Cities come in all shapes and sizes. There are the standout urban projects – like the island-city-state of Singapore. There are megacities that really lucked out with phenomenal natural beauty all around them – Rio de Janeiro, for instance. There are imperial capitals – St. Petersburg, say, or Beijing. And there are plenty of cities with some special “thing” all of their own – I once even drew up my own Top-20 of the very best cities (in my strictly personal, not-always-objective opinion); and at one point I came up with my own Top-100 most beautiful places in the world list, too.

Oh – I got carried away there with my countries and cities and various lists. Now, where was I? Ah, yes: I was building up to introducing Peru’s capital, Lima (here). And it turns out that, though it’s not quite a “megacity” that lucked out with phenomenal natural beauty all around it, it did still luck out. And that’s mainly because it sits high up on the Pacific Ocean shore; and the resultant views are oh-my-gorgeous…

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Leaving Zyryanka, it struck me: the nearest airport with regular flights to the capital of our vast and boundless homeland is a full four days away by car! Well, if you really push it and don’t sleep at night, you could manage it in a couple of days. But if the rule is daytime = driving, and nighttime = sleeping, there’s no way it comes out to less than four. Whether to Magadan or to Yakutsk, it’s still a full four days: Zyryanka > Sasyr (day one), Sasyr > Ust-Nera (day two), and then we’re exactly halfway along the R-504 Kolyma Highway, with about a thousand kilometers either way = another two days on the road.

Not that we were complaining! After all, we chose this bonkers route ourselves, and it’s not as if it was our first time on this or a similar winter-wonderland road-trip adventures…

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Overall, the main items on the wish list for our winter Irkutsk-Yakutsk-Magadan-Yakutsk road-trip had either been checked off (the Indigirka Tube, the naleds and volcanoes of the Moma Valley, the Natalka gold deposit), or only unsuccessfully attempted because of an abnormal amount of snow (the Old Kolyma Highway). Incidentally, we canceled our attempt to get to Jack London Lake for the same reason (too much snow).

But with another couple of days still left, we decided to drive back and forth along the Arktika winter road, and it’s probably worth telling you about it – because it’s an especially beautiful winter road, particularly where it crosses mountain ranges:

The next sizable settlement on the Arktika winter road after Sasyr is Zyryanka. Let me tell you a little about the place…

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After my Korean interlude, it’s back to tales from the deep-frozen Siberian side; namely – a continuation of our drive along the winter road between the villages of Khonuu and Sasyr. The first installment is here.

We’d wrapped up our naled-and-ice photo sessions, clambered back onto land, and it was time to press on!…

Up ahead, another of our must-check-out targets came into view – one of Yakutia’s volcanoes, Uraga-Khaya ->

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After our walk around central Seoul – next up: something wholly unusual: a prison! And this particular prison tells a very sad tale…

From 1910 to 1945, Korea was occupied by Japan, which was extremely heavy-handed in Korean territory – and that led to spontaneous protests and the emergence of organized resistance.

Naturally, the Japanese authorities fought the Korean underground, tracked down and caught Korean “partisans”, killed some on the spot, and sent the survivors off to this here prison set aside specially for political prisoners ->

Seodaemun [former] Prison (now a museum) – I’d normally write “welcome to…”, but no – not this time…

Still, in we went anyway, because reading about history – including that of global cataclysms – in books or on the internet is one thing, while walking around the actual places where the events take place is something else entirely: it gets deeper into your brain and hits your emotions harder and more vividly. It’s a bit like looking at a photo of a red chili pepper online – and actually chomping on one in real life. Anyway, that’s why we went in…

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Where are the best places for a simple stroll in Seoul? There don’t seem to be all that many options, but they do exist. The most notable are (i) the Seoullo-7017 walkway, (ii) a pedestrianized area along a stream with the easy-to-pronounce name of Cheonggyecheon, and (iii) Ikseon-dong – a traditional artisan/folksy district. I’ll start with the first one…

So what is Seoullo-7017? Well, they took a former vehicle overpass and converted it into a pedestrian walkway-bridge around a kilometer long. And what a marvelous thing it is! As the internet tells it, the road bridge – built back in 1970 – had grown decrepit by the 2010s, and needed replacing. But instead of demolishing the old one and building a new one, the local authorities decided otherwise: the old structures were repaired and adapted for walks on foot. Like so:

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Of course, we’re all different. Some are tall, some average height, some a little shorter; some are brown-haired; some blond(e), while others are already gray. In some places there are more Asian faces, in others African, yet others – European. Some are extroverts (as I choose to be); at the opposite end of the spectrum are introverts, and the rest are somewhere in-between. Some are “XY”, and the other, lovely half is “XX”. So… makes sense that we all have completely different thoughts and feelings about… shopping. Not for the weekly groceries, but for clothes, presents, accessories, and other bits and bats…

For example, if I go into a store, I quickly choose the item I need, try it on in a flash (if it’s clothing), instantly fill the cart (if it’s something else), and in transit airports on the way home I just randomly stuff bags with all kinds of tasty goodies (for both home and the office) -> pay fast and get out of there!

For others, it works differently. They simply go nuts over every sort of item laid out or hung up in stores. All of it has to be examined, compared, tried on, etc., etc. – and that all takes time (plenty of it!).

However, the world can be a surprising place. And here in Seoul, I spent a whole hour (60 minutes!) wandering around a store, goggling at the display windows and everything else – something I literally never do. But let’s start right at the very beginning…

This wasn’t just a “store full of all kinds of very important little odds and ends”. It was, in fact, a full-blown art object – outside and in:

And it’s called Haus Nowhere:

What can I say? It’s a total mind-blower – not just a retail outlet. Practically the whole place was filled with really impressive art objects of completely different calibers and styles:

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My usual schedule in South Korea (Seoul) doesn’t normally leave any room for real tourism – thanks to our APAC region bosses, who try to cram every single hour of my time with some very important, can’t-miss event, meeting, business lunch, or similar. Getting out somewhere to actually see something of touristic interest is an unexpected treat – but it does happen. Let me dig through the archives for a sec… ah, here we go: 2016: the DMZ – the Demilitarized Zone, plus a walk around the city in 2023. But that’s the lot!

This time we arrived a couple of days before the business program kicked off, so there was time for some ordinary, everyday tourism – hurray! Here, for example, is a lovely shot from the Lotte tower:

And here’s the tower itself; more on it – and the views therefrom – in a bit:

But first, a quick digression on the “Lotte” brand – because it’s quite an unusual story.

Read on…

Next on our Irkutsk-Yakutsk-Magadan-Yakutsk winter road trip, it was high time we headed off into the deepest backwoods (so – backwoods of backwoods!), where you can go a whole day’s drive without meeting a single other car. Where? The Khonuu-Sasyr winter road (but more on that shortly). Why? Simple: it’s how you get the Moma Natural Park. Why there? Simple: (i) it’s where the most magnificent naleds are – including the G.O.A.T. naled the Great Moma Naled; and (ii) it’s where there are no fewer than two (2!) Yakutian volcanoes! Yep – real volcanoes; I was pretty stunned when I found out. Back in 2024, we’d decided to come back here with drones – to fly around and snap some shots. Fast-forward two years – and here we are…

These are the naleds in question. They’re situated on the Moma river, and, apparently, they’re the largest naleds in the world:

And here are the volcanoes – I’ll have more photos of them a bit later:

Read on…

The great Siberian rivers are the Ob, the Yenisei, and the Lena. Not far behind them are the Yana, the Indigirka, and the Kolyma. These aren’t quite as long and wide, but they’re no less beautiful, contemplative, magnificent, and in places downright astonishing. So it’s in their direction we headed…

Time for some fun – but not like last time. This time around it was a cut-down version, atop and along the frozen Indigirka only: Ust-Nera > Khonuu > Sasyr, and back.

Out onto the ice we go at the start of the winter road, @ “zero kilometers” ->

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