Hi folks!

Oh my… golden leaves! It’s fall already! Is it just me, or do summers seem to get shorter and shorter by the year? Still, there’s a good reason why my summer seemed to fly past – a third of it (mid-July to mid-August: nearly a whole month) I spent in Kamchatka, my fave place on the planet, where, as always, I had much fun and adventures, during which of course times flies…

And time flies for me still to this day (year) in Kamchatka, even though this trip was my seventh full vacation on the peninsula (not including quick ins-and-outs en route to the Kuril Islands a few times). And another thing that never seems to change is the fact that there are still plenty of places in Kamchatka that I’ve yet to get to and fully investigate (there are also a great many astonishingly beautiful places there I just never tire of returning to).

Here, for example, is a place I’ve never visited – the Zheltovsky volcano – near the southernmost tip of the peninsula ->

So, why Kamchatka?

Read on…

Welcome back to Barcelona folks!

After the few days of business in the city, as per, it was time for some express-tourism. Well of course it was – such a beautiful, sunny part of the world as this is! ‘Tourism? But there’s a pandemic on!’. Indeed, this post may come across somewhat provocative, and for that I apologize. What with covid still lingering, it’s hardly politically correct to wax lyrical about visits to world-class tourist destinations now is it? A bit like… A Feast in a Time of Plague, even. So, here goes with my brief justifications: (i) we didn’t go to Catalonia simply for tourism – this was a brief post-scriptum dosage thereof after our reason for coming – MWC-2021; (ii) we were super-careful and followed all the rules and observed all the restrictions to the letter; and (iii) I took plenty of pics while there, which really do need to be shared ). Justifications sufficient? Eek. Hope so…

Actually, though I don’t encourage everyone to pile down to Barcelona/Girona just now as that would cancel out what I’m about to say, right now is a perfect time for tourism here. The reason is simple: all the places of interest for tourists are practically empty. For example, here’s Barcelona’s famous La Rambla; normally you can’t move for the crowds. Look at it today:

You’d think it was February or some other low-season month.

Read on…

When you get to travel all over the world armed with a camera, you get to take snaps of all sorts of natural and man-made objects of varying degrees of unusualness, attractiveness, monumentalness, and a thousand other nesses. But, occasionally, you find yourself taking pics of certain less attractive objects – albeit ones still possessing a certain mysterious appeal: I’m referring to abandoned, deserted settlements: dilapidated buildings left to rot, streets all overgrown; decay, ruin. All rather depressing, but still, clickety-clack go the cameras!

I’ve seen a few such places over the years. In January of this year a group of petrol-heads and I dropped in on the dead town of Kadykchan on the Kolyma Highway in Russia’s far-east. A year earlier we paid a visit to the half-buried-in-sand ghost town of Kolmanskop in Namibia, Africa. The year before that we were in the Kurils where we inspected a deserted former military base. Down in Antarctica there was an abandoned Chilean camp (you guessed it, half-buried in snow and ice). And over on the Kamchatka peninsula there was another abandoned military (naval) base, Bechevinka.

And who would have thought it (not me, at first, for one) – you also get this kind of thing in… Maldives! Here it’s not abandoned military bases or mono-towns or former mining settlements, but derelict, crumbling former tourist resorts. You can find a zillion photos online of fancy bungalows lining paradisiacal atolls around these parts; you’ll find a lot less than a zillion like the ones I’m about to show you…

So, there we were, flying up above the Maldives archipelago, and down below all looks as per the script: paradise!…

But if you look a bit closer…

Read on…

Not heard of Khanty-Mansiysk? You have now!…

Don’t know where it is? You do now!

And I would have thought that… Australians wouldn’t have heard of Khanty-Mansiysk, wouldn’t have known where it is, and certainly wouldn’t have been there. However!…

It was back in 2011 (10 years ago?! Where’d that go?!), and a group of K-people and I found ourselves attending to various business matters down in sunny Melbourne in Oz. Meetings, the start of the Formula-1 season, koalas, Castlemaine XXXX, this, that.

We were in town for several days, and of an evening after each day’s business we’d all meet up for eats and beers in the hotel’s bar-restaurant. And every evening the same waitress waited on our table. Already by the second visit we all smiles and hellos and nice-to-see-you-agains. And on the third we got chatting and she asked us where we all hailed from.

We answered: Germany, the U.S.A., and Russia (there were a few locals among us too).

“Oh, Russia?! I want to go to Russia!” came the response.

“Oh, nice. Well, you need to do Moscow of course – in maybe two or three days – then there’s St. Petersburg, where you’ll need at least a week to do it justice.”

“Oh, yes: must do Moscow and St. Pete”, agreed the girl.

Then she added: “So far in Russia I’ve only been to Khanty-Mansiysk!” 8-( )

Now, Khanty-Mansiysk – to a Russian, it’s a bit… backwatery. Like… Billings, Montana, in America; or… Pontefract, West Yorkshire, in the UK. Nice places, but hardly tourist destinations. So you can imagine our surprise when a Melbourne waitress said she’d been to the Russian version of Billings or Pontefract (and not, say, New York or London)!

“WHAT?!” we asked, all agape and wide-eyed in astonishment.

“Yes – Khanty-Mansiysk. I’m a competitive chess player, and there was an international tournament there once.” Check… and mate!

I mean – even I hadn’t been to Khanty-Mansiysk, and you know how I travel all over the place. And it was a full 10 years until I would finally make a visit – just the other week…

Khanty-Mansiysk is just over the Urals from Europe, not far from where the two mighty Siberian rivers the Ob and the Irtysh meet – here:

Read on…

As you’ll recall, at the start of this year a group of colleagues and pals and I completed a road trip practically across the full length of Russia – from as far east as you can get in a car (Magadan) all the way to Moscow (just a few hundred kilometers more and you’d hit Belarus), along the way stopping off at various worthy places of interest.

The journey took us a whole month (we could have done it quicker, but we took various detours and also dropped in on a few partners), during which we covered some 12,000 kilometers. A mind-blowing road trip it was too. After arriving in Moscow and finally coming to my senses after a month of senses-and-impressions-overload, I put fingers to keyboard to write a series of posts on the experience. Those posts tell how the trip turned out: somewhat unexpectedly – absolutely awesome. No – perfect! So white, so cold, so permafrost, so vast, so unusual, so endless… so surprisingly well-kempt (the roads, that is).

Read on…

Number 12 out of 12, already?!

You’ve had granite mountains, the world’s most voluptuous volcano, the most gorgeous glacier, the most wonderful waterfalls, and the coolest cliffs. You’ve also had quite a lot of redness already: red arches, and a huge red rock. Well here’s some more redness for you: red dunes!

#12. Dunes of the Namib desert, Namibia, Africa.

Enormous dunes of reddish sand, in places more than 300 meters high; vast open spaces, astounding scenery. Clouds give the dunes a special shade-spotty look:

Read on…

Next up, not far from yesterday’s Oz, we’re in New Zealand, for what Rudyard Kipling called the eighth wonder of the world – and what I call #11 on my Top-12: the fiord that weeps!

No. 11. Milford Sound, New Zealand

This is a fiord, some 15 kilometers in length, that leads to a bay onto the Tasman Sea (the strait between NZ and Oz). And down the steep cliffs either side of it stream, flow, fall and fly below streamlets, streams and waterfalls. As with all the other Top-12ers, breathtaking to behold and marvelous to meditate upon. Looking at it from all different sides highly recommended, as is shouting your head off for the mega-echoes ).

Read on…

Just like we stayed in China for two entries to my Top-12, we’re in Australia for a couple too. There was Friday’s Ayers Rock, and today there’s…

#10. Great Ocean Road, Australia.

Ok, ok: I realize a road is man-made, but it’s not the road itself I’m referring to. It’s the views from it – along its full length (243km) – that I mean. The cliffs, stone columns, arches and tunnels cut into or out of the sandstone over millions of years by the ocean’s waves. Also: the unending views out over the ocean, in the direction of Antarctica…

Pre-1990, one of the arches – actually, a couple of arches – was named ‘London Bridge’, as it resembled (loosely!) its namesake. However, in 1990 one of the arches collapsed due to corrosion, and became known – as it still is today – as London Arch! (Incidentally, the same thing happened just last week in the Galapagos Islands!). Fortunately no one was on the part that collapsed – but there were some tourists on the outer section who were stranded. They had to be evacuated by helicopter.

The bonus of this entry on my list is that you can behold all, or most, of these awesome sights in the comfort of your car. Still, stopping for snaps is hardly a chore.

It’s recommended to drive its full length in both directions. We did this in a couple of days, but that was way too little time to fully appreciate the sights. I’d recommend at least three days, better – four, or even more…

The Twelve Apostles are one of the highlights of a Great Ocean Road trip. They’re really impressive: massive, stratified with layers of different colored rock, and the loud crashing waves below. Originally they were called the ‘Sow and Piglets’. Then, around a hundred years ago someone thought they might attract more tourists with a more venerable name, so they were renamed the Apostles!

Why they’re called the ’12’ Apostles I don’t know (apart from the obvious but still hardly applicable reason), since there are just eight of them, down from nine not too long ago when one of them collapsed. Oh those Aussies ).

To get to number nine in my Top-12, we head directly south and west a bit from China – down to Australia: a journey I’d never say no to…

Alrighty…

#9. Ayers Rock, Australia.

Aka Uluru (pics only; Russian text), this is another unique natural object, sat right in the middle of this vast country. No one knows how it formed, but that mystery only adds to the appeal of this red rock formation:

Read on…

Guess what? Just like yesterday’s #7, today’s #8 is also in China!

No. 8. The stone pillars of Wulingyuan, China.

More mind-blowing naturalnesses. But, they’re on this list – so of course they are. More than 3000 quartzite sandstone pillars and peaks – some reaching nearly a kilometer in height! – covering an area of nearly 370 square kilometers. Oh my god-who-created-this-magical-scene! ->

There are at least three entirely different spectacles to be viewed here. In sunny weather – you get like in the above pic. If it’s overcast it’ll probably also be foggy – like this:

Read on…