Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds would be an appropriate soundtrack for the wild and woolly west of Kazakhstan – the place seems like something hallucinated. As I neared Shetpe, the flat scenery again turned into something like Nevada or Utah, if Utah had camels wandering along flaming oil pipelines. It was really beautiful, with an assortment of plateaus, striated cliff faces, mesas, and buttes. I’m not sure as to the difference of the aforementioned geologic formations, but wanted to include all of them for the sake of completeness. (6-04-05)
