NOTES, COMMENT AND BUZZ FROM EUGENE KASPERSKY – OFFICIAL BLOG
March 3, 2020
Our auto-expedition around Namibia, as you have both read and seen, was a series of raptures, ecstasies, OMGs, woweees, and similar such woahs. But already it was coming to a close. Boo!
What no more of this? ->
August 29, 2019
My summer schedule has whirled into a frantic tornado. It’s only likely to ease up … at the end of October :) It was only 16 days ago that I returned from my trip to the Kurils, Sakhalin, Komandorski and Kamchatka, and since then I’ve been on a round trip to Malaysia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. And now my suitcase is packed and I’m ready to fly again…
There are still about 5,000 photos “in the pipeline”. It’s scary to think when that backlog may get cleared up, especially considering the very interesting places in my upcoming world travel plans. They’re the kind of places that leave a lingering imprint in your memory – and photos on the internet. However, it’s now time to catch up on some old stuff.
There was one place on the planet that I had long been dreaming of visiting – the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. I’ll add some stories later. For now, I just want to post a selection of some of the very best photos. Here you go!
Endless wilderness…
April 13, 2019
Ladies and gents, boys and girls!
If you wake up one morning in a hotel room and open the drapes to see this here scene – don’t rush with the cheerfulness. Appearances can be deceiving…
So, what’s not right in that pic? First: the beach – it’s empty, as in – no folks. Second: not a single human head to be seen bobbing about on that there sea. Third: those palms are looking more than a little distressed with their leaves flapping about frantically in the wind.
So yes, this is not a day for the beach. But not to worry – that means it’s a day… for a helicopter excursion!
July 4, 2018
Hej folks!
You’ve seen what the Faroe Islands look like down on the ground. Now, let’s have a look at them from up above in a helicopter.
Hardly any words today folks; just a ton of oh-my-green-and-glorious pics for your viewing pleasure…
This is the north-western edge of the islands; the best pics were taken in the morning – against the sun. But I think a sunset view of these parts needs to be checked too. That will have to be for another day though.
Off flies our ride! But he promised to return a while later…
Oh how I wanted to get up some of those clearly volcanic peaks for trek/climb in such clear and beautiful weather. Maybe I will one day…
Stroll time – on the westernmost island of the Faroes – Mykines.
I like paths; walked a great many; but I can’t recall one with views all around as breathtaking as this one!
‘Faroe’, btw, means ~’sheep island’ in Faroese. Well, as I can vouch personally, nothing’s changed in thousands of years!…
This is the westernmost point of the westernmost island of the Faroes. Further west: Iceland, then Greenland, then Canada…
In closing – a few words about the Faroese climate.
Though my first impressions were positive, it does turn out that the internet doesn’t tell lies: the weather here is pretty darn awful generally. We were just very lucky: a full day of bright sunshine is very much a rarity here. More often than not it’s rainy, foggy, windy, murky and bleak.
(Btw – those are birds up in the sky; we didn’t see a single mosquito)
Rainbow!
Windy, as per usual:
So if ever you’re heading here – take some good weather with you. Otherwise…
PS: the hotel we stayed at was wonderful. Highly recommend: the Foroyar. The food was outstanding.
Cattle sheep grid!:
Grassy roof!
Kunst in the rooms…
…And in the restaurant:
And that, folks, is it from the fair Faroes. Gotta get back here and get some trekking in. If only there was a season when it didn’t rain…
All the photos from the Faroe Islands are here.
September 28, 2017
While at the waterfalls called Iguazu, taking a helicopter ride is a must-do!
A flight up above the falls is not only wholly informative, it’s also thoroughly meditative – just how I like it. Oki-doki… off we chopper…
Here’s the Iguazu River downstream of the falls:
Here’s where the Iguazu (river) meets the Parana – the second longest South American river (after the Amazon, of course:). It’s also a spot where three countries’ borders meet: Paraguay to the right, Argentina – top left, Brazil – bottom left. The differences in the quality of housing and roads are quite marked between the three countries (see the photos further below) – highlighting their different levels of economic development:
June 26, 2017
You though it (NZ) was all over? Nope. More! Whoah! Or, to be more precise – Whoakaari!
Here we are on White Island, known in the local dialect as Whakaari. We got here on a chopper. Whoakaari! Piloted by a really cool woman! Whoakaari!
Oh my gorgeous! Just look at the views we got up there. Almost as if it was all carefully painted, trimmed, and then Photoshopped!…
March 4, 2016
In a follow-up to my plane trip, this post is about my recent jaunt in a helicopter.
I had really hoped our plane could land closer to our destination, which was deep in the mountains, but, unfortunately, the Alps were covered in clouds, and we weren’t allowed to fly to Samedan (am I the only one who hadn’t heard of this place before?) So we were diverted to Malpensa airport, Milan. This white helicopter came to Malpensa to collect us.
Which came as a huge surprise to me. Usually, helipads are either located outside international airports, or miles from the terminals, runways and taxi tracks. However, this time the helicopter landed close to the civil air terminal – in the photos above you can just make out the plane tails with the logos of Emirates (A-380), Lufthansa, Alitalia, Swiss Air, etc.
Then there was the most curious part of all – takeoff.
September 26, 2015
Next up on An-Kam-2015 – Ilynsky.
This is one grandiose volcano. There’s no arguing about it.
And the bigger – the better. Or so it seems at first… (more on the downside below). Anyway, we decided almost impulsively to get ourselves to its peak, for the views from up there are sure to be amazing – weather permitting.
Here’s what it looks like from the window of a helicopter, and also from the shore of Kurile Lake:
July 20, 2015
Hi all!
To get high up and look down and around, say, from up a mountain… it’s always cool and beautiful. But to fly up above for panoramic views of below – it’s even better. And best of all when it comes to flying for sightseeing purposes is the helicopter. Best of all when it comes to what to check out below…: a beautiful city. Best of all when it comes to beautiful cites…: one uniquely beautiful like St. Petersburg.
So of we choppered…
Pulkovo – Petergof – Bolshaya (Big) Neva – the Neva – Malaya (Little) Nevka – Pulkovo.
I’ve nothing much to say really. But a lot to show…:
Petergof:
July 13, 2015
[*see the last-but-one paragraph.]
Of late my blogposts have been coming forth in series. There have been Kimberley 1-7, there are the Top-Places-themed posts coming up, and now, here – the first post of another series: on Saint Petersburg – the Window to Europe…
Here we go!…
First – a bit of a long-winded intro. Long-winded, moi?
For some unknown reason I recently decided to tot up the number of cities in Russia I’ve been to. I mean just cities, not towns – so, let’s say, places with at least 100,000 folks living there. And I also mean cities I’ve properly visited: in which I stayed at least a few days. Accordingly, ‘passed through’, ‘saw its airport waiting for a connection’, even ‘quickly checked out its kremlin’, etc. all don’t count.
It turns out that my total for Russia is 14 cities. Listed from west to south to north to east, they are: Kaliningrad, Pskov, Velikiy Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, Novorossiysk, Kazan, Saratov, Volgograd, Sochi, Yakutsk, Novosibirsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski.
Of course there have been other towns and cities I’ve been to, but they don’t get included in my total due to the above-mentioned exception rules. So, ‘visited’ towns and cities not making the list include the following:
Uryupinsk, Kozmodemyansk, Dmitrov, Dubna, Kolomna, Torzhok, Kozelsk, Kem, Belomorsk, Kholmsk, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Lukhovitsi, and many, many more…
I then wondered what such a list but of US cities would look like… Woh: 16! Two more than in Russia:
Anchorage, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Chicago, Louisville, Dallas, Austin, Boston, New York, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Orlando, Miami.
The ‘barred’ cities and towns for the US are: Honolulu (Hawaii), Valdez (Alaska), Sedona (Arizona), Palo Alto & San Jose (California), El Paso (Texas), Page (Arizona), Key West (Florida) and many others (even our office in Woburn (Massachusetts) – disallowed!).
Hmmm, let’s see… the USA has just under double the population of Russia (320 million and 140 million, respectively). That means one city of Russia should have a coefficient of two when comparing the two nations’ visited cities… No, that doesn’t work: then I’d have been to the ‘most cities’… in Singapore! (with its population of 5.5 million, 25 times smaller than Russia).
Let’s look at some of the populations of countries whose cities I’ve visited…
Norway – five million souls, and I’ve been to two cities – Oslo, the capital, and Bergen; that is, twice as many as in Singapore. Where else?…
…New Zealand! – 4.4 million persons. We acclimatized and slowly strolled about in Auckland, and spent a night in Christchurch and closely inspected its highlights the next day. Then there was Wellington and Dunedin where we bedded down one night each, but no inspecting – so they don’t count.
Do we have a less-than-2,000,000-population country in the visited list? Yes!…
…Gabon! 1.6 million Gabonese, and I was in Libreville for a few days just six weeks ago. Cyprus! Limassol and… Nicosia and Pathos only passed by – meaning Cyprus not a competitor! (Although there’s just over a million population there). Andorra! Been, strolled, skied – 85,000. But who’s the champion? Monaco! Monte Carlo. Clear leader. 30,000 population. And I’ve been there many, many times.
So, if you take into account a city’s country’s ‘handicap’ coefficient, get to Monte Carlo. It equals 4500 cities in Russia or 10,000 towns in the US. Oh, something isn’t right there. The method’s all wrong. We could take into account economic coefficients, geographic area coefficients… but no; I’m already a bit tired of all this, and what I’ve already written turned out to be way too long…
OK, enough math mirth :).
Experimental comparison ramblings aside, recently… I was in Saint Petersburg (note to US readers: the original one)!
The splendid, saintly, seductive, sensuous, statuesque St. Petersburg. I was last there seven years ago, in the summer of 2008. We had our partner conference there. And since then every year I’d kept promising our Peterites I’d be coming back soon, but always shamefully failing to do so.
Seven years I’d been promising. In the meantime we’d opened an office there, we’d then moved to smarter premises, and now 80 KLers work there diligently for the good of the company and the world. A lot has changed, and I was always was promising but dragging my feet. Well, at last, I finally made it up there! Hurray – I’m writing this in St. P: one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
So, what have we here that was here last time? The Neva‘s still flowing through the city, there’s Nevsky, St. Isaac’s, the Admiralty building, Peter and Paul Fortress, and the Astoria; the bridges still open and Petergof is still a real crowd-puller.
