Mongolian Photographic Expeditions

This may be of interest to photographers visiting Mongolia later this year. When I get back to UB I’m hoping to buy a four-wheel drive to do three road trips around the country. The trips will be of around 10 days each and will probably be in July, (possibly to the south Gobi and to see the Naadam festival at Dalanzadgad), during mid-September (possibly to the eagle festival in Bayan Olgi) and a final trip during early November. Each trip will stop whenever there is something good to photograph though most days will also involve at least 8 hours, bumpy, tortuous, dirt-track driving.

I’d be interested to hear from people who may be in Mongolia during those times and would like to come along for a photographic adventure. You’d need to bring your own camping kit (except a stove and cooking kit) and pay all fuel costs (a few hundred dollars maximum).

Time out, 2005, mk1.

Wow its hot. Well, relatively speaking. I’m taking a sojourn away from Mongolia for a while and after a night in Beijing I got here, to Vancouver. The mission is to pick up kit for the next year and possibly do some snowboarding, though the way the slopes look maybe I was being hopeful bringing my board with me. Anyway, have the camera as well so maybe I’ll get another gallery for the web site.

I’m in that state of not quite being jet-lagged but not yet being totally ‘there’ at the moment. Popping a travel sickness pill on the flight had the desired side effect of sending me to sleep for five of the nine hours in the air and got me into time with western Canada, at least it has for my head and my stomach. There just seems to be 12 hours missing between, how should I put it, ingestion and excretion, not helped by the dubious sandwiches in the airport lounge at Beijing…

Web-site updates

If you have come to my blog without visiting my homepage then you won’t have seen a new gallery that has just been added. This one features a selected sequence of photos from my last visit to Turkey, now way back in 2003. The photos are slightly disjointed so are arranged from the cool of a morning sunrise in Istanbul to the baking mid-day heat of the Mediterranean. Take a look, let me know what you think.

The contact page has also been changed. Now you can read an e-mail address hidden in an image and get in touch with me directly rather than using the previous form. If you can’t read the e-mail address the form is still there, and has also been simplified. Using the form and disguising the e-mail address in the image is a way to avoid spam generated by trawling web-bots, not just me being difficult on purpose.

Taxi driver's 14 commandments

OK, not many taxi drivers in Ulaanbaatar will probably find this page but if one of you does, please spread the following words of enlightenment to your colleagues…

1. Your meter should not be counting down the distance when the taxi is stationary.
2. Should your passenger vomit, or leave any other bodily product in the car, kick him out and clear up the mess before it freezes solid.
3. I travel the same route to work every day and know it is exactly 4 kilometres, not 6.
4. Start your meter when I get in the car and not before.
5. Carrying a passenger does not give you the right to try and get to the front of every queue and overtake every other car on the road.
6. If you almost have no gas in your tank then go and fill up before picking up a passenger, especially if you have to add a kilometre to your route to go round a one-way system to the filling station.
7. When I’m talking to someone else in the cab then do not turn up your CB or hip-hop music to drown us out.
8. Should you tout for fares from the airport your customers are likely to have some baggage – it’s best to empty your boot of the assorted crap you carry and wipe out the remains of the last slaughtered animal you took home.
9. If you have to smoke then open your window a little.
10. It’s not acceptable to pick up fares when drunk.
11. At seven in the evening, after picking up fares all day, you DO have change for a 5000 tug note.
12. It is customary for the front seat to be securely attached to the car.
13. Do not break off all your inside door handles and replace them with pieces of string or coat-hanger wire.
14. Racing your mate in his taxi is best done when I’m not there.

Thanks.