All right folks – here we go: finally, my series of posts on our Altai summer vacation begins!…

Now, as everyone knows only too well, backpacking across mountains and valleys is always a good idea. But to do so far away from civilization over five days (or even a week or two) isn’t just good, it’s exceedingly good – especially if the route is surrounded by OMG-beautiful views and assorted unusualnesses. I once even compiled a short list of such amazing best-in-the-world mountain-and-valley treks – here. Well that list needs a +1 for sure – and it’s well overdue: the tracks/paths across the Altai Mountains…

I’ve hiked around here on two routes: between Tyungur village and Akkem Lake (in 2016), and between Belyashi and the same Akkem Lake along the Argut river  (in the summer of covid-stricken 2020). The latter was wonderful; but since it rained for several days in 2016 and we didn’t get to see any beautiful views on that route whatsoever, we decided to do a second pass this year – and we don’t regret it at all!…

You can get to Akkem Lake via different routes; we chose not the shortest but probably the most contemplative (in good weather). In total we walked around 45km, but with ups and downs of more than two thousand meters. We completed it in go-slow mode over four days. It’s generally not the most difficult of treks, but office plankton does need to put in at least some pre-training beforehand.

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Hi folks!

Krasnoyarsk Krai industrial-site tour series of posts: done.

Coming up – my Altai summer vacation series of posts…

But in-between – here’s a long post that’s kept being put on the back-burner for this (perhaps its length) or that (I’m always so busy?!) reason, the title to which is introductorily self-explanatory.

First – a fuller explanation…

While waiting for our luggage at La Paz Airport (Bolivia) at the end of our January (2025) trip around Latin America, one of my fellow travelers suggested I share my experiences of the most unusual hotels and lodgings I’ve stayed overnight in. And yes – “lodgings” (mesta obitaniya in Russian) is often the right word here, for many of the places I’ve stayed overnight can hardly be called hotels: some rather strange and hard-to-reach spots simply defy traditional categorization.

And I thought – what a great idea! Although I’ve long lost track of quite how many such (unusual, etc.) lodgings I’ve stayed at down the years, memory vividly brings back the ones that are impossible to forget – for all kinds of reasons: unusual decor, stunning surroundings, remoteness, etc. But if the old memory does need a helping hand – handily, I’ve been taking notes on my overnight stays on my blog – since… let me see now… yes – since 2010!…

I’ll immediately set aside for now such overnight stays as those in Japanese onsens and African lodges, and at camping-glamping sites and guest houses in mountains, forests, and tundra. Historically interesting hotels and tropical paradises are also out (also for now) – even though some of those can be quite extraordinary too. Why? Well, such categories are indeed unusual for visitors to such places/lodgings, but they’re abundant enough to be interesting only as a “type of tourist accommodation” rather than in terms of uniqueness or memorability.

Anyway, enough chit-chat – time for some pretty intro-pics. This one’s from Singapore – the view from one of the many hotels I’ve stayed at overlooking Marina Bay ->

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Elephant in the room alert!…

Did you notice how at the Nazarovsky open-pit mine we saw zero… coal? Like, we visited this massive coal-mining operation, but didn’t see a single chunk of the black stuff?! What?!

Here’s the deal. The insanely massive mechanism that moves sandy rock from one spot to another was the main attraction – by far. So much so that that’s where all our tour time went – gawping at it, mouths agape! But not to worry, for next up was another open-pit mine – Beryozovsky – where we finally got up close and personal with actual coal ->

The mining here works a bit differently because the layer of non-coal-containing rock (called “overburden”) is thinner – plus there’s way more coal: the coal seam here is up to 60 meters thick:

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Still back in July, still back in Krasnoyarsk Krai, next up on our tour of our dear heavy-industrial customers’ operations (after the Vostochny Gold Mine, the Boguchany Aluminum Smelting Plant, and the Boguchany Dam) – another two industrial giants – the Nazárovsky and Beryózovsky coal mines, which both belong to Siberian Coal Energy Company (SUEK). And just like at the other industrial facilities in Krasnoyarsk Krai, the way we were welcomed was as if we were royalty!

// I say royalty – but only… tee-totaling royalty! At every industrial site in Russia that I’ve visited over the past 10–15 years, a no-alcohol rule is strictly enforced – even for visitors. At every entrance (and exit (!)), employees/ workers/ miners all take a breathalyzer test; if the result‘s positive – immediate dismissal. Apparently, way back when this rule first came in (some time in last century), there was initial resistance: “Come on, how can we work without Alexey? He’s a drunkard, sure – but he’s still a master of his trade”. But no: other – sober – Alexeys were found to replace drunk Alexeys. So yes, back to our welcome: it was grand, but there was nothing stronger than fruit juice on the tables!

But enough of the industrial-site sobriety – let me show you the photos. They’re mixed in from both mines. Just to whet your appetite…

Photo 1, Nazarovsky:

Photo 2, Beryozovsky:

Here we go!…

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In yesterday’s post, I told you all about the operations at the Boguchany Aluminum Plant and its herculean appetite for electricity. I mentioned hydroelectric power in passing yesterday too – and not without good reason: for it’s this that satisfies this appetite at the aluminum plant. So off we popped, next door, to the Boguchany (hydroelectric) Dam…

And here she is – the beaut:

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Ok – you’ve had the gold post. Now for a post about another metal. But first – let me back up on the gold topic before segueing to today’s metal…

Two questions…

1. How much gold has humanity extracted in all of history?

2. How much gold‘s left in the Earth’s crust?

I’ll answer :)…

1. If we trust this source, the total amount of gold ever mined in the world is about 216,000 tons (with two-thirds of it mined after 1950!). All of it would fit into a cube measuring 22x22x22 meters. Basically, that’s about the size of a skinny six or seven-story cube-shaped building. Not that much really. And if you rolled all that precious metal into a ball, you’d get a sphere with a diameter of over 26 meters.

2. As for what remains, the numbers vary wildly. From 40,000 to 80,000 tons could still be dug up. But what happens after that? Well, obviously, we’d have to start bringing gold from the Moon, Mars, and Venus – if that’s even possible. But can you imagine how much that would cost?

So that’s the deal with gold. There’s not much left, and the price just keeps going up. Time to move on to another metal – and the industrial systems used to make it…

Here’s a 90%-automated industrial system, where, under the constant watch of digital telemetry and automatic “iron hands”, rectangular containers filled with gray liquid metal move along a conveyor belt. The liquid solidifies, the solidified bars are shaken out, stacked, and packaged by those same iron hands. And you could watch this process forever. So – what’s the metal?…

…Aluminum!

// Thus – we’ve jumped from box 79 (gold: Au) to 13 (aluminum: Al). in the periodic table.

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Ok, no messing about: let’s get stuck straight in with Karl Bryullóv‘s most famous painting:

Yes, that’s my photo of the original masterpiece – taken at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery, where I was on Monday checking out the Bryullov exhibition with some colleagues to boost our collective cultural knowledge fund )…

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Hi folks!

Been a while, yes, but – you know: August! :). Meanwhile – rewind: back to July…

I’ve said this many times, but I’ll say it again: practically all industrial facilities – quarries and mines, power plants and factories, trucks and ships – are permeated through and through with all kinds of cyber-technologies. Indeed, the only non-digitized operation I’ve seen in the last 10 years or so is… the production of coconut oil in Fiji! :).

And since the prefix “cyber-” is, alas, increasingly more often followed by “-incident”, the combination of “cyber + security” is also becoming increasingly popular and in-demand – including at industrial facilities. It’s for this very reason we work closely with a wide variety of manufacturing companies. Over the years, such partnerships have become more and more based on trust – and with that comes our being invited to visit production sites to see how things actually work. And that’s what happened on our July trip to Krasnoyarsk (which I gave a brief summary of in my last post a month ago): We express our appreciation of and respect for our clients, and at the same time satisfy our own curiosity. After all, it truly is very, very interesting to see up close different lesser-known aspects of just how this world really ticks! Not on a TV screen sat in the office or on the couch at home – but in person and live: from a front-row seat and with full immersion, so to speak.

In just three days we managed to visit a whole five sites – the first of which was the Vostochny (“Eastern”) open-pit mine, where the company Polyus (pronounced pOl-yoos) mines gold. And since this quarry is one of the deepest in the world (more precisely, the second deepest – after the US’s Bingham Canyon Mine), it was doubly interesting to see this man-made wonder with our own eyes:

This is what the mine looks like from up above:

An impressive structure!

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It’s been quiet on this here blog of mine of late (sorry for that), but my schedule’s been as full as a Rastafarian’s head of hair. So what have I been up to?…

Well, last Monday, Moi & Co. got on a plane and flew east. And ever since it’s been just four or five hours’ sleep of a night in hotels, a lot of helicopter rides, a zillion photos, and a crazy quantity of impressions. All of which I’ll eventually be imparting to you sooner or later here. And one particular thing I’ll be telling you about later is the food. Yes – that’s something I rarely do, but when I do, it means something culinarily very special occurred. Spoiler: we came up with the phrase “aggressive hospitality”, which stands for tons of food (waaay too much) – and copious quantities of drinks too. (Two other new terms we invented in Krasnoyarsk: “punitive cuisine” and “gastro-extremism”.) But all in due course…

Our Krasnoyarsk (here, in Siberia) stay was simply awesome, and, like I say – more on it later. Meanwhile, I’m already somewhere else in Siberia – on a bank of one of its great rivers…

…And from now on and for the next 25 days there’ll be little internet time for us (if there’s any internet at all), so my tales from the Siberian side will only start appearing here mid-August.

A brief glimpse of Krasnoyarsk:

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Macau. Where is it, and what is it? Does the name sound familiar? I guess many of you will say it’s somewhere in China, figures large in colonial history, has its fair share of shady neighborhoods, and more than its fair share of casinos. And… you’d be right! However, I was here for neither the history, the culture, nor the gambling – but for work: our Asia-Pacific partner conference – the last in our yearly ultramarathon of regional partner conferences.

Read on…