The Perfect Pick-Me-Up for Long Caravan Rides

A Uighur energy drink found in Urumqi, China.

Manas Bad-Ass

Almaty graffiti inspired by Central Asia's favorite epic poem.

What's Your Beef

Is this Almaty's Green Market? Or Karakol's animal market on a bad day?

Ghost Spa

Jeti Oghuz is a small town set against the picturesque background of deep red sandstone cliffs. It was one of the many resorts built around Issyk-Kul during the Soviet period, and like the rest of them, it doesn't have a big tourist flow today. Its last moment of glory came in 1994, when Jeti Oghuz was chosen as the site of the first summit between Boris Yeltsin and Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev. While still operating, the Jeti Oghuz resort complex looks run-down and creepy.

Since I have a soft spot for Soviet ruins, I wanted to get inside and poke around. So I paid the fifty-cent fee for 15 minutes of using their mineral-water pool. The water in the pool looked kind of grimy and it wasn't as hot as it was supposed to be, so I used my allotted time to take pictures of the facilities. Here are a few.

I Just Couldn't Stan It

Mao banned blogging in his address to the 3rd Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.

Sorry about the lapse in posts, but what could I do? China hates freedom.
Now I'm in freedom-loving Siberia, where - get this - it is very cold. This is a good reason for me to spend some time indoors at internet-kafe and attempt to catch up on a month's worth of misadventures, starting with a couple of posts I had half-written in Kazakhstan, thinking naively I would be able to complete and post them on arrival in Urumqi. Now finally they can see the light. Thanks, Putin, for protecting liberty. Four more years!