Somewhere down the road

Terraced farmland, as viewed from my seat on the train.

The skies are grey in the villages, and even more so in the cities. It's dreary season.
Coffee (below) adds some excitement to the trip, of course! :-)

I’m on a rail trip this week, about 500 miles away from my lovable 15-pound Pekingese fur ball. 

The train is as modern as they come (better than any airplane I’ve ever been on), but the further away I get from Bamboo Forest, the more antiquated the scenes that pass my line of vision.

The mountain villages may be far from the big-city sophistication, but what lovely landscape greets the farmers each morning!

I got off the train in a big city of about 10 million. It is dirty and dreary. They need to run the whole fleet of motor vehicles in this town through a car wash. Some sun would be nice, but even if the clouds lifted I’m not sure we would see it through the polluted skies.

This morning it was raining cats and dogs and my friend and I got drenched in our unsuccessful bid to flag down a taxi. We gave up after half an hour and scrapped our plans for the morning. It is still pouring.  

It's still cold too. I'm wearing three pairs of socks inside my fur-lined boots and even have on two layers of long johns. Winters are brutal almost everywhere in this country, even when {sigh} the calendar officially says spring.

If rainy season is in the summer, then what is this?