Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Asiatified

Been in Mongolia now for three-ish days. The train was pretty much a reading teadrinking W`odka version of Survivor in a box on wheels with fifteen minute breaks and boiling styrofoam noodles with filmstrips for windows. In all, pretty enjoyable. Baikal waves had piled up mounds of ice on the shore of the Lake while I watched from the coffee car passing over bridges, creeks, boulders running down from snows on high.

Mongolia happened one morning when I woke up after a six-hour Russian border customs operation that was sort of funny. I opened my eyes in my bunk and there were triangles of brown pointing up above vast plains and a blanket of mystery mist. The diesel Mongol rail horde belched diesel and screamed on south through the pass and I made the capitol at 7am. Got invited home to stay with my Russian-Mongol car mate who introduced me to his family and get us out to all the standard places around town that a disoriented post-european might like to go before he gets his steppe legs.


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No pictures now, rumors of camera viruses transmitted when digital congress is allowed between suspect terminals and image devices have me spooked. Hit the Natural History Museum this morning, and met up with the Legendary Kara and Ed yesterday, en route through. I've joined a loose confrerie of people at a bunkhouse with designs to descend upon another tectonic mere and camp some.

Cyrillic slowly becoming intelligible. Hurrah!

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