ok so I wasn’t going to meet Cary Grant so how will my train trip unfold. It would be the landscape passing by me like a bucolic tapestry. As everything in Central Mongolia it starts with the dusty Steppes. (By the way I think there were 5 blogs yesterday to catch up with no internet) but this trip passes through the Ural mountains and all the way through Siberia which are filled with forests. I expected vast plains because of the images portrayed in the gulag novels. Perhaps that was the interior emptiness.
The last Mongolian sunset.
All along the way there were wild flowers.
Please put on your Monet vision goggles for that pic.
Then the forests
- The lake was near Irutski where everyone left. Nothing compared to the Heavenly Lake in China.
The area is populated with small communities ready for snow. All houses have at least 4 chimneys with huge stores of logs. I think most of the trees are Silver Birch. Tom do these trees replenish quickly? Who will save the trees?
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On the way to Latvia now. One last picture. These are the much-ballyhooed dachas which serve as summer retreats. They are tiny garages only. Pull up a chair and have a brewsky with a Russky.
