Tag Archives: on the road again

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:

• Over two weeks a full 23 (!) natural and historical objects were visited, strolled, prodded, delighted in, and – of course – photographed;
• Places we stayed for at least a night – 11;
• Distance covered on the road (by our driver) – more than 5000km!

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! ->

Read on…

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).

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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!…

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My Southeast Asian/Chinese business trip was drawing to a close…

Japan – done;

Hong Kong – done;

Beijing outskirts – done.

So far – so good: meetings, events, public speaking, plus the mandatory insertions of micro-tourism along the way – just how I like it.

Just before setting off back home – we had a night in central Beijing. And while there, in my hotel room, I came over all nostalgic…

// Brief digression: you see the clouds in the sky? You know what they mean? That the Beijing air has cleaned up its act. Respect! I wrote about this back in July of last year.

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Hi folks!

Been a while – yes; but I’ve been busy. More on that…

So, you know how business trips for me are pretty much always intense, hi-tempo, tight-schedule, action-packed affairs? Well, guess what? This summer that “template” transferred over to my summer holidays. And I couldn’t be happier for it!…

In almost three weeks – first with colleagues and then with family – I visited a full 10 locations, staying in hotels, villas – even tents! Put another way, for 18 days we stayed in one place on average 1.8 days. More specifically: Beijing; Shenzhen; Guiyang; Nairobi, plus another six overnight stays across Kenya (the final one being next to Diani Beach, where we decompressed for a few days after all the tourism-till-you-drop:).

I said above I couldn’t have been happier; however, not everything went smoothly. Luggage went missing, and there were flight delays of several hours. Fortunately, the first such delay we found out about in advance of setting off for the airport, so we killed time whiled away the time leisurely at Lake Houhai (situated near the center of Beijing, some two kilometers north of the Forbidden City)…

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Sea-based, then (low-land) land-based extraordinary experiences – done.

Next up – time to go higher…

First – proviso: I’m no serious mountaineer into tricky climbs requiring special equipment and training. I take my mountains volcanoes seriously, of course, but I’m always one to take the paths up an incline (if there are any paths), preferring to take a meditative-contemplative approach to volcano climbing/trekking…

I’ve scaled some of the more famous volcanoes around the world, but most of them – like Kilimanjaro – have almost become mainstream these days. So let me tell you about some of the more exclusive/exotic ones I’ve either climbed – or just visited and beheld (entranced!)…

First up – Krenitsyn volcano on the Kuril island of Onekotan, which I mentioned in the first post in this series ->

Read on:…

Finally, my Asia-Pacific tour (Korea–Japan–Singapore–Thailand) had come to an end. My physical body, if it could talk, would probably say “and thank god Buddha it’s ended too!”, since the tour sure was physically draining: flights every ~three days, and nothing much else besides work-work-work in-between. However, my mind would never say such a thing. It’s what I do, and what I love doing. It’s on trips away like this one when I feel fully alive – completely in-sync with the rhythm of life.

Bye bye Thailand! We’re heading home!…

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Today, aviation theme…

Window-seat air travel can be strange. There you are, ensconced, with plenty of thoughts whirling around in your head, but your brain doesn’t pay any attention to them – it just keeps looking out the window. Then, something aerial-awesome comes into view. Thoughts? What thoughts?! And then the hands reach for the camera almost automatically, and it’s “here we go again!” At least, that’s how things played out recently when flying on the short flight from Tokyo to Singapore, in this here mid-size airliner:

Right from the get-go after take-off the views out the window were fantastic. First up – the Japanese strong work-ethic, preciseness, and space-economy were in full view as far as the eye could see ->

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The flight from Seoul to Tokyo takes just two hours. Above Korea it was cloudy, so there wasn’t much worth looking at – or taking photos of – out the windows. Just as well really, since it meant I could concentrate on some admin catch-up (mostly checking emails) – the kind of thing that always gets neglected on a business trip with a busy schedule. On the plane I was undisturbed for most of the way (save for the flight attendant, who kept asking if I’d like another drink:). Nearing the end of the flight, I took my first look out the window to find that the cloud had cleared and Japan was clearly in view down below ->

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Hi folks!

As per usual, having only just seen off the previous year in blog format, it’s February already!

So here we are – in 2023; I wonder, will it continue the trend of being “roaring” – but not quite like the Roaring Twenties of last century? You know – first covid and the lockdowns, then you-know-what. Whatever next? I just hope there’s less roaring, and more… purring – and a lot less geopoliticism…

All this geopolitics, though – it has had one interesting effect on us here at K: it’s forced us out of our comfort zone. It made us adapt, quickly, to the new macro-reality we found ourselves in. We’ve been working harder than ever before – not quite in panic-mode, but not far from it, and we’ve ended up stronger, nimbler and smarter for it. Just as well – for who else is going to do much of the heavy-lifting in building the secure digital future we all deserve?!…

And all our hard work really has paid off: despite everything (though the official figures aren’t in just yet), we managed to maintain sales of our products practically at the same level as in 2021! Sure, we took hits in both North America and Europe, but those were made up for by boosts in all the other regions of the world. In a word: woahski.

// Photographic digression. Why? See the bold below… ->

So, like, how did we manage it? Two main ways really: first – because we’re awesome, obviously; second – we’re kinda getting used to thriving through ****storms! For let’s face it, they’re becoming the norm for us. Crisis management – what’s that? It’s simply “management” now ). Yes, of course we’d prefer calmer seas, without all the geopolitical thunderstorms we’ve zero control over. Instead the seas are as choppy as heck. So we adapt, we toughen up, we get our sea legs, and steer the ship as best we can to ride out the storm. What else can we do?…

Read on…