Dear Reader (2024-12-31)(Recent Travel Post 03 – Buenos Aires – La Boca) It is a grey day here in Calgary. A light snow is falling and there is no line between sky and ground. What we need is a bit of colour, and so in … Continue readingBuenos Aires – La Boca
Dear Reader (2024-12-29)Yes I am alive and doing fine. I hope the same can be said for you and those near and dear to you. Let’s just pretend it has only been a couple of days since my last post. HousekeepingI have a limited amount … Continue readingThe South America Tour Begins
Dear Reader (2024-04-19),In this post, you and I wander Tashkent through backstreets and main streets, past a new apartment building that promotes a fantasy from a rooftop screen that can be read from the street, find apartment layouts revealing, travel briefly through the Soviet era … Continue readingFIVE STANS 36 – END OF THIS LINE
Dear Reader (2024-04-18),It is late afternoon when we board the night train to Tashkent. There is what the mirror says about our ages, what the body says, how we feel, and how we behave. Some go off to the bar car. Three sometimes four of … Continue readingFIVE STANS 35 -NEAR LINE’S END
Dear Reader (2024-04-18),In the last post (Five Stans 33) you and I began exploring Khiva’s old city. In today’s post I continue my jackdaw approach of capturing whatever catches my eye. My travel companions and I visit a weaver (17) who is kind enough to … Continue readingFIVE STANS 34 – A JEWEL PART TWO
Dear Reader (2024-04-17)In the last post (Five Stans 32) you and I left the weird and remarkable Turkmenistan, and crossed into Uzbekistan for the third and last time. In today’s post we visit the third of Uzbekistan’s three Silk Road jewels, Khiva. The first two … Continue readingFive Stans 33 – Third Jewel
Dear Reader (2024-04-16)“In 1971, when Turkmenistan was still part of the Soviet Union, a group of Soviet geologists went to the Karakum (Desert) in search of oil fields. They found what they thought to be a substantial oil field and began drilling. Unfortunately for the … Continue readingFive Stans 32 – An Industrial Accident
Dear Reader (2024-04-15)The post Five Stans 29 provides some background on Ashgabat. After yesterday’s smaller views (Five Stans 30), today is for larger views. CircusThe Turkmen State Circus is the main arena circus in the city, boasting a seating capacity of 1,700 seats. It is … Continue readingFive Stans 31 – Ashgabat – Larger Views
Dear Reader (2024-04-14)In the last post (Five Stans 29) I introduced Ashgabat, and you and I visited the surprising National Carpet Museum. In today’s post you and I wander along streets and pedestrian boulevards reveling in mostly smaller views. In the first image those same … Continue readingFive Stans 30 – Ashgabat – Urban Wander
Dear Reader (2024-04-13),I was worried that you as the reader might be thinking that there are too many images in these posts, and that you might be getting tired of this series. I asked a couple of people for their comments and was told not … Continue readingFive Stans 29 – Very Soft
Dear Reader (2024-04-11),As the previous post (Five Stans 27) was “On the Road”, a fitting companion is “Along the Road”. There are five Roadside Attractions subsets of in today’s post. If you are reading this on Facebook, this post is in five parts. If you … Continue readingFive Stans 28 – Along The Road
Dear Reader (2024-04-10)I don’t know where to begin. Once upon a time I mentioned that I like visual collisions and discontinuities. They help to demonstrate that a binary perspective is a fallacy. Between black and white there are multiple shades of grey, which is where … Continue readingFive Stans 27 – On The Road
Dear Reader (2023-04-02),An element of this grand adventure that I have not mentioned yet is border crossings. They range from non-trivial to Byzantine. The latter is very much the case for the crossing from Uzbekistan into Turkmenistan. The following is not fiction. These are the … Continue readingFive Stans 26 – A Crossing
Dear Reader (2024-03-30),Originally, I thought there was only going to be four posts in this current sequence of Uzbekistan posts. I was wrong. “Five Stans 24 – Bukhara” captures the first part of our visit to Bukhara. Here is part two of that visit. This … Continue readingFive Stans 25 – More Bukhara
Dear Reader (2024-03-26),It was a long day and drive to Bukhara from Samarkand. There were places to stop along the way, including a visit to Ak Saroy Palace (Five Stans 21). If The Registan (Samarkand) is Disney World, then Bukhara is Venice. I have not … Continue readingFive Stans 24 – Bukhara