Central Asia Epilogue

I left an abrupt ending to my last post. I guess the trip kind of ended abruptly, so the last post fit that mould. The last few days felt just as abbreviated. ‘Now you’re on a bus, now you’re running around Ulanbaataar, now you’re home.’ There wasn’t some glorious ‘last night looking over the steppe and pondering the experiences of this trip’. After a few weeks back in the States, I’ve had some time to reflect on this voyage and so I’m going to write a post reflecting on my time in Central Asia. Also, now that I’m back on a computer with a decent screen to edit photos on, I am going through my photos for ones that I may have missed along the way. I thought I’d share a few of my favorites and some of those that didn’t make the posts for whatever reason.

It’s the epilogue!

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Baku, Azerbaijan to Beyneu, Kazakhstan

Baku is finally in my rear view mirror, and with it a week and a half of consternation, restlessness, and a gradual acceptance of my short- and long-term life fate. In the fall, I will be starting graduate study in Biostatistics at UCLA. Any new readers from there that might come across this poorly-written sequence of diatribes and petty grievances I call a ‘blog’, welcome. Thanks also to two particular individuals in Baku, Dan and Victoria, who helped me with accommodation and hospitality for what turned out to be more than a few days in Baku. I am in their debt for their willingness to put up with me for what turned out to be a longer-than-intended stay.

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I have mixed feelings about Baku.

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Kvareli, Georgia to Baku, Azerbaijan

I know there were many anecdotes, stories, and images that I wanted to include in this blog post, but unfortunately the only record I have of them are hurriedly scribbled notes on loose-leaf sheets of paper attached to a clipboard over the last 10 days or so. Things like “… stuffed in the back of a Lada and thrown off a bridge”, or “… jackals, dogs, and military drums”, or “four boisterous dudes in a Lada”. I’ll try to remember what I was thinking at these points in time. I swear there were coherent thoughts behind each of these short notes, but for the life of me I don’t really remember them fully. Here we go…

Continue reading Kvareli, Georgia to Baku, Azerbaijan