Off Silk Roadin

A buddy of mine has been on an epic trip across Eurasia, and adventure he calls Off Silk Roadin’. His blog is a fairly long form recounting of his tales, but I recommend checking it out mixed in with browsing through his pictures on Flickr. He’s done some in depth touring in places that are often forgotten by travellers, and without saying it, gives a powerful recommendation for going to the Asian Steppes.

One of his best talents is starting conversations with strangers and thereby making friends and getting a much better place for where he is visiting. One quick tale for example:

I popped into a Photo studio for some visa pictures. The three guys who ran the shop were Armenian and eagerly recounted the histry of their families, which lived in what is now northeastern Turkey (where we had just come from) before the “Armenian Genocide” (something I have to learn more about having heard so many conflicting accounts. They sat around, solved crosswords, drank coffee, brewed us a tasty batch, and when they got wind of our journey, pulled out an old Soviet Atlas, pointed at things and recounted stories of their service in the Soviet Army that took them places where we were going to go. A sailor came in and introduced himself as a “semen” (seaman) and when I took a picture of him, suggested I not post it since he travels to the US frequently, and doesn’t want to be listed in the rolodex of the CIA (to which I was presumably contributing.) We encountered this kind of Soviet relic paranoia in several instances, particularly Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan so far.

And tales like that with some of these pictures, and I get that itch on my feet and can hear the open road whispering in my ear.