You enter through the basement blast doors and then ride the tiny elevator 11 levels down into the armored control silo. You and one of your comrades man the launch control consoles. A quick consultation, then 1-2-3 you each turn your launch key and simultaneously push your launch button. And the SS-24 ICBM roars into […]
Browsing Posts in Travel
Ukraine: Soviet ICBM Base
July 11, 2014
Chernobyl Tour
July 10, 2014
Touring Chernobyl feels distinctly odd. The name conjures images of a doom-ridden wasteland, but the reality is very different. Even deep inside the exclusion zone there is generally only low radioactivity, roughly the same as normal background, and it has turned into a pleasant green wilderness, marred only by a scattering of decayed buildings. We […]
Buddhist Elista
July 2, 2014
I’m in Elista, in South-West Russia, Europe’s largest (only!) Buddhist city. A Pagoda, a Golden Temple, stupas, a giant golden Buddha statue, assorted Buddhist art. And amazingly few tourists. Elista is home to the Kalmyks, a western arm of the Mongols, who settled in the plains North of the Caucasus in the 17th century. They’ve […]
Cuba: Revolutionary Block Party
February 11, 2014
I’m in Matanzas Province, Cuba, traveling with Smithsonian Journeys. We were scheduled for a “block party with locals”. Which sounds boring. Except that it turned out to be with the local Committee for the Defence of the Revolution. And the event had escalated – we had more than 200 locals attend and a local Communist Party official crashed the event to make sure that we all got got the Right Messages ™.
Cuba: Classic cars
February 11, 2014
For many years, Cubans were banned from buying and selling cars. If you had a car, you could keep it, but you couldn’t sell it or replace it. As a result, old cars were cherished, and pampered 1950s American cars are common on the streets of Havana and other cities. As well as the classic […]
Russia-Azerbaijan Border
September 19, 2013
The Russian-Azerbaijan border used to be closed to foreigners. But a couple of recent postings over on the Lonely Planet forums had indicated that the Russian regulations have changed to allow non-CIS citizens to cross. I was in the Caucasus, so I thought I would give it a try, starting from Derbent in Dagestan and […]
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