Photos

It will be a long time now before I can look at a poplar tree (тополь in Russian and Uzbek) without thinking of Central Asia; they line the roads everywhere, are used to define boundaries between fields, and so on. You do see them more in the mountain areas such as this scene, but then much of Central Asia is mountainous (over 90% for Kyrgyzstan, 97% for Tajikistan). And when we were there, the poplar leaves were starting to turn their fabulous fall gold color.

The shot was taken on the A362 road that runs from the easternmost Kazakh border point, along Lake Issyk-Kol's north shore, to Balikchi at the west end of the lake. I don't have an exact location for it, but I think we were on the northeast shore of the lake (which is generally not visible from the road). I took it through the front window of the bus -- one disadvantage of traveling with a group is that it's hard to get them to stop even for a magnificent scene like this one, so one has to make do. On the other hand, they let me sit in the jump seat in front whenever I wanted.

Technical: Cropping to get rid of minor things like the driver's silhouette (NOT good enough to include). I remember now that TE darkens pictures more than they appear to me in Photoshop, so I lightened it more than I would for a print or other display.