We were lucky to be invited to the opening day races of the Ahal Velayat Hippodrome. It was another cold and wet day but we had amazing seats inside the beautiful complex directly over the track. The building itself is beautiful and the design well thought out.

I took some photos through the plexiglass but wasn’t satisfied with being in deluxe seats and of course I wanted to go outside. The Russian photographer, Julia Kuznetsova, managed to get down to some seats just out of the rain but at least outside so I followed her down. So I was able to shoot some of the races from a better vantage point.

Everyone had a superb day at the races despite the rain! Here is Kerim Basimov, our chief, awarding the winning horse:

There was a beautiful display of artwork inside the complex but I had watched all the races and didn’t have time to check them all out. Here are a few that I did look at:

and the group of docents looking after the collection:

We then had an interesting lunch that ended even more interestingly. We were seated at places where people had already eaten. The plates weren’t taken away so I waited and then gathered up the dirty plates and tried to give them to the waiter who seemed to indicate that we were to use them again. Oh well, I had a clean spoon at my place and used an Hors d’oeuvre plate. Everything is always set up perfectly but there are also always interesting things like this that happen.

Next Jessica Eile-Keith and I excused ourselves from the table and said we were going to the bathroom. We didn’t tarry but when we came out everyone was gone. We asked someone (supposedly security) about our group and he said to wait. The diplomats were all exiting so we waited. And waited. We decided it was better to stay in one place and assumed that the group would notice two people missing!

After a while the security guard said the group was in Ashgabat! Just then Dr. Jalil Ghiadi came and asked where we had gone. He noticed we were missing and came to find us. Jalil speaks Turkmen and he confirmed with security that the group had left us all behind and was back at the Atlary. Jalil arranged for a car to take us back and we enjoyed a nice time together.

We ended up arriving at almost the same time as the rest of the group. They hadn’t left when security thought they did, but since Jalil was also missing they assumed we had all gone off together and didn’t worry about us.

Here’s a photo of Jalil during his television interview and Julia Kuznetsovaat the track and Nadja Tarasova and Artur Baboev, who sat above me. Under that is a photo of a Turkman I really like!

You can check out all of my photos from the races on FLickr.