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Some absurdist god's curious plans.
I figured out why we were having such a hard time getting transport through China. There's this whole, er, National Day thing. Because it wasn't enough to have watched fireworks and celebration in Kyiv and Kazan. It's even the start of a Golden Week. If some have their way, this might even be the last National Day for which there is a Golden ( Read more... ) -
... and don't be surprised if we come home with tattoos. :)
One of the things that makes it most clear to me that we're Far From Home is the writing we see around the city, the most intelligible of which is the Cyrillic-plus-extra-characters that modern Mongolian is written in.
( click here if you have a geeky interest in writing systems ) -
It's new to me!
- Crossed a border illegally. Two borders!
- Been in a car that flipped over.
- Seen vast stretches of wild-growing pot.
- Been denied exit from a country.
- Bribed a police officer.
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On caladri's most excellent nature
caladri bought me two kilograms of horse-milk cheese! If that ain't love then I don't know what love is. It's very hard and salty, a lot like parmesan, but also kind of sweet, in a roasted-chestnut sort of way. Mmmm. I plan to ambush anyone who visits me in the near future with minestrone with horsemilk cheese, or maybe some sort of garlicky pasta. ( Read more... ) -
Mongolia by the numbers
- 1 hill carved into the shape of Genghis Khan looming over Ulaan Baatar.
- 2 ravens living in a nest made of cow ribs and lined with leaves from nearby ancestral cannabis.
- 3 camels grazing in a field.
- 4 sheep vertebrae strung artistically on baling wire at a days-old nomad camp.
- 5 saddled horses hitched outside a bar in Sukhbataar.
- 6 yaks in the road ( Read more... )
- 1 hill carved into the shape of Genghis Khan looming over Ulaan Baatar.
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peace on earth
za. I am in an Internet Center in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. My cell phone is dead, the charger is shattered, and the keyboard is just about as high as I can lift my arms. There are so many things I wanted to tell you, folks. An endless stream of posts queued up and discussed at length with corivax about our Story and our strange Trip and this place and ( Read more... ) -
Cities, subways, rivers.
About half of the cities with over a million people are celebrating some sort of anniversary and all of those are slathered with signs proclaiming how old the city is - some we've past through had four digit numbers and appeared to be using at least base 10. Kazan was a charming, infectious city - the capital of the would-be republic of Tatarstan ( Read more... )
