (holy man) lit an area of sticks on fire and walked across it to sit on a swinging chair of nails over the fire and mediatate. His "associate" who spent some of the time pulling a rope to keep the Sadhu's swing in motion told us that the holy man didn't usually do this in front of crowds as he didn't like the attention.

We’re on a mission … to get to the village of Liboi on the Kenya-Somalia border -- a tiny spot on the map which has been the entry point for many fleeing victims of Somalia’s clan wars since the early 1990s.

We’ve chartered a plane in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, (a six-seater Cessna with a two-man crew and carrying 300 kilos of gear.) Destination, the tiny town of Dadaab in the country’s east. The flight is smooth and uneventful, thanks to the experienced German pilot who clearly knows his way around the thick clouds. Along the way we get an amazing double-view of the snow-capped peaks of Mounts Kenya and Kilimanjaro.

Two hours later we’re in Dadaab and meet up with the rest of our crew which drove up the night before. We pack the 4x4 and head due east to the border. The roads are unbelievably bad, the terrain inhospistable on a good day. I wonder to myself, even if the Somalis refugees make it across the border, walking the 75 kilometres to Liboi under a 50-degree sun is suicidal at best. Every now and then we see antelopes and other wild game skipping across the landscape while a warthog and her little family scamper at the sight of our loud and dusty vehicle.

Three hours later we finally get to our destination, the village of Liboi a few miles from the border. It’s literally a one-horse town -- dry, dusty, deplorable -- with families of refugees lining both side of the main dust-filled street: Men, women, children and more children.

We check into the only hotel available. It claims to offer five star service. Actually it’s a dive with no electricity, a roach motel with no running water but (thank God,) cold soft drinks. We devour what seems a fridge-full of drinks, quenching our thirst from the now unbearable heat.

It’s going to be a tough few days here, but I’m thinking of the poor refugees stranded across the border with their few belongings and fast running out of water and food. At least we know we’ll be leaving this God-forsaken land in just a matter of days. These refugees don’t know how long they’ll be in this "black-hole," not wanting to return to Mogadishu due to fighting and not knowing who will eventually come to their rescue here in the middle of nowhere in Africa.

A few hours after waking up to the sounds of heavy gunfire, our Bureau Chief Cal Perry yelled: "I want a cameraman on the roof NOW -- get the fighter jets!" Air support for the "Haifa street battle" had arrived.

Within minutes, our engineers and cameramen were on the roof transmitting live pictures of fighter jets in the sky and Apache helicopters firing missiles; Correspondent Arwa Damon (embedded along with cameraman Dominic Swan on this operation) was phoning in reports with loud gunfire in the background. Correspondent Ryan Chilcote was reporting live as the battle in the heart of the capital intensified. Shortly afterwards Anchor/Correspondent Michael Holmes arrived from the streets of Baghdad and headed straight to the second live location.

All three CNN correspondents were in place for breaking news we have not seen in Baghdad for a while. Producers in the newsroom were making calls and passing on information to correspondents on the roof. Cal was running from the roof to the newsroom throughout making sure everyone on the roof had body armor and helmets on as he was overseeing our coverage.

The fighting died down by late afternoon. But tomorrow is a new day and every day in Baghdad brings a different story, a bombing, a mass kidnapping, a grisly discovery of tortured bodies, or a battle between insurgents and the military in the city center. But one thing never changes, we are all here as one team doing our best to cover a war that is becoming more and more difficult to cover every day.
-- from Jomana Karadsheh in Baghdad