The other day I was in the Argentinian capital for the fourth time in my life – the second time this year! But only this time was I able to get a bit of my favorite pastime in: micro-tourism…

It’s a city of contrasts. There are the historical buildings of yesteryear that hint at the former riches and economic successes of the first half of the 20^th century; then right next to them are thoroughly ugly (second half of the 20^th century) residential buildings; then a bit further out of the center there are the favelas – slums – with overhead highways running through them; then further still there are new business-class apartment blocks with parks, cycle lanes and other cool infrastructure. But – you know me – I tried to take pics of the positive side of the city…

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Read on: Dictators and the tango…

My business schedule for this fall looks like it’ll be a full one, as usual. So it’s time to warm up before the long slog so as to ease into it gently and in high spirits… First up – a spot of the industrial…

I’ve shown you pics of the iron-and-steel industry before here – from the Novolipetsk Steel Plant. But today you’re getting photos from another of KL’s respected customers…

Severstal! You no doubt will not have visited the city of Cherepovets :) or the Severstal steel mill here… but that’s just fine: I’ll be showing you around the latter in this here post – from where they turn ore (actually – agglomerate) into crude iron…

Read on: Converter, smelter, slabs, rolls!…

One of the most fascinating places along our Upper Yenisei adventure was where the Baliktik-Hem and Kizil-Hem rivers merge. It’s here where the ‘Yenisei’ is first mentioned on the maps (when viewing the rivers going down from the mountains); specifically, that first mention is Maliy Yenisei (Little Yenisei).

Round that corner is the Kizil-Hem, which starts out as a small stream in Mongolia!

Read on: Extreme tourists…

Now it’s time for me to tell you about the ‘living quarters’ – the most important part of any expedition through the great outdoors.

Along the Upper Yenisei, there are lots of campsites – they are dry, comfortable, some have excellent river views, and sometimes they are ideal for fishing. There wasn’t a single campsite that our team didn’t like.

Read on: Icing on the cake…

Rafting on Balyktyg-Khem and Ka-Khem (aka the Little Yenisei) was pretty chilled – there were no particularly dangerous rapids to speak of. The plan of action was simple: keep paddling along the main part of the river, keep clear of rocks and immediately obey the captain’s orders. The instruction that our crew performed fastest was “Stop!”.

There were only a few rapids, probably five. Apart from that there were sand bars with light riffles, fast sections, two or three standstill sections. For rafters, standstills are an inconvenience – you have to paddle! Thankfully, we always had the wind at our backs, or there was no wind at all.

Read on: Unexpected pitstop…

So, just how exactly did we get to the upper reaches of the Yenisei?

Well, obviously, we didn’t walk. It involved various means of transport. First, we drove 400 km from Abakan to Kyzyl. The quality of the road was bearable – it is asphalt all the way, though there were lots of roadworks. Next year it should be in better shape. It took us 6-7 hours because of the repairs, detours and time spent waiting at traffic lights giving way to oncoming traffic on the single-lane sections.

But we finally made it to the city of Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva:

However, this is where things took an unexpected turn for the worse.

Read on: A marvelous artefact next to the airport…

The Yenisei River. Many of you won’t have even heard of it. But that doesn’t make it any less of a mega river: starting out in Mongolia (!), it’s the main river of three great Siberian ones, and the world’s largest river system flowing into the Arctic Ocean. Anyway; introductions over – we headed its way after our Tian Shan adventure…

…And not long after we reached it, sure enough – we were heading down its rapids in rafts.

Now for a bit of geography…

Read on: Now for a bit of geography…

No chronicle of our Tian Shan adventure would be complete without mentioning the travel agencies we used for the trip: 7 Summits Club and Ak-Sai Travel. All the hands-on fieldwork was undertaken by the latter: they met us there, ferried us about in the 4x4s, flew us in the helicopter, and were our guides on all the trekking and clambering and camping. Here’s Ak-Sai’s Ilya at the front with a ‘don’t get lost!’ flag – just like guides have when showing tourists in most any tourist attraction around the world (ok, not necessarily a flag; these days it’s more likely to be a selfie-stick or some such).

I’ve already told you about the camps we stayed at on our expedition, and how they fairly amazed me by their relative comfort in such harsh surroundings, so I won’t go over those again (but a restaurant tent with chairs and a big dining table, minibar, mini-shops, and other modern conveniences will never be forgotten!).

Read on: Occasionally things seemed to get a bit mixed up…

Howdy folks!

Oh no! Summer’s nearly over! So I’d better start winding up these here tales from the Kyrgyz side – our Tian Shan expedition across glaciers and along ‘trains‘ of glacial rubble, aka – what I did this summer…

Now, I have a list of what are, to me, the 100 most beautiful, most fantastic places on the planet – both natural and man-made. It contains waterfalls, lakes, caves, deserts, volcanoes/volcanism, multicolored rock formations, deep canyons, Patagonias and Galapagos islands. And a lot more besides. But conspicuously absent from the list are mountains…

Well now the time has come to correct such negligence…

Accordingly, herewith, I put forward the candidacy of Tian Shan, Engilchek Glacier and the landscapes that surround them, for entry into my Top-100 List of the Most Beautiful Places in the World.

The glacier is reeaaal long – some 60km+ – and we covered almost all 60 (apart from the last 10 up where the glacier starts). But the glacier really starts up on the very highest slopes of the mountains – around 6000-8000 meters up! But there was no way we’d be rock climbing so high: we were, after all, a group of mere-mortal office plankton taking a leisurely, albeit it rather extreme and unusual, ‘stroll’ :).

Read on: Around the glacier in ten days…

Inylchek Glacier is 60 kilometers long, which, for the average normally-office-bound tourist is plenty enough :).

During our Tian Shan expedition, our general direction was steadily up the right-hand slope of the southern sleeve of the glacier. But there were exceptions – one having been our one-day march across the glacier to Merzbacher Lake. And, oh, what a splendid march it was!

It was here where we touched for the first time genuine glacial ice – with both hands and feet:

Read on: stone mushrooms…