Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Roads

Cee’s roads challenge this week, had me searching through a few of my albums for something different. I’ve travelled many roads, in many countries, and I do try not to snooze, just in case I miss something.

This long, narrow and very winding road up to Machu Picchu really kept my heart in my mouth. Not a chance I was going to fall asleep on that coach, as I had to keep breathing in every time I saw another vehicle coming towards us down the hill.

This is the road through the town at the bottom of the hill, also very narrow.

A dusty, stony road through Bolivia, made for quite a bumpy ride.

Another sand road through a Bolivian town. Tarmac would be a real luxury.

Back to the USA, and a drive down the highway in Montana under clear blue May skies, was far less stressful. We could see Yellowstone in the distance.

As we travelled through Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming the weather became less Spring-like, and the road was quite slippery.

Back to civilisation, and Times Square is much more populated of course. You can hardly see the road for cars and people. 🙂

Here’s the Lincoln Tunnel, as we sped our way out of the city. No stopping allowed of course. 🙂

Hong Kong roads are also very busy, and quite hair-raising to cross.

In Xian, the roads were extremely congested, even though there weren’t many if any cars around.

Of course what ever road you may be travelling on, it’s always nice to ride in style, so from the ridiculous to the sublime. I was most impressed when our New York taxi arrived. I was expecting one of those yellow cabs.

To see more interpretations of Cee’s theme, just click here.

Travel Challenge: Leading Lines

Ailsa’s travel challenge this week, is ‘Leading lines’. I couldn’t for the life of me think what to post for this, other than roads, power lines or traffic jams. Then I remembered our visit to see the Terracotta Army at the Museum of Qin just outside Xian in Shaanxi Province. It was listed by UNESCO in 1987 as one of the world’s cultural heritage sites.

I had of course heard of this amazing collection of  life-size figures of warriors and horses, but I was absolutely awestruck to actually see them in real life, standing in long lines as if ready for battle. It is said that no two faces are the same, and there are over 8,000 soldiers.

There are columns of soldiers at the front, followed by war chariots at the back.

Excavations are still ongoing in the three pits in which they were discovered by local farmers in 1974. They are a form of funerary art buried with the Emperor Qin Shi Huang in 210-209 BC. They were there to protect him in his afterlife and to make sure that he had people to rule over. I’ve heard of “ruling from the grave” but this is quite ludicrous. 😉

My favourite sculpture is this fabulous horse-drawn carriage, sculpted in copper, which was in a glass case in the actual museum.

It will be years before all the lines of soldiers are excavated and cleaned up, but even now, one can see that the army is arrayed in a rectangular formation, all facing east. In the front there are three rows each with 210 warriors making up the front ranks.Behind them are marching soldiers and horse-drawn war chariots, making up the main body of the army. This is indeed a most amazing spectacle.

So there you have my leading lines of warriors with thousand of others bringing up the rear.