I like exploring new places. I like wandering the streets with no particular aim other than to get my bearings a bit and get a feel for a place. I like to not have an answer to the question 'where are you going?' However, it's also fun when you have an objective, a mission, an appointment with the unknown.
'What're you doing Terrance?' 'I'm searching for treasure!'
My treasure hunt wasn't quite Lara Croft or even Robert Langdon in the Da Vinci Code, but it was still exciting for me: I needed to find the wise woman of Moscow, who, if I satisfied her questions, would give me a mystical runic token granting me rapid passage to the east! OooooooOO! :)
Roughly translated I needed to find some obscure Russian travel agents who were in cahoots with Sundowners who were organising my Moscow-Beijing travel. At said obscure travel agent, the chain-smoking old lady, verified who I was and gave me my ticket for the following day from Moscow to Aralsk in Kazakhstan. After explaining my ticket in triplicate and warning me about every possible danger in Russia, she read me the travellers thesaurus of how to be cautious! I had to work a little to extricate myself from her doom-saying. One thing she had been justified in being worried about was that it was friday, they close earlier than other days and are closed on saturday... had I arrived a couple of hours later, getting my ticket would have got a whole lot more complicated.
To please thine eye with some colour to partner this text, here is a church at which I turned right to reach my treasure! (a prettier and more unique sight than the KFC that was an earlier landmark on the directions I had!)
No comments:
Post a Comment