[Leica] Leicas in the middle of nowhere

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Peter Klein wrote: 

> Hi, y'all!  I am on vacation right now, and want to
> relate an improbable
> tale.
> 
> We went to the rim of Hell's Canyon, 6,000 feet above
> the Snake River at
> the Northeastern corner of Oregon, on the Idaho border. 
> Drove 64 miles
> from Enterprise, OR to get there, the last 14 miles on a
> truly amazing
> gravel road, up, up, up in second gear, with lots of fresh
> air just off
> the side of the road. I saw more wildflowers than I've
> ever seen before,
> plus multitudes of butterflies everywhere.
> 
> The canyon was awe-inspiring. Hiked about all afternoon. 
> Just before we
> headed back, we climbed the fire tower. As I get to the
> top, a voice calls
> out, "Hi, come on in!" So I do. And the Forest
> Service guy looks at me and
> says, "Say, is that an M6?"
> 
> Turns out he does photography when he's not in the
> middle of nowhere
> watching for forest fires.  He has an M6, but that's at
> home. So I showed
> him my M8, and he showed me his D20 with a big white
> 100-400.
> 
> Note well: The M8 shutter can spook deer, ground squirels
> and even the
> occasional pocket gopher.  Although said critters were
> often too intent on
> mooching our lunch to pay the camera much mind.
> 
> Everybody be good, I'll be back with pics in a few
> days.
> 
> --Peter


This could be the start of an interesting thread.

In 2002 I traveled along the Chinese Silk Road into far western China with 
my then 17 year-old daughter.  From Beijing by way of Urumqi we reached 
Kashgar, the western-most city in China, in the region of Central Asia where 
China converges with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan.  The 
borders largely follow the mighty Tien Shan, Karakoram and Pamir ranges, 
which stopped the forward progress of Alexander's armies. One of the most 
distant cities in the world from any coastline, Kashgar lies at the junction 
of the northern and southern routes around the vast, hot, trackless 
Taklamakan Desert (name means 'the place you enter but do not leave'). To 
give you an idea of how the Taklamakan is situated, it's hard against huge 
mountain ranges on the west, north and south, and its eastern flank is the 
Gobi Desert. Tough access. But, being an oasis and crossroads town on the 
desert periphery, Kashgar is home to the largest weekly livestock bazaar in
 the world -- thousands of traders from miles around come every Sunday to 
trade in hoofed creatures, including Dromedary camels, descendants of 
Ferghana horses, numerous varieties of sheep and goats -- and the market is 
a Babel of Turkic, Russian, Chinese and Central Asian languages. The local 
people are Uighyrs, a nomadic Muslim people, now increasingly dominated by 
Han Chinese migrants.  There are at most a half-dozen hotels in town of very 
modest standard that cater to foreign travelers, and, during the week or so 
we were there, there were two Leicas in town -- my M6 and the M2 belonging 
to the one other American traveler I ran across.  It was only natural for us 
to strike up an acquaintance, and that's how I got to know James Delano, a 
Leica photographer who makes his living doing black-and-white travel and 
editorial photography and occasional reportage in Asia. Some recent work 
here: 
www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0806/delano-intro.html

Any other tales of "Leicas in the middle of nowhere"?

Peter.
SF, CA