Their villages and lands divided by mighty rivers that flow from the Tibetan plateau forming the tributaries of one of the three great rivers of the subcontinent, the Brahmaputra. Through name they can locate the family relationship between themselves and a fellow tribesman, between themselves an Abotani. A man's children will take the second syllable of his name as the first syllable of theirs. Dakkar, the son of Kardak, is thirty six generations descended from Abotani. His brothers names start with Dak, his children's will start with Kar. Abotani was a man of the jungle mountains, a hunter and gatherer and like most of the tribes of the north east, their worship was outside of the Hindu pantheon, untouched by the Mughal empires or Buddhist conversion. They were and are animists, today it is called the culture or religion of Donnyi-Polo, Sun-Moon, worship of the spirits. Abotani roamed the mountains until they prostrated themselves into the vast plains of the Brahmaputra valley. Here he met a Goddess who gave him grains of rice and a message of cultivation. He returned to his mountains, to his people and spread the grain over the land and waited for a germination that would never come. Returning to the plains he found the Goddess and enquired for the technique of cultivation. With the seed and the knowledge of plantation he turned back to the mountains and his people with rice and the end of nomadic life, the start of cultivation, of settlement. It is the addition of rice to their bamboo culture that led to a multi course meal in the jungle. Cooking of the rice in bamboo, wrapped in water tight leaves, roasting over a fire. It is a complete meal using the jungle and a machete. Rice introduced rice beer and the Galo devised a unique method of production resulting in the finest brew I have tasted. It is not as strong as the distilled clear liquid version that results in a permanent hang over and an unexpectedly quick drunkenness. The Galo drink is semi sweet, dark in colour and very drinkable. They use smoke the rice husk and place them in the cooked rice, forgetting it for a one week fermentation. The result is placed in a cone over which water is slowly poured over the blackened white rice, filtering through to a bottle underneath.

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I get a little ahead of myself, my visa triumph, I am truly chuffed with this, my favorite stamp in my five passports. Whilst some feel elation at the their football teams triumph, a payrise at work or the thought of their favourite TV program, I was in pure ecstasy leaving the embassy with a stamp. For an infidel such as myself, a visa to the land of the two Mosques is normally only possible if I'm going to work in the country or on an extremely expensive sporadic group tour with a police escort. Not content to work in Australia I am certainly not interested to work for the medieval kingdom of Saud or pay them any sort of money to see their country. So a transit visa was the only possibility. It took four visits in four days to the Saudi embassy in Sa'na, Yemen.

There are posts on the internet about people obtaining transit visas when in possession of a Jordanian visa, the country on the other side of Saudi from Yemen. My first crack at the Saudi embassy was completely unsuccessful. I was told it was open til 12 and I arrived at 11, the embassy was closed at 10. Next day I lined up to the front gate at 8, they sent me across the road to a photocopy shop that sold the visa forms and translators who spoke no English who helped me fill out the visa form in Arabic. Back to the guards outside an enormous wall for a really imposing embassy, they directed me to a travel agency down the road. At the travel agency after much discussion about why I wanted a transit visa, my reason was to save money, about US$200, its enormously cheaper to bus through Saudi than it is to fly over it, they ended up telling me that everything was in order and I should return to the embassy which by this time was closed.

For my third attempt I arrived at 8, lined up, again the guards directed me to the travel agency, I refused to move and stalled the line, the guards made some calls, they let me through. Along a path to a very well designed court yard, conducive to heat dispersal with a semi-functional fountain in the middle and about 200 Yemeni's. I made straight for the door to enter the visa hall, they refused and said I should wait a minute. In Arabic 'wait a minute' is the tips of all fingers on the right hand pressed together, facing skywards and moving up in a few gruff jolts, its the Middle East's lingua franca and the most used piece of body language, even the Israeli's do it. A minute turned into ten and I made another attempt, denied, back to sitting. After an hour of waiting I was getting suspicious, everyone in Muslim garb were been ushered in. The guard at the door disappeared so I made a dash for it and into the hall. There were many lines I took to one, the guy at the counter told me I had to wait, he couldn't approve my visa, only the Consul could. I sat, and I sat, the lines shortened, no one else entered the hall, the lines emptied, the staff left, the guards told me to leave, the guards left, I sat and they turned off the lights. After about half an hour of sitting in an empty room and a few unsuccessful attempts by the guards at ejecting me one of the embassy staff returned to talk to me. He looked at my papers, he said 'Everything is in order, we should issue you the visa, but the Consul needs to sign off on it and today he has personality problems'. I think he meant personal problems, but personality problems was more apt. Content I left after a total of four hours to return the next day.

Again 8 and again the same problem with the guards at the entrance and again at the visa hall. After some negotiations I was in the visa hall in a line to see a guy who told me I needed to see the consul but he was asleep. I waited until midday when an extremely fat hungover guy who looked to be about 20 turned up and pronounced himself to me as the consul. I discussed my plan to pass through his country in order to save $200, he thought it was a valid reason, signed in the box and sent me to a further two counters, one to pay, one to hand over the receipt. Two days later I was back at the embassy with a slip that enabled me to pass the guards without discussion and to a passport with a very swank visa, all in Arabic, a photo that made me look like a mercenary, and an 'Enjoy your time in Saudi Arabia' from the embassy drone. Before I left I got some people to translate the visa's Arabic. It was a visa that could be used anytime within the next three months, it was valid for zero days and I was going by road to Jordan. The proud possessor of a Saudi visa I went and claimed my bus ticket through to Jeddah. Exiting Yemen was more of a problem than entering Saudi Arabia.

I had forgot to register with the police in Yemen, the immigration officer pointed at the big stamp in my passport saying register with the police within seven days. He kept saying Sana, I kept saying Jeddah, we agreed on US$15, I should have bargained harder. The Saudi's had a really slick border post, although it hadn't been maintained, much like the embassy and Jeddah. Jeddah was exceptionally humid and completely Arabless. I felt like I had just bussed to KL in Malaysia, full of Asians, Bangla been spoken everywhere, the compactness, markets of Asia, Philipinos, Malays, Indonesians, Indians, Bengalis, Pakistanis, Africans but no Arabs and no whites. More surprising were the women, walking around hand in hand with men, hair flowing freely, scandalous, a stones throw from Mecca. From the land that exported virulent naziesque Wahhabism across the planet, they should be stoning women in their own backyard before they tell others where to throw their stones. I can't hide my disappointment, I thought I was going to the most conservative country on the planet, I saw more women in five minutes than I had in two weeks in Yemen, I was invited for a smoke, they had western shopping malls and I was gearing myself up to advocate the nuking of the entire country. My faith in Saudi Arabia has been shaken but I was told after my unsuccessful venture to chop chop square that Riyadh is far more conservative. I don't want to give you a bad impression of the place, the government enforces Ramadan, all shops and business close for the five prayers a day, the Mosques are overflowing, people praying all over the street. The one thing that was as I imagined was petrol, the price of water is more than double that of petrol. Been so close to Mecca I thought there might be a little spiritual rub. Watching the TV, the prayers at Mecca and Medina, thousands of people in concentric circles praying to a giant black rock, people from all over the world, except white people, bathed in white clothes, the very artistic and beautiful Arabic writing over the walls, the sing song of the Koran been called out, I can't deny that it interests me. If the misogyny, anti-semitism, ban on pissing standing up, intoxicants, art, music and sex, the medieval punishments, fasting, rules for every situation, violence and most importantly God and Mohammad could all be extracted out of Islam, I think I would find it appealing. But still, with all of the above removed I couldn’t stand and kneel together, I would do the opposite, as much as I find beauty in collective action, I prefer to watch and then do my own thing, I am purely individualistic at heart. As everyone walks around the rock I would walk the opposite direction. Entertaining the idea of a life of rules is possible without critical thought, but once it kicks in, after a quarter of a second, I think, man….this is insanity. Over my travels I have spent so much time in cultures where people are immersed in the rules of God yet constantly breaking them I can't help but question my own atheistic ways, every time I get the same answer, if there is a God, he is really very rude and we should organise an army and declare war on him. The people who pray and are obedient are the poorest and most fucked up people on the planet, those who live in relative peace, security and prosperity don't pay any attention to him. What other conclusion can you draw, God punishes his own people and rewards the infidels. I'm sticking with the infidels and I think you should join us.

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I spent Easter in Lalibela, a UNESCO site, churches carved out of rock, Africa's Petra, one solid Church, one solid structure, not constructed or built but dug into existence out of rock, connected by tunnels, church after church, not another Christian museum, a testament to a superseded belief, a Christianity alive, full of men and women robed in white entranced in prayer. Ethiopia has a Christianity like no other I've seen, semitic, ritualised, untouched by modernity, unadulterated by Roman or Greek paganism, without a breath of Luther, unpoliticised by American evangelcism, the Soviets or the rest of the world this is Semitic Christianity. Women with tattooed crosses on the foreheads, patterned across their necks, covering their hair like Muslims, the pray eerily Muslimesque, standing to kneeling to standing to kneeling, knees smashing against rock followed by foreheads into stone, arms clasped across their chests in a cross, over and over again, children racing, praying at high speed, the older the slower. Each Church packed with black people clad in white, squeezing to find room for an aerobic prayer, the bible made audible by monks in constant recitation.

On Saturday everyone with reeds wrapped around their heads, dipped in holy water in solidarity with Jesus's crown of thorns. For two months leading up to Easter they fasted, no meat, no sex, no alcohol. A complete fast between Easter Friday and Easter Sunday, not morsel of food, not a drop of water. Broken on Easter Sunday with a carnivorous feast, fused with home made alcohol, beer, a wine made from honey called Tej. I joined in the prayer late on Saturday night, Sunday morning, in a church carved out of stone I stumbled in completely drunk on Tej, slightly high on chat/khat/chad, wearing an orange jacket into the middle of a congregation robed in white, breaking my knees on the rock and head on the floor was easy in my inebriated state, standing up was far more difficult. I could see Jesus, he was painted on the wall in front of me but alas I am still unsaved. I can't help but like the ritual, the link with an ancient past, a glimpse into our history, of how we were, I am glad there are people that keep it alive, that history is not consigned to a museum. A call to prayer at dawn, in Arhmaric, a semitic language, sounding very similar to an Ajan, halal/kosher style eating, no pork, the blood is drained, prayers are said before the animals throat is cut. The old testament is as important as the new. They are pre-Muslim, they did not get it from them, apparently they were Jews before they converted to Christianity in the third century. The line between Judaism, Christianity and Islam is given life here. They say they gave refuge to Mohammad's family when he was expelled from Mecca.

This is Abyssinia, this is the old world, they interlocked with the Pharaohs, the Jews, the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia. This is the birthplace of coffee, drunk all day, black and sweet, there is the coffee ceremony, drunk, beans roasted, boiled in water and served with excessive amounts of sugar. This is the only coffee I have ever liked, I do not shake, my guts do not burn, my ass does not explode, I just feel a little more awake. This together with chat/khat/chad, a don't know the spelling, its a leaf that half the country is chewing, a new drug for my wasted on a shoestring tour, a mild amphetamine, chewing in the night without a serious drinking session afterwards will lead to a sleepless night. Its effect is subtle, its initial taste awful, after 30 minutes of chewing a lightness, conversation is smoothed into an uninterrupted flow of ideas. Knee breaking unfathomable bus journeys are tension free as the bus winds around unmade mountain roads, dipping and crawling up hills in an unbranded bus with Ethiopians on their first journey vomiting everywhere. These are a people like no where else I have been, this country is completely unique, it is not Africa, I am not too sure if I am in Africa, at first I thought I was between worlds, between continents, ethnicity's, an intersection of culture but then I realised, this place is too ancient to be called a fusion, it is unbelievably diverse because of its antiquity.

There are multiple language families within this country, when placed against the Indo-European family that stretches from Europe to India the extreme diversity is unparalleled. I have seen black people with blue eyes, narrow Chinese style, sometimes nearly white, sometimes jet black but more often a bronze brown, hooked noses, sharp chiseled features, elongated faces, bums are no longer bumpers, West Africa has given way to slimness with curves. They are close to a claim for the most beautiful people on the planet. They eat injara, a staple made from tef, it is pure iron, somewhere between a sour pancake, a muffin, slathered into a plate with food piled on top, torn off in bits to pick up the food. If there is a word for this country it is unique, they have a 13 month year, 12 equal 30 day months plus a 13th month of 5 or 6 days. They will celebrate the year 2000 this September. The time is different, their midnight falls at our 6am. Approaching dusk the entrance to a house is lined with cut grass, incense burnt, the coffee ceremony begins. The country is exceptionally poor, it is difficult to understand why, the land is fertile, the people resourceful yet in towns the taxis are donkeys and wonky carts. They had 2000 years of feudal rule, followed by 15 years of military Communist rule that nationalised all land, still today you only buy the house on top and get a 99 year lease from the government. The current government has been in power for the last 15 years since they defeated the Soviet backed military, they are from the north, they hold elections to be compliant with post cold war norms. A the last election the opposition won, they are now in jail, they sent out international SMS's, now texting is banned, the government has a monopoly on everything, there is one phone company, one internet company, one gas, one electricity, one water and nothing works. Beer is cheaper than water.

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1. Video: Easter in Lalibela, Ethiopia

I crossed into Mali, the most expensive poorest country in the world from Burkina with a case of giardia that I thought might be malaria. In a hospital of eighteen year old French speaking chain smoking doctors I was correctly diagnosed with the translated help of the stoned guy who had turned a squat into a hotel where I found myself staying. A course of antibiotics and I was ready for another hundred kilometre bus journey that would take ten hours. A stop every thirty minutes, the driver leaving to pay a bribe at the regular police checkpoints, another stop to talk to his mates, the bus breaks down, two hours to watch the sunset, a stop for prayer, a stop to eat, a toilet stop, an internal customs check, one passenger gets off, five get on, they argue with the conductor and are kicked off, three petrol stations we pull into to find the cheapest price and for the driver to have a chat, another without reason and another for good measure. Forty degrees outside, no aircon in an aircon bus where the windows are sealed shut, a bus soaked in sweat. The bus, car, minibus, converted truck invaded at every regular stop by a dozen women plying the aisles selling their wares all balanced on their heads, one with nuts, another frozen tap water tied in a plastic bag, a kid with bananas, bread, meat on sticks wrapped in a torn corner of a used cement bag, muffins, frozen juice, plantain and a dozen things I cant identify. Half of them are selling the same thing, they are screaming to be heard above each other until one finally gets a sale, muffins for fifty cents, she is handed the equivalent of five dollars and goes into spin, there is no change, there is never any change, she rejects the sale.

One currency for a dozen countries printed by a country in the midst of a civil war. I try and buy a drink in a store, I hand across two dollars for a one dollar drink, 'no' exact change only, change is too precious, she won't sell me the drink. She would rather lose business than their change. The capital city called Bamako has dirt roads, goats, American Peace Corp volunteers, women braiding their hair and music. I stayed in the house of a Ghanian car importer, two a month from Europe, a good business if government taxes are avoided. The batteries bought on the street are made in Mali, legally exported to Burkina Faso then smuggled back into Mali to avoid local taxes. He is the last of 37 children, his father was a local King who had seven wives. We went out to see excellent Malian live music one night and the other Malian reggae. Africans copying amaicans longing to be Africans. They sing about returning to Africa from Africa. The circle is complete, nothing exists, there are no roots, just confusion cloaked in 'Jah Rastarfari'. A bus terminal that is the worst in the world, more hustlers than customers, the whole country is feeding on itself, everyone screaming to sell nothing at the highest price possible. They would rather lose the business than accept anything below a first world price. The bus company will lose my business rather than have me pay the correct fare, they cannot believe a white man will not pay more, I am rich, white people give them things, this is a country of beggars that put the Indian beggars to shame. A bus should go around Mali collecting beggars, leave them at the border with the Ivory Coast, those who make it through the civil war alive can board a cargo ship bound for India where they can learn the proper respectful art of begging, the art of begging with shame. An old woman begs for candy, an old man begs for a pen, kids beg for the leftovers from my plate, a guy looking at another guy fixing a motor bike begs for a pen, a kid begs for a watch, an adult for my glasses, an old man can't understand why I won't give him my torch. This is beggar culture extraordinaire, the worlds greatest beggars, the most persistent, kids caked in mud, unwashed, unnamed ask for whatever they see.

There are two types of foreigners in the country the young white girls with no skills who want to help the poor black people and the package French tourists, they all hand out and the Malians can't understand why I don't. This is dependency at its most disgusting, all international aid to Mali should be scrapped, these are people without self-respect, they should stand on their own. They live in a desert and have a thousand children. It is time to be cruel, evolution has been distorted be guilt, the most fucked up societies are populating the planet, there is reward for the most failed strategies, Asia is rising and this place just goes backwards. The Niger river is perfectly West African, it starts near the sea, heads inland to be evaporated by the desert before crawling into Nigeria. So we are at the stage where Mali is in outright second place as the worlds second most shithouse country, I'ld been murdered by bus rides, giardia, first world prices, beggars, hustlers, unending heat, boring food, dehydration through sweat and diarrhea, people with the conversation skills of a parrot and a blankness that says vacant. Its still a long way off Guyana which is in outright first place.

I thought the place was without redemption, until an aid worker talked me into heading to Dogon country, then a Dutch guy who had settled in Mali, then I met an American traveller who spoke French and was on a mission to Dogon on the cheap. I headed off in a taxi with seven passengers, a driver and a Ghanian Christian on a mission to have the Bible dictated in the Dogon language, burnt to CD, posted to America, placed on an MP3 player, sealed so it can't be modified, deleted or have music added, powered by an inbuilt battery, recharged by the sun, three buttons, back a gospel, forward a gospel, play/pause, Christianity at its most scientific. The Dogons are sold as one of the last remaining Africans, unconverted animists, culturally intact, unruined by Muslims or Christians, a living, smiling, begging museum into another age. The Christian is on a mission to bring them civilisation, it is the only competition in the country, will they become Muslims and piss squatting, will they become Christians and piss standing or will they maintain their culture and piss wherever and in whatever direction they want. Dogon country is a really a massive scam, a cartel of highly priced guides who are sweet until they realise no money is heading their way, then threats follow. Against all advice we headed off without a guide, spending four days walking between villages, hiring local guides in the places we wanted to visit. Walking through one Dogon village a guy approached me and my French-American-Canadian travelling companion named Ted and asked if we wanted to stay at his hotel, we said no, he said he would call the police and get us locked up in the gaol unless we stayed at his hotel, we walked on. So you wondering when Mali's redemption will happen?

We slept the first night in Dogon country frozen on a roof then we went down the escarpment to a village called Banani. We were told there would be a funeral, the French tourists could not sleep the night before as the villagers let off their guns through the night. The woman had died a year previously, the funeral went for days, we witnessed one. They gathered in a circle, women on one side, men on the other, on a small plateau under the cliff slightly above the village. On a rock in the middle they placed some of the dead woman's possessions, the drums started, then the men came in blazing with ancient decorated guns, muskets from another age, half of which misfired. A single man or a group of three at a time would do a funeral dance around the dead woman's possessions, the singing would get louder with each pass until an equilibrium was reached, drums and voices in tune and then they would fire their guns into the rock to the howls of the women. Without a thought for gun safety, they loaded their guns, fired at the singing women to their screams, clouds of dust and gunpowder fusing in one of the wildest sights of my life. To finish the men leapt from rock to rock at the edge of the circle, each one sent off by the village Hogon, the priest, firing their guns off randomly into the air, at rocks, without aim. Later in the night, close to sleep drums started and we walked down to a friendly small scale dance contest, men beating upside down bowls and a few drums, a piece of cloth placed next to the drummers for entry, a one foot hop backwards, asses rhythmically punching backwards, a cloud of dust, one on one, women dancing with sleeping babies strapped to their backs, men drunk on millet beer falling over in laughter, the dancers feet and bums lit by flashlight in a village without electricity. We walked for a few days between villages, in searing heat that left me drinking six litres of liquid a day and too dehydrated to piss. This is the Sahel, the edge of the Sahara, it rains once a year, it is so dry that the sweat on my brow evaporates before I can wipe it off. On entering the edge of a village territory a dozen children would attach themselves, asking for candy, pens, gifts.

We slept on roofs, under the stars, a respite from the heat. The Dogons smoked too much one night, saw a snake and lit a bonfire to kill it searing one side of the house. Our last village was Dounan where we caught the market bus back to the main town that serves as an entry point to Dogon country. The market was full of colour, a topless woman with a baby sucking on each tit, goats and unimaginable food. Guideless, we paid our village tax, walked off from our place of rest to see the village. Weaving through alleys serving as main roads past mud brick houses, a turn every few metres in a village where a path never runs straight we found ourselves in an open rock area with a view, a moment to take a photo was interrupted by youths telling us off, we had walked onto a piece of land where only the initiated may enter. We were summoned before three sleeping village elders in a togu-na, the place to resolve disputes, nine rocks supporting a square roof made of a tightly crisscrossed pile of wood. The roof two feet high forcing everyone into a crouch, a dispute resolution mechanism, to get fired up, to stand up impossible, the layers of wood cooling the heat and tempers. For our trespass we paid a $2 fine for the purchase of a chicken to be sacrificed in order to appease the Gods. From Dogon country I headed east towards Gao, the last town before Niger, through endless quantities of sand and dust, bus break downs, five hours late into a town with streets of sand. A stamp from the police where they unsuccessfully tried to extract a bribe. We departed late afternoon, I sat with broken knees in a converted truck through a dirt road to a border post that was closed. We spent the night sleeping in the open on the ground, for the bus to leave Gao for the border early in the morning and pass through to Niger in one day unimaginable, only the most difficult will do, the most illogical, the most time consuming, the most inefficient. When the sun rose the border opened and we passed into Niger, from one desert country to another, from the fourth poorest country in the world to the poorest. My companion was a Bangladeshi, he had been working in Dubai for five years then had spent his savings on three unsuccessful attempts at getting into Spain. He had flown from Dubai to Libya, transited Niger, Mali then to Algeria where he had been caught by the police crossing into Morocco three times. They threw him back into the desert, each attempt had cost him five thousand dollars to smugglers. The last stamp in his passport was an exit stamp from Dubai. The Malian border officials were bemused by his lack of stamps, they asked for a two dollar bribe, after a year without a stamp he obtained an exit stamp from Mali. He entered Niger without a visa, not thinking he would need one, the police left him with only ten euros, a stamp into the country, I bought him lunch, changed his last money into the local currency, CFA. He had set out from one of the poorest countries in Asia to get to the wealth of Europe and now he found himself in the poorest country on earth with only ten euros to his name. He had heard that South Africa was rich, this had become his new dream, he wanted to know where it was, I showed him on the map, he sighed, a long way from West Africa. My opinion of West Africa is currently low, Mali is not the second most shithouse country in the world but I want to get out, its too hard on my head, India and Bangladesh are easy by comparison. The Dogons were a much needed highlight amongst a stampede of stupidity. I can't continue to talk to people and receive blank looks, its too depressing, a regional cerebral vacation has little touristic appeal. Mali was a freak show and it will become more amusing the further I get away from it. I've uploaded photos of Dogon country: http://wokling.com/v/Mali/

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His image towers over the city, a golden statue 12 meters high atop a giant tripod, disected by roads, unreachable the elevator has broken, the gate is locked, three policemen guard three legs from a people who do not exist. His image on the tripod turns to face the rising and setting suns forming the backdrop to an interview I did with his television station, they wanted me to repeat after them some slogan in Turkmen about Turkmenbashi, I am not interested in been propoganda material for a dictator, I said the city is a mirage, I dont know if it exists, but I saw a beautiful wedding today and drunk too much vodka yesterday. His image sits permanently in the corner of the TV, emblossmed in gold, a side shot with software aided cosmetics so the chin that is two may be one, this is channel Turkmenbashi. His image is the backdrop for the program, a group of women sing a song to his greatness. His image exists therefore he exists. His image is built into the exterior of parliament, filled with hallucinations, elected by ghosts, waiting for commands. His image is on the front of his book, a soilder told me in a dream that his book is one of the great works of literature, politics, history and philosophy, this work is the teacher, recounting his peoples glorious history, fundamental role in the development of civilisation, translated into over 20 languaes, he is a prophet without a God, no, a God without a prophet, above, before and after, Dozes, Jebers and Haram-ed. His image as a boy sits in a mothers arms atop a globe carried by a bull, towering above the green median strip, flanked by water features, roads with no traffic and ringed by empty apartment blocks. His image sits at the end of the road on a water fountain in the middle of the desert, an oasis, no, a mirage. His image hangs from the front of the train station. His image is on a billboard, he is looking at his watch, the board turns to tell the time. His image is in the hotel and hangs from outside. His image is on the coins and the notes. His image hangs from the front of the bank. His image does not adorn the palace where he may live. His image is hung from the hundreds of fake marble buildings, five year old buildings that line the grid. His image is always in a suit of blue, a white shirt and a blue tie, a bulge for a stomach and a round Eurasian face. His image is sometimes the smile of the father, sometimes the stern ruler, others the quizical bemused look of the common phantom, always he is big brother. His image sits on that which works and that which doesn't. His image sits in the front of the park of lush green grass that has never been walked on, sat on, lay on, picnic'd on or rested on, preserved by an army in a city of green and blue in the middle of the desert. His image towers over a boulevard of intricate tiled motifs on which only police walk. His image is sterile, his city is sterile, he is the executor of life. His image is on men's lapels, a profile shot on the end of a pin in fake gold. His image is no where to be seen on the beautiful Eurasian women dressed in their ehtnographic best, colour, broaches, braclets, necklaces, figurehugging ankle length dresses, no trace of the evil empire and headscarves of design and colour to make Mohammad shudder. His image transports me 21 years into the past. His image speaks an 800 year old Turkish. His image is not in the bathroom where the toilet is on permanent flush in the only house where people exist, a homestay in the capital, an 18th birthday party, too much vodka, distorted Turkmen music and dancing. His image would hang from the wall of an internet cafe if they were not banned. His image has turned oil and gad into water. His image would be on a packet of cigarettes except he quit a few years ago and banned smoking in public throughout the country. His image was hanging above me as the police questioned me at the entrance to a building of no purpose that sat across from the presidental palace, a photo or four has brought on their fury, fists waving interspersed with a rub of the index finger and thumb, not knowing Turkmen or Russian has its advantages, as the policeman spat at my feet I played dumb and after fifteen minutes he waved me off. His image has been made by oil. His image hangs enlarged on the archways about police checkpoints at the entrance to each town. His image is in the office of the police check points that stop all traffic, dotted every 50 km along roads that through the desert that have no crosses, the police with gold teeth take down the name and passport number of every person passing through, suspicious of me they telephone to check, five to thirty minutes at every post. His image exists, his country does not, I have transited a mirage. His image, the last I saw was at the border, a stroll across to a country without oil or gas, immigration was two wooden tables in the middle of the road surrounded by soilders, a donkey and cart in the distance, welcome to Uzbekistan. Click here for Turkmenistan photos

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