While driving to our Kazakhstan destination the next day, we saw a herd of horses standing in a pond not far from the road.  As is common with this tour, that meant stopping the bus, and getting out for half an hour of photography.  The horses did indeed present wonderful images to capture (bottom). However, we were intrigued by the cowboys controlling this herd riding their dirt motorcycles (in lieu of horseback) to round them up (top).

Another roadside cemetery gave us a chance to stretch our legs and further explore.

Our main target for today was the Altyn-Emel National Park known for their famed Singing Dunes. The sand dunes get their name from the way their particles rub against each other and make a sound, when the wind is blowing hard, or a person’s footfall creates a mini-landslide.

Jamil, our local guide in both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, loved to have fun, and started jumping for joy (and our cameras) on the dunes (left-center and bottom). Many small lizards were creating intricate trails in the sand (right-center and bottom), so Evelyn decided to capture them too (upper-right).

Another major destination along our tour was Charyn Canyon. This is a colorful, multi-layered deep ravine canyon in Kazakhstan, looking like a smaller scale Grand Canyon in Arizona. The road to reach this canyon is steep and poorly maintained, to the point that only four-wheel drives are allowed (and for very good reason!).

Throughout the canyon are natural rock formations that give the impressions of various animals in a petrified zoo.  The frog and toad in upper-right is pretty obvious.  The owl in upper left also stands out pretty quickly.  Which others can you spot in the block above?

We had a chance to stretch our imagination with seeing “animals in the sky,” like the flying dragon (middle-left)… ☺