Dear Reader (2020-10-13),
In today’s single blog post, or trio of Facebook posts (because FB doesn’t sort consistently) the journey continues. Over the course of 4 weeks, 6 other travelers, me, and the tour guide travelled over 6,400 km. Outside of the two memorable overnight train trips, most of those kilometers were covered in small buses the size of an airport transporter. Given the amount of time we spent travelling, I have a large collection of photos “through a bus window”, and most of those bus windows were tinted. Many of those images are dreck, but some I believe capture the epic nature of this part of the world.
Astana (previous post) is a city one works in. Almaty (today’s post), the former capital of Kazakhstan, is a city where people live, play, and pray.
The Photos
~ 1 – Near dawn from the Astana to Almaty overnight train. New contributions to the “Thin Line” series (see Thin Line under Books and Monographs) are rare.
~ 2 – 15 – Almaty, Kazakhstan
~ 5-7 – at the market,
~ 6 – captured with permission – a proud butcher with her horse meat sausage
~ 7 – captured with permission – a suspicious dried fruit vendor
~ 8-11 – at play
~ 12 – Soviet era brutalist architecture has not weathered well
~ 13 – An immortalized Kazakh sage reflects
~ 15 – Through a bus window
~ 16-19 – Through a bus window bound for …
~ 19 – In exchange for roads built under the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, China has gained access to mineral deposits throughout the Five Stans. Off in the distance there is the dust from a Chinese resource extraction project.
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As always, all comments are welcome and sought.
Cheers, Sean
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All rights for all material on any media reserved – © Sean P Drysdale 2020-2024
Hmmm. Coming off a road trip in a small airport transporter sized van, I’m looking at these in a new light. I think what would throw me the most is not being able to read the signs. Does google offer a translation service that lets one take a photo of a sign, and then it tells you what it says?
2. I liked the intricacy of the building, and the composition of the photo. Pity about the photo bombing bird.
The through the window photos are very much what I had imagined that part of the world to look like.
Keith, thank you for visiting and commenting. Yes, Google Translator does work if you have a strong internet connection or have downloaded the appropriate dictionary.