NOTES, COMMENT AND BUZZ FROM EUGENE KASPERSKY – OFFICIAL BLOG
January 28, 2025
Not far from Jiuzhaigou National Park (100 km by road) there’s another unique beautiful natural object – the Huanglong Scenic and Historic Interest Area. It features a cascade of travertine (limestone) baths, pools, lakes and waterfalls of various forms and colors. The cascade is around 3km in length in a straight line, or ~5km if you take the tourist paths beside it. The spectacle is fantastic:
January 27, 2025
Teaser, aperitif, hour d’oeuvres, and just yesterday your side of garlic bread – done. Now for your first main course of China-2024 (and there’ll be several!)…
Quick recap: we visited quite a few places and saw over 20 natural and historical sites of varying levels of significance and beauty – some of which were simply masterpieces. And that’s what I want to talk about in detail. Where should I start? From the beginning! In what order? As it happened: that’s how I’ll recount it. No need (and no desire) to invent new storytelling formats. “I sing what I see,” as the tundra reindeer herder says…
And so…
We landed in China (the exact location doesn’t matter), cleared passport and customs control, transferred to another flight (some even managed a swim in the warm sea in Sanya and celebrate a birthday along the way), landed (after plenty of turbulence en route), and arrived at Huanglong Airport – at an altitude of nearly 3500 meters above sea-level.
An interesting airport! Right by the baggage-claim area there are small shops selling warm clothing. Many Chinese, who’ve spent their entire lives in warm, even tropical climates, are completely unprepared for the fact it can get cold in the mountains during the fall. In the same area, a pharmacy sells small oxygen cans to similarly unprepared tourists. Although the altitude isn’t extreme, some people find it difficult to breathe.
But enough about the details – we’re here to explore, see, and marvel. So off we popped – straight to Jiuzhaigou (the “Jiuzhaigou Valley Scenic and Historic Interest Area”, or just “Jiuzhaigou National Park”), which means “Valley of Nine Villages”. Jiuzhaigou is a mountainous valley where streams and rivers of strikingly beautiful colors flow: a chain of brightly-colored lakes and stunning waterfalls – like this:
January 21, 2025
Do svidanya, Kamchatka; Nǐ hǎo China!…
You’ve had my photographic teaser, aperitif, and hour d’oeuvres already. Now for a photographic preview-overview of the whole trip. So, as the title says – off we go!…
The most beautiful place on earth, in my humble opinion, is Krenitsyn – the “king of all volcanoes” – on the Kuril island of Onekotan. The most beautiful region in the world is Kamchatka, where you can easily count more than a dozen natural objects of the highest category of unusualness and contemplativeness – that is, my “five-K”, or “KKKKK” category. Of course there are other places that are rich in various natural (and sometimes historical) delights and quirks, like New Zealand, Indonesia, Namibia, etc. But the richest country in terms of the sheer quantity, quality and… out-of-this-world-astonishingness of touristic delights is, of course, China. I wouldn’t be surprised if you can count already more than 50 absolutely magical places here that I’d strongly recommend visiting at the first opportunity. I compiled a list of Chinese must-sees back in 2018 as part of my Top-100 series, but today that list looks wholly incomplete…
Cue photo of one such must-see natural masterpiece ->
October 23, 2024
Though these tales and pics from the Chinese side are only just warming up to get going – in the meantime we’ve gone and completed our China-2024 trip!
Cheeky spoiler: this year’s China-in-the-fall trip was especially full-to-the-brim with active tourisms:
The concentration of OMG-impressions and emotions during our China vacation this year was off the scale – all about which will be coming to these here blog pages soon (after the Kamchatkan tales are done)…
Just in case you missed them, here are parts one and two of this China-intro-trio. Now – on with part three! ->
October 21, 2024
Ni Hao!
Our China trip continues…
In the city of Xining we turned westward – thereby exchanging mountain forests, rivers and lakes for nothing much besides desert. Not that the views to be beheld were any worse for it…
So what can I say about this part of China? In no particular order, this is what:
These desert landscapes are in the northwestern Chinese province of Qinghai, which sits next to the Tibetan Plateau – the Roof of the World; yes – the world’s highest (and largest) plateau above sea level. Yes – meaning breathing up here can be rather difficult. We’d planned for this however – having been acclimatizing up around two or three thousand meters above sea level for a week already.
By Chinese standards, the place is sparsely populated: just under six million folks live here over an area of 720,000 square kilometers. That’s a population density similar to that of the whole of Russia – the world’s largest country (including all its vast but sparsely-populated Siberian and Arctic regions).
October 19, 2024
Regular readers of my tales-and-pics of my travels to far-flung countries (and some nearer to home) will recall that, usually, in the first half of October, colleagues & friends and I get ourselves over to China!…
October 18, 2024
My summer tales from the Kamchatkan side have only just begun, but now – quick fast-forward to the present for a China interlude over a few days…
I spent my 59th birthday in the Chinese resort Sanya on the tropical island province of Hainan, which, actually, seems to be the only large resort of its kind in China. It’s also literally the southernmost city of China, with Vietnam just 250-300km across the water and Beijing a full ~2500km away.
October 16, 2024
For the first time in my life I’ve seen a comet unassisted – with just the naked eye. Oh my Gerasimenko! ->
Greetings all – from China’s Qinghai province, where right now up above our heads we can see the 62P/Tsuchinshan comet without a telescope. And it’s going to be flying past Earth for around another week!…
Like I say, I hadn’t seen one before, since they’re a rather rare phenomenon – even though there are plenty of them; for example, there’s the famous Halley’s Comet, which we won’t see again until July 28, 2061 (if clouds don’t get in the way).
So when will 62P return to our cosmic skies? Some astronomers think… never!
October 4, 2024
And so it goes…
You follow the path of life, running here, slowing down there, focusing on this and that, getting caught up in small tasks, darting around the planet, and suddenly – boom: you find yourself being 59 years’ old!
Fifty-nine. That’s a serious number of years. Stock – as ever on this day – needs to be taken (real quick; don’t over-think it:)…
I’ve done a great deal throughout these 59 years – but I still need to do a great deal more. I’ve seen, prodded, tasted, smelled, and photographed half the world already – but I still dream of seeing, prodding, tasting, smelling, and photographing the other half. So that’s what I’ll do – and full-steam ahead!…
September 19, 2024
Now for a quick review of my recent business trip to Tianjin, China…
The first thing that came to mind when we reached downtown was: “Where are all the millions of Chinese folks that I’ve been told live here?” For the mentioned downtown sure seemed rather deserted empty for a city of 14 million – just as it did on my previous trips to the city (2012, 2019)…
The internet and my other senses tell me this city is far from an uninteresting place to live. People have called the banks of the river here home since ancient times, which makes sense given its climate. But then the Chinese emperors moved the capital north to Beijing (I still don’t understand why), which in Chinese literally means “Northern Capital” – 北 běi for north and 京 jīng for capital.
The migration of the imperial capital north and subsequent prospering of Tianjin happened (if we believe unverified sources) around 600 years ago (see here), and the city turned into a southern port for the capital, which I’ll show photos of a little later. This was the first time these river backwaters got lucky. Then for centuries Tianjin was a major transit point from the southern provinces to the capital, and from the capital and back.
