A Stranger in the Ural Mountains
Bobby Rahe follows a Bashkir legend across Bashkortostan: “We were passing from Europe into Asia. Most of the folks working at the roadside stops had lived there for generations. I was a foreigner, just as I was in Ufa. But I was in good company.”
In the Global Village
Alex Freemon on Dubai’s largest fair: “No, we do not feel as if we have traveled the world any more than, say, a visitor to a library, standing there among the stacks, feels as if she is experiencing a great book.”
Sneaker to Sneaker in the Grand Bara
“One event in Djibouti,” writes Rachel Pieh Jones, “brings together Muslims and Christians and atheists, Djiboutians and French and Americans, men and women, navy and air force and coast guard.”
Streets of Tirana
Between the bright buildings and blue skies of downtown Tirana, the Albanian capital city, you can buy hawks, flowers, and gunfire. Eric Ji sends these photographs.
Have You Been to Hell Today?
Kenny Houston hits the otherworldly caverns at Kizkalesi: “Leaving Heaven, appropriately enough, is a truly daunting prospect. Whoever named the cave was either wise or had a wicked sense of humor, maybe both.”
