A Cosmopolitan Quest!

We're back! From a highly cosmopolitan, immensely fun, albeit too expensive, outrageously delicious experience in DUBAI!

I'll give you the blow by blow low down on how we conquered yet another strangely wonderful place we call planet Earth. But first things first. I feel compelled to have you travel with us to our jumping off point. That alone is adventure, ladies and gents! Let's take a train- A central Asian train, no less...

Our trip will take 24 hours thru the most BORING landscape on earth. It is desert, but not the beautiful desert of California or the exotic landscape of the middle east that is dotted with oases of palms. This is just bleak! Hard packed, salty soil, with interspersed sage brush type bushes and mangy cows and sheep is all one will find here. Throw in a nice mix of garbage all along the tracks- plastic pop bottles, a myriad of plastic shopping bags waving like Buddhist prayer flags on every bush, and an assortment of contruction materials- enough to build several homes if one is savvy, and voila, there you have it a picture of our mundane scenery for 1,000 miles. Let me illustrate for you:

The photo above was of interest to us. We suspect that this is actually a uranium mining operation, which is quite prolific in our area. Did you know, in Soviet times, the government would put the miners on trains with no windows, haul them to the mining sites on twisting, winding tracks for miles and miles and offload them underground so they could neither know where they were themselves, and consequently not be able to disclose the location of the deposits! Things are quite so bad now, mostly because western companies are overseeing the mining operations, but still, as you can see, a bit out of the way, and "hidden".

Now, what does the inside of a real live train look like? Well, let me show you! They are actually quite comfy, if NOT travelling with monkey children. For 18 years I have been saddled with the label of "mother of monkey children". Sad, but true. Oops! Lunch is ready, I'll have to continue in my next post. Sorry to leave you hanging like that, but we can't have burned rice now can we?

Until Next Time,

Your Steppe Sister