Lop Nur Journals: Happy Snaps

Friday, October 27, 2006

Happy Snaps

It's been a while between drinks, hasn't it. I'm in Turpan, about to head to Dunhuang on a sleeper bus - and let it be known that these two words strike a cold terror into me after the 26 hour one I took across the Taklmakan Desert from Hotan back to Urumqi a few days ago. Alas, it is tough being a heroic traveller these days. I'm sure it beats across the desert by camel and donkey though...

So on my last day in Xinjiang, a fairly random selection of images...

Kashgar Watermelon Man:

Emin Minaret, Turpan:

Jiaohe Ruins, Turpan:

No profound thoughts occur to me at the moment (nor do they most of the time)...maybe later. Right now I have to hit the CD shops to get some Uighur disco music before I leave.

3 Comments:

get me some of that urigir disco

oh and vote 1 josh

By rixy, at 2:44 am
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

By Esther, at 3:01 pm
hey scott its esther
alfie gave me this link
great pictures!
especially the second one
magnificent but...peaceful
seems you really had a good time
i'm glad man

hope all well

By Esther, at 3:04 pm

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Maurilia

In Maurilia, the traveler is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine some old postcards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, two young ladies with white parasols in the place of the munitions factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits; admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of the metropolis Maurilia, when compared to the old, provincial Maurilia, cannot compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old postcards, whereas before, when that provincial Maurilia was before one's eyes, one saw absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if Maurilia had remained unchanged; and in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was.

Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At time even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices' accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one.

Italo Calvino

Lop Nur Journals

Friday, October 27, 2006

Happy Snaps

3 Comments:

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