Nota Bene

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” ->

Read on…

And so, early one morning in late February of this year, our convoy of several vehicles once again rolled out of the glorious city of Magadan. The plan: get to Ust-Nera, covering 910km of not-exactly-easy road…

The weather wasn’t the sunniest, but our spirits were as high as a kite. Let’s roll!…

Read on…

Every time I come to St. Petersburg, I’m amazed by what a bright, sunny city it is. The internet lies to you about gloom and low gray skies. Don’t believe it! Better yet – go see for yourself that it’s not true. This time around, though, there was a certain grayness to the sky at first, instead of the usual blue skies and bright sunshine…

Read on… )

(Prequel: Taking the (more) scenic route to Magadan)

We’d checked out the Natalka gold mine, dropped in on the settlement Ust-Omchug, and now we were pressing on along the super-scenic Highway 44N-4 toward Magadan…

Read on…

A few days ao we wrapped up our whirlwind there-and-back business dash to Kyrgyzstan, and to the Kumtor gold-ore mine and ore-processing complex (aka – a gold-extraction factory: the first time I’d ever come across the term). Why the holdup in getting these write-ups published? Simply because, when you visit industrial sites, you usually need to get a “yep, all good!” from the hosts before posting any photos – even though I hardly shoot anything inappropriate in the first place (my internal censor sees to that).

So. Kumtor…

First, it’s one of the main pillars of the country’s mining sector. Second, it’s one of the highest-altitude mining operations in the world (the second-highest, to be precise – behind the Yanacocha gold deposit in Peru, (also gold-ore)). And third, it’s just plain beautiful! Here are the pyramids they show you as you drive into the open pit:

The main pit – the one they showed us – is impossibly gigantic in size: 3.5km long, by 3km wide, and almost a kilometer deep measured from the ~highest point. And up on the loftiest peaks there are snow and glaciers. What a beauty! ->

Read on…

We’d checked out the Natalka gold-ore deposit and the mining-and-processing plant of the same name, but what else was worth a contemplative look at out there – further down Route 44N-4 (also known as the Tenkinskaya Highway, or just Palatka–Kulu–Neksikan)? Why – the settlement of Ust-Omchug! ->

Here it is on the map. Yes, it is very, very far away. But not too far from Magadan :)

Read on…

Where should you head first in Manaus – the capital city of Amazonas? The fish market, of course!…

It absolutely floors you with its sheer size and variety. They’ve got everything that lives in the Amazon and its tributaries here – well, except for Red Book protected species (dolphins, for instance). And in waters this vast, the variety is about as wide as it gets:

I’m afraid I can’t remember what any of these various species of fish are called; I just recall being bowled over by the variety:

Read on…

Alas, everything comes to an end sooner or later. Not only the Brazilian leg, but our winter tour around South America as a whole was drawing to a close. It was time for us to be heading back to Manaus, where there’d be a plane to São Paulo, and from there – back home. And what a fascinating route our tour had taken: Patagonia and Jujuy in Argentina > Atacama in Chile > Amazonia in Brazil! Done! Time to return to a place we hadn’t been for ages: home.

There was just one last thing we needed to see: the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon itself. So it was in to a hydroplane and off we flew!…

Read on…