Working with photos...

It's astounding how complicated publishing photos to my blog from the same editor I use to write the text of my blog can be. I've finally found a freeware (Ed. Note: err... shareware, apparently) editor called Ecto that seems to do the trick and publishes my stuff to flickr at the same time that it shoves it on my blog. To prove the point I'm publishing a bonus photo (YAY!) from China.

(Below: A baby with a 'doo on a bike.)

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Nic's Current Location: Classified. Somewhere South of North and North of South.

We've got a bit of catching up to do haven't we?

As the title of this post suggests, I'm finally getting off my ass, proverbially at least, and writing a bit of an update about what I've been up to for the last... err... 16 odd months. It's hardly an excuse, but my time in China behind the Great Firewall all but killed my blogging momentum, and my two months in Nepal afterwards, with internet connections slower than anywhere else in the WORLD (seriously) pretty much killed what remaining enthusiasm I had for the endeavour.

What I'm hoping to do now is to write and publish a series of catchup-posts over the coming weeks to bring everyone who's curious up to speed with what I'm doing and where I am now. For the less patient among you, the short answers to those questions is "Heading South and East" and "In Bali" respectively, though I've had one or two interesting adventures on my way here. Having said all that, I guess it's time to start cluing you guys in to what I've been up to:

Following my late-August 2007 departure from Mongolia I made a proverbial bee-line from Ulan-Bator to Beijing by train and hell-car (aka "sleeper bus") ... I still haven't figured out WHY they're called "sleeper" buses, as I have yet to manage to get a single wink of sleep on one. Anywhere. Ever. A week(-ish) in Beijing and it was off to Dalian, in the north, and then onwards to South Korea via a ferry from Dalian to Incheon, just outside of Seoul, where I spent 5 days enjoying Korean life and catching up with some old friends from BlackBall (The ferry company that runs the MV Coho from Victoria to Port Angeles; Selling Coho tickets was my first "real" job at the end of high-school.). After Seoul I hopped onto a KTX high-speed train for the ride to Pusan in the South-East of Korea, where I spent another few days sight-seeing.

I got bored of Pusan after a couple of days and, longing for something new, hopped a ferry over to Fukuoka, Japan on a whim... Given the amount of time I was actually in the country for, Japan was actually a rather eventful place for me. I met a great girl and spent a couple of weeks wandering around the country with her. I also managed to spend a few days in Nagasaki and Hiroshima to have a look at the A-bomb memorials and sites; my curiosity about the two locales stemming from my time in Chernobyl, Ukraine.

That's all you're going to get out of me for now, though I'll do what I can to write a bit more in a few days.

(Below: A back-street in Beijing very, very early in the morning.)

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Nic's Current Location (at time of writing): Seminyak district, Denpassar, Bali.

Just a test...

I've decided to make another attempt at resurrecting my blog. We'll see how this goes, but I've managed to find a rather handy offline blog editor which will (hopefully) let me write stuff offline and then just post it quickly and easily when I've got an internet connection...

This is just a handy-dandy test post to see how the burst-transmission end of this works, and whether or not I like the formatting... Hopefully there'll be a bit more to come...

Powered by Qumana

It's official... I suck at keeping my blog updated...

I'm well aware that it's hardly an excuse to abandon this damn thing for so long... I lost most of my posting-momentum while I was in China, where, as per the wisdom of the government, blogging is illegal.

Since my last real post in Mongolia I've ... well... covered a lot of ground... My route took me through China, via Beijing and a northern city called Dalian, through South Korea (Seoul and Pusan), Japan (Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Tokyo, Yokohama and Osaka) then back through China (Shanghai and Beijing again)and deep into Tibet via the new high-altitude train run from Beijing to Lhasa. I got to breathe oxygen from a tube for half a day in the comfort of a compartment shared with 5 other people... Sounds like fun? You Bet!

My time in Tibet was somewhat limited as I was in the area illegally. The Chinese government was imposing a crackdown on foreign travelers and weren't too thrilled to have a 6'3" red-bearded white guy wandering around... ... C'est la vie...

From Lhasa I crossed the Himalayas to Kathmandu by jeep, an endeavour that took several days with stops at Shigatse, Gyantse, and Everest Base Camp (Tibet)... The trip also included one mild concussion and a visit to a Tibetan "doctor's office" where I was helpfully informed that I'd only imagined hitting my head and passing out... Gee... Thanks doc...

A planned two-week stay in Nepal evolved into two months, and included two solid weeks of white-water rafting, trekking in the Himalayas, my first flight in a (hanging from a) paraglider, and wandering the slums of Kathmandu at dawn. All amazing experiences, and none of which I have the time to go into at the moment. I promise I'll write a longer post when I'm in England (more on that in a few minutes)...

India thus far has been... Interesting... I've spent most of my time in the North-East and North-West of the country and am still trying to figure out exactly what all the big fuss is about... People keep telling me that the South West is "different", but thus far most of the country, with very, VERY few exceptions (though they do exist), seems to be one large, smelly cesspit full of people who would gladly knife me in the back to take the 10 Rs of change I have in my pocket... I've seen more thefts in the last two months than in the rest of my life combined, and have, for the first time in my life since junior-high, actually engaged in something resembling a fight; an activity I don't particularly enjoy doing, to say the least...

My time in India has been broken up by detours to Bangladesh and Bhutan. The former was an enlightening, if tiring, experience. The latter was very, very expensive and over-rated, but still worthwhile... I've just arrived in Delhi after two weeks in Western Kashmir (currently under 2.5 meters of snow!) and am getting ready to fly back to England for 10 days of sanity, sanitation and... good beer... before hitting the road again through SOUTH India and on to Singapore...

Once again, my apologies to my readers for leaving things so long. Getting back into the blog-posting groove after a forced month-long absence from it is a challenge that I, apparently, wasn't up to. I apologize as well, for the crudeness of this post. I'm throwing this up on the net without my usual editing or photos in the hopes that having THIS done will be enough motivation for me to get back into the groove and write a bit more while I'm in England (having real internet access helps as well!)


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Nic's Current Location: Pahar Ganj, Delhi, India.

-:My GPS died an ugly, painful death 5 days into a rafting expedition in Nepal. You'll have to live without my specific whereabouts for a while until I can replace it.:-

Nic can't post right now because of the Great Firewall

Nic can't post right now because of the Great Firewall

This is Ian posting to Nic's blog because he's in China and can't post right now - For more information on the Great Firewall - visit Wikipedia - Article Here Once he leaves China controlled internet, I'm sure we'll hear from him sooner or later...

So, my nine-day tour of Central Mongolia, including Kharkhorin, the ancient capital of the Mongolian Empire and a three-day horse-tour of the 8-lakes region is complete. Within two hours of arriving back in Ulan-Bator I began gearing up for a 9-day trip to the South Gobi... I leave at 8AM tomorrow morning and will be back in UB late on the 22nd, just in time to get a good nights sleep in a "real" (i.e. Hostel dorm) bed and hop on a two-day-long train/sleeper-bus connection to Beijing that leaves in the evening of the 23rd. It's 12:30 right now and I still need to finish packing... I'll do what I can to fill everyone in on what I've been doing for the last 2 weeks...

My "tour group" which included myself, Miquel, a Spaniard, Dan, an American, Carlo and Liat respectively Italian and Israeli, on their honeymoon, and our driver, Sagi, a local Mongolian from Ulan-Bator (UB) whose wife was in hospital about to deliver their first child on the day we left UB. (*NOTE* I still can't figure out how to spell Sagi's name. It's pronounced "Sahg-ee")

(Below: (Left to Right) Myself, Dan, Miquel, Carlo, Sagi and Liat. Out-of-focus photo taken by some poor soul at the hostel who was awake for our 5AM departure.)

A few of our adventures along the road included climbing a Mongolian "Mountain" to take a look at some wild horses in Hustai National Park, hanging out with a young boy on the side of the road who had "caught" an eagle, spending three days on horse in the 8-lakes area (Note: Mongolian horses are very, very small. I walked a lot.), having my tent attecked (read: trampled on and eaten) by a herd of Yaks at 5AM, and having our van break down more times than I can count.

(Below: Miquel looking very much like Indiana Jones. The Tilley hat is mine and I'm quite upset that it looks better on Miquel then on me.)

(Below: A boy and his eagle. Touching really. Shortly after this was taken a two van-loads of Chinese (perhaps Korean?) tourists showed up and swamped the pair with cameras and flashes.)
(Below: Miquel's comment: "They are Yaks." Do I need to say more? (Miquel is the one on the right.))

(Below: A view from the same campsite as the Yak attack. It's not all bad.)

(Below: You don't want your van to break down here. Ours did.)

(Below: A taxi-stand in Tsetserleg, a regional capital several hundred km due WEST of Ulan-Bator.)

This is posted, again, with apologies for such a short update, but I figured a short update was better than none at all.

This... This could be interesting...

This is just a brief note to let everyone know that I won't be posting for a couple of weeks. I've arrived safe and sound in UB (though managed to nearly get myself deported from Mongolia before I even got off the train... All's well that ends well though... )... Anyway... a few friensd and I are renting a van and heading deep into the Western Mongolian wilderness. We'll be gone for at least 9 days. Following that I may, or may not, be heading South into the Gobi... The short version is that I won't have 'net access for quite a while, but I *WILL* have some interesting updates for you guys when I get back.

For those interested in doing more research, I'll be heading into the 8-lakes and White Lake regions, almost due East of Ulan-Bator.

[2007-08-13:CORRECTION: The 8-lakes and White Lake areas are due WEST of Ulan-Bator, not due East, as stated. This is what I get for rattling off a blog post at 6AM on only two hours of sleep...]

The Wild Wild East...

Irkutsk is, as one of my former editors put it, The Paris of Siberia... It's an oddly accurate description really. Despite the fact that the city itself has almost nothing to offer even the most dedicated and adventurous tourist, it is, in it's own strange and unqiue way, quite an interesting town... I've spent nearly a week here, based out of either Irkutsk itself, or, for three nights, Olkhon Island, which is 350 hundred kilometers north of here and takes somewhere between 6 and 8 hours to reach by bus, depending on how adept the driver is at dodging potholes and cows, both of which can be found in great abundance on the dirt roads of Siberia... The bus trip north was, for the most part, uneventful, though I did manage to make myself a new friend on the way. Karolina, a Polish girl who's travelling exploits make mine, to date, look quite meager, was sitting behind me on the bus. She was the only other English-speaker on the bus at the start of the trip (Not counting a pair of Quebecois who made it fairly clear they were "from Quebec, not Canada" and didn't like Canadian anglophones) and we managed to become decent friends over the course of the trip. Being a linguistics student, Karolina's Russian skills are, to say the least, far superior to my own; we spent the better part of two days bumming around on beaches and hiking the island before she had to return to Irkutsk to catch a train to Mongolia. We're planning on meeting up and getting a group together for some tours in Ulan-Bator once I get there...

(Below: One slighly crazy Polish polyglot on a ferry dock. I would have been lost on Olkhon without Karolina's help translating. My Russian is so poor that it would often send the locals (and Karolina) into fits of laughter whenever I tried to order a drink, let alone a meal involving more than one type of food.)

Olkhon Island was fascinating in it's own way. Most of my time was spent in the village of Khuzir, located about halfway up the western side of the island. The town is at once extremely primitive and quite advanced (by Siberian standards); electricity was only brought in in 2005, and running water is still, if you'll pardon the pun, a pipe-dream. The room I stayed in was a small three-bedroom (though I had the place to myself) on the very edge of town. A quick step out my door and I was looking at a radio tower, then nothing but barren hills and sparse pine forrest as far as I could see. The toilet was a not-so-deep pit in the ground, with a wooden board and a hole cut in it. Cows roam freely through the streets (The farmers here haven't yet found any good reason to put them behind fences, and for the most part they do quite a good job of eating weeds and anything else left on the dirt roads of the town.) On my second day in town I opened my laptop to download some pictures and was pleased to find that, for the first time since leaving Moscow, I had a wifi connection to the internet, courtesy of one of the nearby houses...

(Below: A typical, though somewhat isolated, Olkhon outhouse.)

(Below: A view of the bluffs near Khuzir, as seen from Shaman's Rock.)

Olkhon Island itself, outside of Khuzir that is, is truly one of the most beautiful places I've seen in a very long time. I'd even go so far as to say that Siberia (the parts away from cities at least) rivals B.C. for natural beuaty... Long white-sand beaches, open plains, forrests, and even small mountains (or large hills, depending on who you ask) cover the place. There are also many, many cows.

(Below: Here a cow, there a cow... Note the tents and beach in the background. It's not uncommon to wake up on Olkhon with a cow in one's front yard.)

(Below: Enjoying a sunset from the Khuzir Bluffs, is one of the more popular evening activities on Olkhon Island...)

Since returning from the island my time in Irkutsk has been largely spent exploring out-of-the-way places, including several streets full of old wooden houses (quite a rarity in Russia), most of which were built by, or for, exiled Decemberists in the early/mid-1800's. (I forgot to put pictures of the houses on my USB Drive before leaving my hostel this morning, but will post a few pictures once I get to Mongolia...) I'm currently killing time (This blog is good for something, right?) before hopping on a train to Mongolia...

(Note: This post is titled with apologies to Karolina for stealing "Wild Wild East" from her.)

4 days, 5000km, 7 new friends, no showers... That's one long train trip...

Seeing as how there's been a distinct lack of pictures lately, I'll start this post by throwing up a few shots from St. Petersburg and Moscow... I've talked about both in previous posts, but words really don't do the places justice...

(Below: One of the more historically interesting (to me) places that I visited in Moscow, the Lubyanka, former KGB headquarters. There's an old Russian joke that says the Lubyanka is the tallest building in all of Moscow because you can see Siberia from the basement... It's funny now, but perhaps not so much 30 years ago...)

(Below: A view looking up a canal at Peterhof Palace, just outside of St. Petersburg. The place was created largely by Peter the Great and is really a collection of palaces, gardens, fountains, forrests, and pretty much anything else you can imagine.)
Since departing St. Petersburg I've managed to successfully get myself back to Moscow, and all the way from Moscow to Irkutsk in one very smelly, tired, jetlagged, happy piece... The train itself was fairly decent by Russian standards, though I expect it was probably built sometime in the mid-1970's...

The trip, all 5000 km or so of it, has entirely reaffirmed my belief that trains are in fact the best way to to travel. In the space of 3 days and four nights I managed to make friends with a WONDFERUL German couple, a pair of amazingly friendly (and exceedingly beautiful) Swedish girls, a Canadian girl from Vancouver (It's a very small world...), a satellite electrical engineer and his girlfriend on Vacation from Moscow, a trio of extremely drunk Latvians on their way east after two weeks of camping and hunting in the depths of Siberia, and a Tibetan/Russian martial arts Master who could (disturbingly accurately) read peoples palms... The latter, named Yuri, was my roommate for two nights. More on him later...

The German couple I mentioned, Miriam and Roland, a pair of social workers from Frankfurt quite brilliantly had the foresight to bring along a squeegee to try and clean the windows on the train in order to get a better view (When we boarded in Moscow the windows of our car were so caked with mud that we could hardly see outside at all, let along enjoy the scenery)... After nearly 10 minutes of scrubbing with soap and water the windows were sadly just as dirty as they were when we left Moscow.

(Below: Roland made a valiant attempt to clean the windows of his and Miriam's cabin. He received quite a few very strange looks from the babushkas on the platform, and many of the Russian passengers, largely because cleaning is a "Woman's job" in Russia. For a man to pick up a bucket of soap and water is practically unheard of... Miriam is in the background, holding a bottle of soapy water and looking on in amusement.)

The air-conditioning in my carriage broke on the first day, and the rising temperature (I clocked it at 35 degrees in my cabin) forced most of the people in the car I was in into the halls, where we staged a small coup and forced open several windows and jammed or tied them open with empy pop bottles and some string... Quite a few people in my carriage, including Pavel, the aforementioned satellite electrical enginner, went shirtless for much of the trip.

(Below: The ever-cheerful Pavel. His girlfriend, Olga, took more pictures than I did. Both were quite excited to see Siberia for the first time.)
(Below: Olga, beer in-hand and camera hanging from her wrist, at one of the many stops. Babushkas selling a variety of (to Canadian's) unimaginable foods, are in the background.)

The Swedish girls I met were perhaps one of the more random encounters I had along the way. I said hi to them after hearing two of them speaking English in the corridor of the train. (While many russians speak a few words, or even have basic English down pat, it's tough to find fluent English-speakers.)... One of the girls, Maria, a social worker (yes, another social worker) from Sweden and I ended up chatting for a few hours afterwards... Later that day I was distracted from the book I was reading (Eugene Onegin, by Alexander Pushkin. HIGHLY reccomended to any fans of literature.) by Maria asking me if I could "be her hero" ... One does not often get asked to be the hero of tall, blonde, and beautiful Swedish girls, so I of course obliged... Turns out she'd accidentally deleted all of her holiday photos from her digital camera and I was the only person on the train with a laptop and a copy of Lexar's PhotoRescue software (a rather handy piece of professional software sold with Lexar-brand memory cards and used specifically to recover deleted and damaged photos from memory cards...) ... 90 minutes of image-recovery later and I found myself one friend richer in the most unexpected manner. I was shortly introduced to the rest of the Swedish contingent, including Lousie, a teacher. The two together were irrepressably cheerful, and I spent a good portion of the rest of the train trip hanging out with them in the dining car.

(Below: Maria (left) and Louise at one of the many small stations along the trans-siberian.)
There were countless other interesting, friendly, and in general quite amazing characters on the trans-sib, but the last I'll have time to mention in this post is my roommate for more than half of the trip, Yuri:

Yuri arrived in my cabin on the third night of the trip at around 11PM in Novosibirsk. He seemed quite friendly at first, and it didn't take us long to determine that he knew even less English than I did Russian. Yuri's spoken vocabulary consisted of "Sit down please" and "Kung Fu", the latter of which I quickly learned he was actually an avid practitioner of... I learned very quickly that when the English phrase "Kung Fu" was uttered, it was often followed by a brief demonstration of one of the several martial arts that Yuri was quite proficient in. After the second or third such demonstration I learned to step back, very quickly (though often not quickly enough) whenever Yuri decided to talk about his profession...

Over the course of the next two days we managed to communicate basic information about each other through the use of several Russian/English bilingual people on board the train (Pavel and Olga, my next-door neighbours, being the most prominent among these.) ... Seems Yuri runs several martial arts schools across Russia, has just returned(brand new iPod in hand) from opening one in Atlanta, Georgia as well. I was somewhat skeptical at first, until he produced both business cards (bearing his name, and the title "Master of Asian Martial Arts" and several rather official-looking certification cards that, from what little Russian I know, I managed to gather were "Master" certifications in various martial arts... One of his other skills that I, as well as my Swedish friends, were introduced to, was his ability to read palms with (in my case) rather disturbing accuracy. Several of us (myself, the Swedish girls, another Canadian named Natalie, and a few Russians) were treated to a demonstration of Yuri's prophetic skills.

(Below: On the third day of the trip Yuri (left) joined several of us, including Maria (right) in the dining car and offered to tell our fortunes. Most of the westerners received somewhat similar news: None of us have any love in our lives. Similarities aside, a few of the details Yuri managed to conjur up were a tad closer to home than would be expected, especially given that he didn't share a language with more than half of us... )

I'm now several hundred rubles in debt to the internet cafe that I'm writing this post from, and need to find some food for my rather vocal stomach. I'll leave my more dedicated readers with a view of a Siberian sunset. Suffice it to say that most of what we've heard about Siberia in Canada is only true during the winter (I think) and that this place really is one of the more beautiful corners of the world that I've visited...

(Below: A Siberian sunset, shot through an open window on the train.)

Another day, another hurried blog post from a Russian train station...

... That may not be QUITE how the old saying goes, but it's certainly a decent approximation of my life these days...

St. Petersburg itself was absolutely amazing, and I really do reccomend anyone and everyone who has the opportunity to visit to do so. The city is the cleanest European city I've stepped foot in in my life, the people are amazingly friendly and warm, accomodation and food are both cheap (compared to Moscow at least.) and the scenery is amazing. The Hermitage alone needs a week, at least, to go through. I'm sad to be leaving so soon, and really do think I'll try and spend the better part of a month in St. P. the next time I'm in this neck of the woods...

I'm back in Moscow right now after 3 days and two night in St. Petersburg, and am currently waiting for train 006 to take me from Moscow to Irkutsk. The trip is about 4500 km and will take 3 days and 4 nights. If all goes according to plan I'll leave Moscow at 9:35PM tonight and will step off the train at 5:13 AM local-time in Irkutsk on July 23... What I'm going to DO in Irkutsk at 5AM remains to be seen, as I doubt I'll be able to show up at my hostel until 9 or 10AM at least... I'm sure I'll find something to entertain myself with...

That's it for now. I'm still hopeful that I'll be able to find wifi in Irkutsk (hopefully at my hostel) so I can throw a few pictures up.

One the move again...

This will be, as my last several updates have been, brief. My apologies again to those of you wanting some more in-depth information and/or pictures. Considering it's size, finding wireless internet in Moscow (especially near my hotel) is ridiculously difficult, meaning that these last few updates have been written on cyber-cafe computers, surrounded by 13 year-old boys playing Counter-Strike the like...

Moscow has been wonderful, and I really am a bit sad that I'm not staying longer. The city is gorgeous, the history here is astounding, and the people really are some of the friendliest I've met thus far... Highlights from the city have included eating a cheeseburger in front of Lenin's tomb, before bribing my way in just after closing (it seemed appropriate) and spending an afternoon reading a good book under a tree in Alexander's Garden, just behind the Kremlin.

On a more somber note, I spent half a day and visited Mitinskoya Cemetary, where the Chernobyl Heroes are buried. The monument above their graves is one of the most potent I've seen in the post-soviet states since I arrived. The monument itself is in the shape of a giant mushroom cloud. Standing in front of it a lone bronze figure, with radiation burns across his face, shields the 28 graves of the heroes from the radiation...

The Web informs me that my hostel in St. Petersburg has internet access. I should have a bit of time there to sit down and write some more, and if it's wifi, even post a few pictures from Moscow.

A McDonalds Cheeseburger in Red Square...

Dear Diary,

Today I ate a McDonalds cheeseburger in front of Lenin's tomb...

...

If I kept a diary, I think that would likely be one of the more bizarre entries for the week... This statement does, of course, mean that I've arrived mostly-safely in Moscow, and (after being evicted from one set of accomodations at 6PM on my first day here... It's a long story...) am now happily residing at a place called the Hotel Altai. I haven't had a chance to grab GPS coordinates yet, but I'll try and have them by the next time I post. Pictures are also in the works, though I can't find any wireless internet access in Moscow, and thus can't upload pictures as easily as I'd like... They're coming, I promise. This post, for the same reason, will have to be brief. Suffice it to say that I've arrived, have stood in Red Square (McDonalds cheeseburger in hand, no less) and am already happily darting around the town on the Moscow metro. My tickets to both St. Petersburg and Irkutsk (Eastern Siberia) are booked, and I'll be heading out of Moscow in 5 days or so.

My SportsShooter.com page has been updated...

This is just a brief note to tell everyone that my SportsShooter.com profile page has been updated with some more Chernobyl work. As always, I'd love some (hopefully constructive) criticism.

Got Milk?

My most sincere apologies to those of you who have complained about my somewhat infrequent blog posts over the last week. Things have been at once remarkably busy, and remarkably quiet. I've spent another two days inside the exclusion zone, one of which was spent entirely in Pripyat. I've had a few "down" days, getting a bit of rest, and had a few more days of driving around and talking to people. I've also tracked down a few people in Moscow that I've been trying to find for a long time, and have booked my train tickets into Russia (I leave Ukraine July 7 and arrive in Russia on July 8).

Most of today's work revolved around talking with an old couple living in a small town near Ivankiv. They've been pretty heavily photographed by other shooters over the years, but they were neat to go and talk to, and were wonderfully friendly. Vladimir and I arrived just in time to meet their cow as she returned from pasture and got milked.

(Below: Got Milk? An old couple's cow stops to say hi on her way back to the barn.)

(Below: Some more time in Pripyat let me check out School #2. I seem to recall that MY high-school classrooms felt a lot like this when I was a student.)

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Nic's Current Location:
Yaroslavna Hotel, Vasilkiv, Kyiv, Ukraine
+50° 10' 43.11", +30° 18' 49.24"

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

It's awfully cliched, I'm sure, but Shelley's verse kept running through my head today as I clambered my way through the ruins of Pripyat, the largest town that was evacuated following the Chernobyl disaster. Vladimir and I got word early in the morning that we would have access today and, after a few more problems with the van, made our way out to the Exclusion Zone. (For some background reading on the Exlcusion Zone, what it is, and how it functions, I reccomend, as always, Wikipedia's article, available here.)

Stops today included an old Kindergarten outside of Chernobyl, which used to be for the children of the village of Kopachi, one of the towns inside the zone. Stop number two was Reactor 4 itself, though you can only get within about 100 meters or so. Our guide helpfully informed us that the electrified fence around it actually carries enough current to kill a person.

(Below: An industrial garage located directly beside the reactor.)


(Below: Reactor 4. I got much closer than this, but liked the radiation warning sign in the foreground with this shot.)

Later stops included the tallest building in Pripyat, a 16-story apartment complex that's been heavily looted. The view from the top is amazing though, and was well worth the climb. I also spent some time in the Pripyat Kindergarten and the "Palace of Culture" in the town square, which included a movie theatre, stage theatre (complete with lights still hung on the pipes at stage-level) a library (I snagged a copy of "Reminiscences about Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin".) and a gymnasium with a tree growing through the floor.

(Below: One of the classrooms in Pripyat Kindergarten.)


(Below: Detail of a bear on the ground at the Pripyat Kindergarten.)

(Below: The gymnasium at the Palace of Culture.)

I've got a bit of a headache and a dry throat, as does Vladimir. Our guide had one too, and helpfully informed us that it was "quite normal" after 6 hours inside the 10km Zone... A brief Wikipedia search seems to indicate that I probably received a radiation dose somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0 Sieverts (or 50 - 100 REM). I should feel fine by morning, and am somewhat comforted in the knowledge that most of the plant workers receive this level of radiation on a daily basis while at work.

I expect to be making at least another two trips into the zone, but likely not in nearly as heavily contaminated areas.

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Nic's Current Location:
Yaroslavna Hotel, Vasilkiv, Kyiv, Ukraine
+50° 10' 43.11", +30° 18' 49.24"

Digging in for some work...

I’m writing this blog entry from the passenger seat of a Ford Transit diesel-powered delivery van with a leaky windshield, leaky brake—line (we have to top up the brake fluid every few days when it starts to run low), a leaky front tire (also topped up every 48 hours or so) and a second-hand alternator that was installed two days ago after the first one literally fell off it’s mount. Vladimir, my fixer, is driving south towards Kyiv on the M01 E95 highway, going 120 k/h in an 80 zone; we’ve already bribed our way out of one speeding ticket earlier in the day.

There are no seatbelts.

I love my job.

(Below: Vladimir and a mechanic at a garage in Ivankiv, 120km outside of Kiev, debate the best course of action after the van's alternator decided to stop ... um... alternating.)


I spent almost all of today in Slavutych, the small town built to house all of the Chernobyl workers once the town of Chernobyl became contaminated following the 1986 disaster. Today it’s almost entirely inhabited by current plant workers, people who work other jobs inside The Zone, and the few people who provide support services (shops, restaurants, etc.) to them. Today was probably the most successful 12 hours I’ve spent in Ukraine. We decided to head to Slavutych today after an abysmal day yesterday wandering around the outskirts of The Zone on the west side of the Dnieper river. We had originally planned to spend the whole day inside the exclusion zone, but the cops who were supposed to be “arranging” for our access all got dragged into a big raid on some scrap-metal salvagers that had just been caught. Instead, we ended up driving through villages, shooting abandoned farms and houses, and chatting with a few people along the way. It wasn’t nearly as productive as I’d hoped, but it was good in it’s own way, and allowed me to work through a few things in my head that I really needed to sort out.

Today was different. Vladimir and I both slept in by accident and woke up at 9:30 instead of the planned 7:30, then managed to get stuck in traffic on the way out of Kyiv. We arrived in Slavutych after nearly 2 ½ hours of driving (As I write this, V informs me that we’ve driven 1730 km together since I got here last Saturday.) After a quick lunch in Slavutych we took a brief wander around the town to the memorial for fallen firefighters located in the town square; from there we decided to start wandering and interviewing random people in the hopes of finding someone with a good story to tell.

(Below: Two images showing different sides of the memorial to the firefighters who were at Chernobyl the day of the disaster and later died.)

It didn’t take long to persuade a couple of women sitting on a park bench enjoying the warm, breezy afternoon to start telling us their experiences. One old woman named, Mira, started crying as she remembered what life used to be like in Pripyat. “The best place in the world to live” seems to be the best way paraphrase how most people here remember the old town. Later in the day, when we saw her for a second time, she presented me with a book she was given several years ago: “The Chernobyl Atomic Power Plant at the end of the Millenium” … She inscribed “To the memory of future generations. May this never happen again in any place.” in Russian on the front page for me…

(Below: An electronic sign at the Slavutych train station helpfully informs passers-by that they are receiving 14.4 micro-Roentgens of radiation per hour.)

Following our chats with her, we spent a few hours hanging out at the train station in Slavutych grabbing random people as they walked off the train and asking them to tell their stories. Two particularly interesting ones agreed, including an engineer who’s 15 year-old daughter is heading to the US for surgery to repair cataracts in about a month.

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Nic's Current Location:
Yaroslavna Hotel, Vasilkiv, Kyiv, Ukraine
+50° 10' 43.11", +30° 18' 49.24"

Interesting times in Ukraine.

I’m writing this blog entry on my way back from my second day in Ivankiv, the largest settlement just outside the Exclusion Zone ( EZ ) around Chernobyl. My fixer, Vladimir, is an amazing asset. I doubt I’d even be able to function at all without him

(Below: Vladimir smoking on the 12th floor of an abandoned factory we climbed earlier today.)

Day 1 was spent largely getting my bearings and trying to understand how things work in Ukraine. Most people around here seem to think that traffic laws are for sissies. The driving here makes MY driving, even on deadline, seem slow and restrained. Those of you who have been in a car with me while on assignment will understand the true meaning of this statement. We did get the time to check out some interesting abandoned farm houses and barns near the EZ that were absolutely gorgeous:

(Below: A two-image stitched panorama of an abandoned farm house.)

Day 2 here was largely a bust. Some major vehicle problems this morning caused a 5-hour setback that didn’t get fully resolved until about 3PM. To make a very, very long story short, the alternator on the delivery-van Vladimir and I are driving around in blew out on us while were in Ivankiv. I can now say I’ve been stranded in a radiation-contaminated town where you don’t speak the language.

The hotel (I use the term very loosely) Vladimir and I are staying in is locaed about 30 minutes south of Kyiv. It’s a bit of a drive, and a slight pain to be so far out of town, but for about nine Canadian dollars a night, you can’t really beat the price. It’s what’s known in most Canadian cities as a “condemned building” … It’s absolutely ancient, lacks any sort of amenities at all (Hot water? Toilet paper? Shower curtain? Who needs em?!) and is generally quite disgusting. They do, however, provide lovely clean bedsheets every night, and the place is, from what I can tell, 100% bug and rodent-free.

(Below: My “hotel room” at the Yaroslavna Hotel. Note the illumination provided by the single, bare, 60W bulb.)

(Below: My bathroom at the Yaroslavna Hotel. Attention should be paid to the lack of, well, anything, really. I don’t think this bathroom has been cleaned since … well… Ever…)

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Nic's Current Location:
Yaroslavna Hotel, Vasilkiv, Kyiv, Ukraine
+50° 10' 43.11", +30° 18' 49.24"
(**NOTE** CLICK ON SATELLITE VIEW. ROAD MAPS IN GOOGLE EARTH NOT AVAILABLE FOR THIS AREA.)

I've arrived.

Have arrived in Kyiv. This post will be short as internet access is... spotty... Updates shortly.

(Below: Sign on the fence of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone checkpoint.)

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Nic's Current Location:
Yaroslavna Hotel, Vasilkiv, Kyiv, Ukraine
+50° 10' 43.11", +30° 18' 49.24"
(**NOTE** CLICK ON SATELLITE VIEW. ROAD MAPS IN GOOGLE EARTH NOT AVAILABLE FOR THIS AREA.)

Leaving Hungary...

As of 6:15 PM this Friday, June 15, I'll be leaving Budapest and heading in to Kyiv to start shooting Chernobyl. I haven't a clue what my internet access there will be like, but I suspect it won't be nearly as convenient as what I have right now (Wifi in-house at my nephew Tristan's place, where I'm staying) so those of you who have been in regular contact with me, please don't expect me to be too prompt with my email replies.

Budapest has been AMAZING, and I'm really quite sad that I have to leave tomorrow. There's been no shortage of interesting things to keep me occupied during my stay. I've climbed Gellert Hill (Among other things, an old WWII fortress, but with evidence of use dating back to 1200BC and the Celts.), wandered through St. Stephen's Basilica (Szent István-bazilika in Hungarian) seen his mummified hand in a shrine. (The church keeps it in a reliquary at the back of the basilica. The hand is kept in the dark unless you put 100 Forints ($0.75 CDN or so) into a small machine to one side. Once you've paid up, a light comes on illuminating the hand for 60 seconds or so. If you want more time to pray to it, you need to pay more.) The rest of the Basilica is absolutely GORGEOUS, and quite honestly blows St. Paul's in London clear out of the water. Even Notre Dame in Paris couldn't hold a candle up to what they've got here in Budapest.

(Below: St. Stephen's Basilica, as seen from the apse, looking down the nave towards the altar.)

I've tried, twice, to visit the Hungarian Parliament and take a guided tour of the place, but haven't been able to swing it unfortunately. I'll have to do it next time I'm in town.

Other highlights here have included Statue Park, or Szoborpark, is a park just outside of Budapest proper where a large number of old Soviet-era statues have been "retired" ... Personally I think it was a true stroke of genius, saving all of them and making a park out of them. It's an AMAZING place, and well worth a visit if any of you reading this ever happen to make your way to Budapest. This is definitely on my list of places to come back to. I'd love to spend a few days working on a photo essay here. Sadly, I only had an hour before I had to hop back on my bus and head back in to town.

(Below: "Liberation Monument" which used to stand at the top of Gellert Hill.)

Last but not least on my itinerary for the week was a visit to the Children's Railroad, a small-gauge rail-line operated almost entirely by children. Apparently these things were quite common during the soviet days, and a quick google search reveals that there are several still in operation, though the Budapest one is still, from what I can find, the largest and most successful of the ones that remain. It took me an hour or so to find my way to Széchenyi-hegy (I believe, but am not sure, that "hegy" means "station" or "stop"). From there I took the train to János-hegy, then got off, walked for a while, and took a chair-lift back down to the city before busing home. The railway is another thing I'd love to come back and spend a week or two shooting as a documentary project. The kids are AMAZING, they literally do everything except drive the train itself (a job reserved for adults only), though, as the picture below illustrates, boredom does strike at times.

(Below: A young ticket-inspector takes a break from his duties to admire the scenery on the trip from Széchenyi-hegy to János-hegy.)

That's all for now. I'll do what I can to post an update or two once I've arrived in Kyiv, but I make no promises. I'm flying solo from Budapest on (That is, I've had wonderful friends and family putting me up until now) so things should get a bit more ... interesting... as I progress east.

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Nic's Current Location:
Tristan and Krisztina Hume's Apartment, Budapest, Hungary
+47° 29' 25.43", +19° 4' 6.08"

A week of Cryptographers, Crepes, and Trains.

It's been the better part of a week since my last "real" update. My apologies...

Before leaving London I got to take a day-trip out to Milton Keynes, where Bletchley Park is located. Those of you not familiar with the Park's history really should be. Wikipedia article is here. I had an AMAZING time out there, and even got to see a full-size, *FUNCTIONING* replica of Colossus, the world's first electronic computer. (It's existence has only been recently declassified, and ENIAC, in the US, was incorrectly regarded as the first until recently. Colussus pre-dated ENIAC by two or so years.) I had a WONDERFUL chat with one of the engineers who have been rebuilding Colossus, and managed to get myself some paper-tape from a bona-fide Lorenz 40/42 Cipher being cracked by the machine. Interestingly enough, due to the parallel architecture used by Colossus, it still breaks codes as fast, and sometimes faster, as modern-day computers running software to crack the same 1943 ciphers. Astounding. I'll spare you all the technical details, but suffice it to say this is one of the few computers I've seen in my life that I've ever truly been in awe of.

(Below: Nic with Colossus)

Other treats before I departed London included going to see Othello as a groundling at Shakespeare's globe, which I now count as one of the highlights of my theatre-going career. Met up with my friends dan and Laura for what was supposed to be *A* pint, but turned into several, at the Founders Arms, on the Thames, following the performance. I also managed to cram in a quick visit to King's Cross, platform 9 3/4. Those of you who get the reference will, I hope, be pleasantly amused.

(Below: Platform 9 3/4.)

Packed up and snuck out of Robyn and Jamie's place early on Friday morning and hopped the train in to Waterloo. Went through the most thorough security search of my life when I was told my backpack was "packed too densely" for the security x-ray to scan it properly. Spent 45 minutes standing beside a nice security who was was emptying everything (and I do mean EVERYTHING) out onto a steel table. I did get a good laugh when he sniffed the two jars of Veggemite I was taking to my nephew Tristan in Budapest. The stuff is concentrated yeast extract, and smells about as pleasant as you'd expect.

Wrote a small snippet of this blog while I was on the train... I managed to snag GPS coordinates here, at +51° 5' 43.86", +1° 2' 11.20", shortly before entering the Chunnel, and another set of coords here, +50° 39' 35.21", +3° 1' 27.78", shortly after popping out on the other side, in France.

Spent the afternoon in Paris, with visits to Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower both on the to-do list, as well as a brief detour into some obscure back alleys in le Quatier Latin, to get away from all the touristy crap and kitsch. Walked about 10 minutes and did everything I could to get myself lost in back alleys. Ended up having an awesome lunch at a tiny little crepes restaurant (for lack of a better word) about the size of my bathroom back home in Victoria. The place was so small that I actually couldn't turn around inside with my backpack on. Had to back out once I'd bought my food. The woman who worked there was absolutely THRILLED to have someone as "exotique" as a Canadian in her store. Had two ham and cheese crepes for lunch, with a Nutella crepe for desert. Spent an hour or so reading on the banks of the Seine, then went off to the Eiffel Tower. Was rather annoyed to find multiple-hour-long lineups to get up the thing, AND was told that even if I waited, I wouldn't be allowed up with my backpack due to security concerns. Went across the Seine to la Place de Varsovie, only to find an "Experience Rugby" event going on. Seems someone had the bright idea of bringing in artificial turf, inflatable bumpers, and several tents, and holding a rugby tournament in the middle of Paris. What can I say? It seemed like a pretty cool idea, really, and it looked like everyone was having a blast, to say the least.

(Below: Rugby in la Place de Varsovie. It is, indeed, a strange world.)

Just chilled out for the evening in Paris, then caught the night train to Munich at 10:45 from Gare de l'Est. For the sake of brevity (i.e. I'm tired right now) suffice it to say the transfer through Munich was uneventful, and I made it all the way in to Budapest without too many hassles. Got to see some gorgeous scenery along the way as well, which was great. Snagged one more set of GPS coordinates here, at +48° 11' 32.15", +16° 18' 47.17", on the way into Wien, en-route to Budapest. Was met by my nephew Tristan at the train station, showered at his place (where I'm staying for the week) then went out and was ... errr... warmly introduced... to the city. Having a wonderful time here thus far, but will have more updates once I've explored a bit tomorrow.

(Below: One last picture. Heroes Square, +47° 30' 52.80", +19° 4' 39.02", (Wikipedia link here) in Budapest.)


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Nic's Current Location:
Tristan and Krisztina Hume's Apartment, Budapest, Hungary
+47° 29' 25.43", +19° 4' 6.08"