Midnight, May 27, Bayanulak

Nobody in the car as happy as Wanbing 萬兵, after all, Bayanbulak is for him the highlight of the entire trip, and against all odds, we finally made it here and just finished a short session of shoot. Driving in almost total darkness heading to hotel, the plan for tomorrow is finally set - we will have a good ight rest, easy morning so that Neo can get a maintenance for his car, we charge up ourselves, cameras and computers or whatever, then we will go to Bayanbulak for sunset shot. It is a clear night, discussion moved to what we wish tomorrow weather will be, and hope for the best. And I suggested to Wanbing may be to do some shooting for star, to test the Nikon D3 for long time exposure, as well as Wanbing's Canon 5D2.
We arrived at the hotel at midnight, while Huang Zheng, Neo and Pook went to restaurant to order our dinner, Wanbing and I gather our gear and ran to the roof of the 4 storey hotel building to set up our cameras for the stars. We will leave the camera expose and run to restaurant for dinner, I use the shutter released cable to lock shutter B, take a look at my watch, and go to dinner.
On our dinner table, I found the lavish dishes, and a bottle of white wine contributed fromWanbing, finally here in Bayanbulak, we congratulate ourselves, cheer to each other. Pook told me while waiting for the dish and Wanbing and myself to return to table, Neo gave her a tutorial of what we have journey so far and what we will be going to, and using the Canon G10 to record our route.

Between dinner and removing bags to hotel room, and preparing the gear for tomorrow shoot, I made a ew exposures of the night sky, uisng variest set up to try to get the best night image. It was cold, battery drains quickly. I made a succession of captures using Nikon D3 and AF-S 24-70/2.8G ED and AF-S 14-24/2.8G ED, between around 15-30 minutes. Some pictures here for reference, strong wind and the cooking smoke or turbine steam from the hotel we stay and probably the other restaurant clound the sky, not as clear as I hope it will be, but it is late and I ran thru 2 batteies, it was almost 2am and I told myself, time to go to bed!