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Just had a gorgeous late Spring snowstorm. Temperatures fell to 28º F last night and it was still only 32º F at 10:00 a.m. After the 90º F-plus temperatures I had just experienced in Turkmenistan this was quite a relief. It was easy to imagine that it was Fall and an ever-invigorating Winter was just about to begin. Of course this was just an illusion. The Solstice is only twenty-four days away and we are faced with the prospect of yet another dreadful Summer.  View from the window of my hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi (click on photo for enlargement)

In an Earlier Post I commented on Ashgabat’s incredible array of huge white buildings. Well, it is now official: Ashgabat has More White Marble Buildings  per square foot than any other city in the world. Guinness World Records editor-in-chief Craig Glenday on Saturday awarded Ashgabat the record for the highest density of white marble-clad buildings, saying it "shows that the architectural re-styling effort led by the Turkmen government has come to a high spectacular level". White Behemoths in Ashgabat As noted earlier, Ashgabat is already in the Guiness Book of World Records for the world’s largest handmade carpet and the world’s largest ferris wheel. Update: HIGHEST DENSITY OF WHITE MARBLE-CLAD BUILDINGS . In an impressive architectural re-styling effort led by the government of Turkmenistan, an area measuring 22 km² (8.49 mi²) in the capital Ashgabat boasts 543 new buildings clad with 4,513,584 m² (48,583,619 ft²) of white marble. If the marble was laid out flat, the...

My initial interest in Turkmenistan was spurred by my researches into the Mongolian Invasion Of Khwarezm , the ancient realm straddling the lower Amu Darya River and its delta where it flows into the Aral Sea, in the winter of 1220-21. The territory of old Khwarezm is today encompassed by both Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. I had earlier visited Khiva , Janpiq Qala (fortress), and Gyaur Qala in the part of Khwarezm now in Uzbekistan, all sites attacked by Chingis Khan’s sons Ögedei and Chagatai as the Mongols swept through the region. The old Khwarezm capital of Gurganj is in Turkmenistan, however, eight and a half miles from the border and thirteen miles from Gyaur Qala. The ruins of Gurganj are close to the city of Konye (old) Urgench, not to be confused with the new city of Urgench in Uzbekistan. I of course wanted to visit Gurganj, which had put up the fiercest resistance of any city the Mongols had up to that point in time encountered in Islamic Inner Asia, but since I had no T...

Wandered into Hagia Sofia in Istanbul to see the purported tomb of Enrico (Henrico) Dandolo. As most of you know, Dandolo was the Venetian doge who engineering the Fourth Crusade that resulted in the sack of Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1204. As John Julius Norwich put it in  Byzantium: The Decline and Fall , volume three of his magisterial history of the Byzantine Empire: There are few greater ironies in History than the fact that the fate of Eastern Christendom should have been sealed—and half of Europe condemned to some five hundred years of Muslim rule—by men who fought under the banner of the Cross. Those men were transported, inspired, encouraged, and ultimately led by Enrico Dandolo in the name of the Venetian Republic; and, just as Venice derived the major advantage from the tragedy, so she and her magnificent old doge must accept the responsibility for the havoc that they have wrought on the world.  Interior of Hagia Sofia (click on photos for enlargements) The...