Bakening: nothing to do with baking or bacon – and a lot to do with meditation!

Hi folks!

Kamchatka – the remote peninsula that just keeps on giving (you more and more OMG-astonishing-bewildering-meditationing-mindblowing impressions and sensations). But you know that already if you’re not new to this here blog of mine. If you are new – read on: you’ll get the drift in a single post – this one!…

And so, onward we choppered – along the Sreddiny Range after our brief landing on Khangar. Next up – as you’ve already guessed from the title: the volcano called Bakening. No – not Báke-ening, but Bakéning, so you can banish images of either baking a cake, or frying streaky bacon with your full English right now – before you work up an untimely appetite!…

[Returning from the kitchen…] Now where was I? Ah yes – Bakéning volcano…

So what can I say? I’ll say first this was the first time I’d seen it; I’ll say second…: oh my grandiosely gorgeous! ->

There it is on the horizon – still a hundred kilometers away! ->

A hundred kilometers? Yes – we were lucky with the (famously normally bad) weather on this day in terms of visibilty: an incredible scene – and trajectory. It took us half-an-hour to fly the hundred kilometers – and every one of them was rapturous as we took in the surrounding untouched (by man), unpeopled, vast undulating volcanic paysages ->

Approaching Bakening! We chopper over the road – the only one between Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and central Kamchatka. Yes – the road situation on the peninsula isn’t great, but at least this one’s now fully asphalted ->

Here Bakening up close from the helicopter:

First the views around and about in different directions:

The peak:

There’s no place for landing up top; but there is a short way away from it – over there:

It’s a secondary cone of Bakening called Novo-Bakening – here.

We land!…

The lava fields are relatively fresh – merely two hundred years old or so. That must mean the volcano’s an active one; however, the internet tells us it’s dormant. Strange. Whatever; the views – still oh-my-grandiose-greens-and-grays! ->

There’s Bakening over there ->

A little nearer ->

Brutal, beautiful, behemothic, Bakening! ->

More around and about ->

For some, the impression-sensation overload was all too much; time for a lay down to meditate on something more everyday: the sky! ->

A little later we had to be choppering onward. Thank you Bakening – you were… chakra-awakening!

The rest of the photos from our Kamchatka-2024 trip are here.