When I was a lad, Vladivostok was impossibly exotic, remote and inaccessible. It was a closed city, the home of the jealously guarded Soviet Pacific Fleet, inaccessible to regular Soviet citizens, let alone wicked foreigners. Well, nowadays a standard Russian tourist visa will let you enter Vladivostok and you can wander at will around the […]
Browsing Posts in Travel
Vladivostok and the Pacific Fleet
March 8, 2009
A Day in Transdniester
December 21, 2008
On my way from Chisinau to Odessa, I passed through Tiraspol, the capital of the strange territory of Transdniester (aka Transdniestr, or Transdnestr, or Transnistria, or Transdniestria). This is a narrow slice of Moldova with an ethnic Russian majority. Back when the USSR was dissolved, these good folk were alarmed to discover that Moldova was […]
Zoroastrian Yazd
October 11, 2008
The city of Yazd is the main remaining Zoroastrian center in Iran. Zoroastrianism is (along with Christianity and Judaism) one of the three recognized and protected religious minorities under the Islamic Republic’s constitution. So worship and pilgrimages are officially tolerated, although probably not exactly encouraged. I hired a car and guide for the trip out […]
The Darvaza Gas Crater
October 3, 2008
The Darvaza Gas Crater is the debris from a disastrously failed Soviet gas well. After the failure, the escaping gas was left to burn itself out. It has been merrily burning for over 30 years now. (More Davaza photos.) Through StanTours, I had arranged a 4WD, driver and guide for the trip, about 150 miles […]
Ashgabat: Much Strangeness
October 2, 2008
Turkmenistan is by far the strangest of the ex-soviet Republics. The late President Niyazov (aka “Turkmenbashi”) ruled as an absolute monarch, with a personality cult that would have made Stalin blush. Strange relics of his reign still dot Ashgabat. The Arch of Neutrality is a 75 meter tripod tower, adorned with a 12 meter golden […]
Astana: Kazakh City of the Future
September 7, 2008
Astana is Kazakhstan’s new post-Soviet capital, in the Northern steppes. The faces on the streets seem mostly Central Asian, so it seems to have succeeded in attracting a large ethnic Kazakh population into what was formerly an ethnic-Russian part of the country. That may not have been President Nazarbayev’s sole goal, but it has certainly […]
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