Salam elim!

On the Karavshin trek across the Pamir-Alay mountain system, summer weather is normally glorious. Mornings bring guaranteed blue skies, by midday a few insignificant little clouds might swell up (or possibly rather more significant ones); and toward evening there might be a fine drizzle. At night the clouds dissolve, and whoever’s lucky enough to have insomnia (though, after long marches, plus all the up-and-down tramping, insomnia is a rarity around here), or unlucky enough to need a nighttime call of nature, gets to gaze at an infinitely brilliant starry sky, and at the satellites scurrying back and forth across the heavens around this planet of ours.

Like I say, that’s how things are normally. We, alas, weren’t so lucky…

For some reason, by the end of day one and for almost all of day two of our trekking trip, a thoroughly atypical scoundrel of a cyclone rolled in over the mountain ranges, drew a dense gray blanket of cloud across the sky, and doused everything (and everyone) in a spiteful rain that drummed dismally on our tents – drumming that woke us all up on the morning of day two. But what could we do? Not much besides waiting for nature’s gloom to turn a little more transparent and then head out along the trail ->

Read on…

Hi folks!

Ok, you’ve had a couple of intro posts already; now let’s get this started properly: the Karavshin trek – one of the most beautiful routes I’ve ever walked with my own two feet – our first day…

First up: where is it? In the very southwest of Kyrgyzstan, on the border with Tajikistan:

Read on…

It’s time to move on to fuller accounts of our July-August adventures in Kyrgyzstan and the Sayan Mountains, and I figure that their telling should go in chronological order: first, the Karavshin trek in the Pamir Mountains, and then rafting down the Sayan Oka River. But before anything else we need to settle some geographical terminology. And for this we need to switch on perfectionist/pedant mode so as to clarify that we weren’t actually walking in the Pamirs as such, but in the Pamir-Alay mountain system; and to be even more specific – in the part of this mountain system called the Turkestan Range. But enough already with pedantic perfectionism; main thing: it’s simply beautiful here!

Read on…

Ladies and gents, boys and girls – greetings!

It’s been a while. But of course it has: there was a vacation-heavy summer to get through! And now, finally, the time has come to begin my traditional tales from the summer-holiday side…

This year I’ll be splitting these write-ups into two segments: the first – all about our mountain trekking adventures; the second – all about our mountain-river rafting escapades. But first – also as per tradition – overview intro-post: an overview of what we did, and what’s coming up in both photos and texts…

First we hiked the Karavshin route in Kyrgyzstan, then air-teleported ourselves over to the Sayan Mountains (Russia) and rafted down the Oka River there (not to be confused with the more well-known Oka River not that far from Moscow – literally five thousand kilometers to the west:).

So how was it? In a word: awesome!

Karavshin = 10 days on foot, 115 kilometers covered, total ascent and descent = 7.5km:  the most physically punishing trek I’ve ever done. Even Kamchatka-2015 (315km trekking up and down volcanoes) was easier. All the same – it was worth every step!

The views on show there are downright magical:

The (southern Siberian) Oka River is a real beauty too…

Read on…

On our Irkutsk–Yakutsk–Magadan–Yakutsk winter road-trip we finally rolled into civilization and were fast approaching Yakutsk Airport, from where we’d soon have the good fortune to be heading home. But before the triumphant finale to our adventures, we decided to investigate a topic that’s been pertinent to the locals here since, like, forever: connecting the two banks of the Lena River to give Yakutsk – a city of almost 400,000 – year-round access to the “mainland”. And our investigations hit upon some very positive news: construction of the Lena Bridge has finally begun! Hurray!

But first things first…

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It was a short flight from Lima, Peru up to Bogotá – the capital of Colombia. We had just one day here, and it was a strictly business one at that – alas, no tourism this time. No shots of unusual nature or off-the-beaten-path spots either. But here’s something that always makes me smile in hotels in Colombia ->

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Hola folks!

Lima oceanside walkies – done; next up – our LatAm partner conference, with 220 guests, from 19 countries.

So. What? Why?!…

It’ all rather straightforward really. Practically any mass-market product is sold not directly but through retail chains, distributors, resellers, and so on. Well – maybe with the exception of online sales of various kinds of software, and even then you need a partner with an online platform (by no means every software company can afford to develop and maintain its own online storefronts). It’s the same in our case. While online sales happen with minimal partner involvement, everything from boxed product (yes – that’s still a thing) on upward – especially with corporate products that call for training, deployment, and support – simply can’t get by without a partner network.

And to make that network run more effectively, you need regular meetups, conferences, seminars on new products and technologies, and all sorts of other things like that. And that’s exactly what we do – every year we put on several regional partner get-togethers plus one global one; and we’ve been at it since all the way back in 1999! We even kept to the yearly partner meet-ups schedule through covid in 2020!

Fast-forward to 2026, and this time the capital of Peru was chosen as the venue for our LatAm conference: two days presenting our new products, technologies, and services, talking through the partner program, and so on. Naturally, I got up and spoke too:

What did I talk about?… ->

Read on…

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…

Read on…