Walking around – full circle – the upper ridges of volcanic craters and calderas is a splendid idea. Unique views in all directions, aka – beauty-360˚! I’ve already gone into this topic in a research-post entitled: 12 reasons why volcanoes are way better than mere mountains. From there, I quote:

“Mountains are good in that, once you’ve climbed to the top of one and look around, you get a massive dose of ‘oh my gorgeous!’ But with volcanoes you get a mega-massive dose of the same, plus often there’s a bonus: looking inward – not out – you get the fantastically pretty volcanic craters to feast your eyes on.

It’s only sat on the rim of a volcanic crater you realize how tiny and insignificant man and all his civilization is. I’m sure astronauts get this feeling too, but they’re up in space. On Earth: a volcanic crater is the place to be. All our labors and plans and worries and frets – how meaningless they all become when compared with the magnitude and magnificence of nature.”

And that’s just how it is. Multicolored shadings, the colossal grandiosity of the constructions, the exquisiteness of the shapes, plus the antidote to human delusions of grandeur. The ‘kings of nature’? You realize Homo sapiens are no such thing when you find yourself on the rim of the caldera of an active stratovolcano! For it’s not just a big lump of inert mountain: a volcano is alive – brimming with volatile underground chemistry!

So, you get it: volcanoes are better ). But what can you do to get more of the magical experience that is volcano-gazing – as in: prolong that experience? Easy (actually… hardly:) – you trek around the full circumference of a volcano’s caldera/crater – up on its upper ridge. Oh yes…

As you’ll know, or will be able to guess – I’ve done quite a few caldera rim-walks. But I wonder how many? Let’s tot them up. Maybe someone will want to follow in my footsteps (recommended) or try to beat my total (recommended:)…

I. Ksudach (Kamchatka). Full (detailed) trekking-tourist guide – here.

Read on…

Another marvelously mind-blowing place in the Kamchatka must-see category is Ksudach. It’s the caldera of an ancient volcano inside which a new volcanic cone continues to grow, resulting in two lakes that are simply unreally fantastic to behold. The scale too is… almost off-the-scale for a volcano: the main, outer caldera – almost an ideal circle – is some seven (7!) or eight (8!) kilometers wide! To see such a spectacle with your own eyes (photos never fully capture it), is oh-my-gargantuan! Especially from the ridge of the caldera:

Read on…

Next up on our Kamchatkan adventure – rather: next down – we chopper out of the city and fly south!…

After half-an-hour, or around 100km, we make it to our next must-stop-and-investigate. We could have stopped off along the way for some hors d’oeuvres, but the weather was just a bit too cloudy for comfort, so we settled for hors d’oeuvres-tasting from the comfort of our helicopter instead:

That symmetrical beauty is Vilyuchik, which you can see from the city (as long as it’s not hiding as a mirage). Oh Vilyuchik – why are you so photogenic?!

Read on…

Though we’re already well south of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in my Kamchatka-2021 travelogue series, I haven’t reported anything yet on rafting on the peninsula. Well that changes in this post, and now – not later – is as good a time as any, since all our rafting had been done by the time we reached ‘the city’ as there are no decent rafting rivers in southern Kamchatka (perhaps with the exception of the Opala river, but I’ve never rafted it myself).

Over the years I’ve often had the pleasure of rafting in Kamchatka – and mostly in the central part of the peninsula: down the Bistraya (fast) river (near the village of Esso), the Bistraya (!) river near the village of Malka (the southernmost stream/river I’ve rafted down), and also the Icha river.

I won’t go into detail here, but I will say is that rafting in Kamchatka is a welcome alternative activity when trekking up to and around volcanoes might become a bit too samey for some (it can never be too samey for me, but there’s no accounting for taste bizarre viewpoints:). In short, the rafting = adrenaline rushes: check; wonderful Kam-scapes whizzing past: check; oar action as one’s daily fitness activity: check; much beauty and meditation possibilities: check.

Read on…->

Wanting to continue my travelogue series ‘southward from the city’, I looked back at some of my older Kamchatka chronicles, and I found this neat little ‘southward from the city’ synopsis, from 2015:

“In my humble opinion, Kamchatka is the most fascinating and beautiful place on the planet. Voluptuous volcanoes with colossal craters with multicolored lakes, + unearthly surrounding landscapes, geysers and hot springs, + lazy wild brown bears roaming free, + red caviar applied on your sandwiches not with a knife or teaspoon but with a spade :).”

And, indeed, I was thinking maybe I’ll pass going over old ground – the Kam-wonders that are reachable by car within a day, but then I reconsidered…

The main reason is… I occasionally read folks’ travel notes from their trips to southern Kamchatka, and they’re… just silly! Example: a group will report proudly how they made it to the top of the volcano Gorely. But getting to the peak completely misses the point: what needs doing is a trek along the top-rims of the craters – full circle, and the same goes for other volcanoes here. Then you get a whole day of the most amazing natural beauty all around you, while you steadily plod along. Racing to a peak, taking a few pics, then racing back down again – where’s the fun in that? What is the point? See – it’s like I say: just silly ). So, that’s my first reason for not passing over some previously-reported volcanisms: to make up for the sacrilege that’s out there on the internet!

Accordingly, here, today, dear readers: Gorely review! In particular – the multicolored lakes thereof.

First – to the readers who haven’t (yet:) been to Kamchatka: this is a volcano that is categorically visit-mandatory! I know I rave about most any volcano on the peninsula, but this one really is A-list, VIP, elite, etc. Alas, neither Google Maps nor Russia’s Yandex Maps shows the full topology of this volcano, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome in the flesh. The main thing: the sheer size and… ambiguity of the structure of this volcano – plus the lakes in its two main craters.

Read on…

My Kamchatka-2021 chronicles resemble a tourist guidebook already! And since that’s the case, I simply couldn’t not include the wonderful Nalychevo Nature Park, which is a stone’s throw from… the city, and, as such, can easily be recommended as a tourist’s first Kamchatka experience after flying in for the first time. Why else? Because it has a bit of everything: beautiful volcanoes; hot springs you can bath in; boiling, bubbling, gurgling muddy pools; and hissing, steaming – stinking! – bright yellow fumaroles. Besides, the tourist infrastructure of the park is pretty civilized – paths, cabins, and even as far back as 2006 distance posts appeared along tracks and wooden bridges were built over the streams.

The park features natural beauties such as this one:

Read on…

Finally, I made a long-overdue visit to Fiera Milano, the humungous, legendary fairground and exhibition center in Rho, on the outskirts of Milan. The occasion was the EICMA motorcycle trade show.

What really struck me about the place – just how massive it is. so I looked it up later – and yes, the stats back up my observations: turns out it’s the biggest exhibition center in Europe! ->

Incidentally, Expo 2015 took place here (I mention this as the world-expo topic was touched upon recently after I visited Expo 2020 in Dubai).

Read on…

I recall, quite some time ago, wondering why there are so many skyscrapers in large cities in the U.S.A., while in Europe – hardly any. Wait, no let me see – and delve (into my archives). Yes – I wondered it in Frankfurt, in 2017.

My question was answered with a reasoned reply: “just look at Tuscan cities, rather – how they once were, long ago”. I didn’t quite follow, and didn’t follow-up either back then. And having just been to Bologna, (which is almost Tuscany – just outside it), I was still further perplexed since I sure didn’t see a Bolognhattan; only a few medieval skyscrapers:

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The ‘chainsmoking’ volcano on the horizon behind yesterday’s Semyachik is the volcano called Karymsky. And it’s the most active of all of Kamchatka’s volcanoes! That figures, since every time we view the crater at its peak, it always looks different. Here it is in the year 2006:

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I’ve already told you what a Kamchatkan mirage is, haven’t I? Briefly, again: it’s when a whole volcano can simply disappear. Oh yes. “But surely you mean just the peak of a volcano can ‘disappear’, say – in some mist or fog or in some low cloud, right?” some of you may understandably ask. Actually – no. Whole volcanoes. Whole, gigantic volcanoes! Like, these, for example, next to… ‘the city’:

“Which city is that?” you may also ask…

‘The city’ is in fact Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky – which used to be the only city in Kamchatka. All other settlements on the peninsula are smaller than city-size: like towns (today there are a further two: Yelizovo and Vilyuchinsk), villages, or even smaller. Since Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky was long the only city, it was – and still is, out of habit – referred to by all locals as simply ‘the city’: you never hear its full name uttered. So you hear things like: “I’m in the city”, or “I’ll meet you in the city”, or “there was a bear roaming the city this morning”! :)

Read on…