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Tag Archives: USSR
From dusk till dawn. Life in the Pamirs.
In my teens and early twenties this place would’ve been hell. Life in a tiny village where farm animals outnumber men by a wide margin. Where the main past-time is to sit down and watch the clouds move around Pyk … Continue reading
Posted in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan
Tagged Alpine, Asia, Central Asia, Children, Clouds, Cow, Cube, Goat, Grass, Hitchhike, Hitchhiker, Hitchhiking, Huckleberry, Izba, Kids, Kyrgyz, Kyrgyzstan, M41, Mountain pass, Pamir, Pamir Highway, Pamirextreme, Pass, People, Photography, Sary Tash, Snow, Summer, Switchback, Travel, USSR, Village
19 Comments
A Huck Finn state of mind.
What does it feel like to be floating on the mighty Mississippi with no worries but where to moor for the night? How does it feel to be absolutely unconstrained by timescales, worries or need-to? In a nutshell, what does it … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan
Tagged Aeroflot, Airplane graveyard, Airport, Alpine, Antonov, Asia, Basmachi, Breakdown, Central Asia, Clouds, Container, Cube, Daewoo, Finn, Fuel, Gagarin, Gulcha, Hitchhike, Hitchhiker, Hitchhiking, Huck Finn, Huckleberry, Ilyushin, Kamaz, Kyrgyz, Kyrgyzstan, M41, Mark Twain, Marshrutka, Matiz, Mountain, Mountain pass, Osh, Osh airplane cemetery, Osh airport, Osh Bazaar, Pamir, Pamir Highway, Pass, People, Photography, Rubik's, Sary Tash, Shared Taxi, Statue, Summer, Switchback, Taldok, Taxi, Travel, Truck, USSR, Village
25 Comments
To the last city.
No, that’s a misnomer. Tashkent was, if anything, Uzbekistan’s first city, at least in the modern sense of the term. First one to be occupied by the Russians, first one to be reached by a railroad, first to host all … Continue reading
Posted in Central Asia, Uzbekistan
Tagged Asia, Central Asia, Christianity, City, Cityscape, Cycling, Earthquake, Food, G55 AMG, Hotel Uzbekistan, Islam, Islam Karimov, Karimov, Kazakhstan, Korean, Kosmonavtlar, Lenin, Marx, Mercedes, Mirobod, Soviet, Soviet Union, Street photography, Urban photography, USSR, Uzbek Koreans, Uzbekistan
11 Comments
A tale of two missions. Part 2.
It was just appropriate that, in line with the general low-key-feeling of the entire place, the next stop in our tour looked a lot like grandpa’s barn meets serial accumulator’s shack, if one was willing to ignore the fact that … Continue reading
Posted in Americas, USA
Tagged 747, Anders, Apollo, Apollo 1, Apollo 11, Apollo 8, Austin, Boeing, Borman, Chief Astronaut, Cosmos, Faith 7, Gemini, Gemini 5, Gene Cernan, Gene Kranz, Houston, Johnson Space Center, Lovell, Mars, Mercury, Micheal Collins, Moon, Moon Buggy, NASA, NASA Parkway, Orion, Pete Conrad, Pin, Shuttle, Space race, Space Shuttle, Texas, TSUM Dushanbe, USA, USSR, Venera 10
12 Comments
A tale of two missions. Part 1.
The TsUM Magazin on Rudaki was rumoured, according to the chit-chat in the hostel, to be unbeatable in Dušanbe for Soviet tat, but once we’d gotten there it was pretty hard to figure out why. Ground floor was packed to … Continue reading
Posted in Americas, USA
Tagged 747, Apollo, Apollo 11, Austin, Boeing, Chief Astronaut, Cosmos, Faith 7, Gemini, Gemini 5, Gene Cernan, Gene Kranz, Houston, Johnson Space Center, Mars, Mercury, Micheal Collins, Moon, Moon Buggy, NASA, NASA Parkway, Orion, Pete Conrad, Pin, Shuttle, Space race, Space Shuttle, Texas, TSUM Dushanbe, USA, USSR, Venera 10
13 Comments
Disaster by design: the death and partial rebirth of the Aral Sea (Part 2).
I’d seen Serik a long time before we met in the parking lot outside the Altair hotel; in fact, I first read about him on Al Jazeera. Dubbed “Aralsk’s only tour guide”, he’d accepted to be my guide for the … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Kazakhstan
Tagged Aqespe, Aral, Aral Sea, Aral sea ships, Aralsk, Asia, Beached boats, Boat, Camel, Cotton, Desertification, Disappearance of Aral sea, Ecological disaster, Ecology, Impact on health, Kazakhstan, Lenin, Moscow, North Aral Sea, Salinisation, Ship Graveyard, Ships, Soviet Union, Travel, USSR, Uzbekistan, White Gold, World Bank, Zhalanash
22 Comments
Disaster by design: the death and partial rebirth of the Aral Sea (Part 1).
The aurora was a promise of yet another scorcher of a day, as it’d been yesterday and tomorrow was bound to be, but right now it was fresh and cool as I sat on my pack on the first of … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Kazakhstan
Tagged Aral, Aral Sea, Aralsk, Asia, Cotton, Desertification, Disappearance of Aral sea, Ecological disaster, Ecology, Impact on health, Kazakhstan, Lenin, Moscow, North Aral Sea, Salinisation, Soviet Union, USSR, Uzbekistan, White Gold, World Bank
15 Comments
The “Frontier School of Character”: Travels along the Pamir Highway Part V.
To Dušanbe. “In my opinion, eight officers out of ten are corrupted in Dušanbe” Tajik police officer, interviewed by I. Khamonov, 2005 My memories of Khorog are fleeting, for such was the nature of my permanence there. We took possession … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Central Asia, Tajikistan
Tagged Afghanistan, Atatürk, Basmachi, Bolshevik, Bukhara, China, Dushanbe, Dušanbe, Enver Pasha, Khorog, Kulob, Lenin, M41, Marshrutka, Pamir, Pamir Highway, Panj river, Shared Taxi, Tajikistan, USSR
16 Comments
The “Frontier School of Character”: Travels along the Pamir Highway Part IV.
To Khorog. “Recent years have struck a final crippling blow to the roadlessness of Kirgiziia […]. Instead of isolated districts there is now one connected and unified economic whole.” M.M. Slavinskii, 1935 A minute man waited for us in the … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Tajikistan
Tagged Adidas, Asia, Great Game, Ionov, Khorog, Kirgizia, Mountain, Pamir, Pamir Gap, Pamir Highway, Panj, Queen Victoria, Snow, Tajikistan, Tsar, USSR, Younghusband
18 Comments
