19 Results

K Johnson rode through treacherous mountains in Georgia, with constant mini-avalanches and rain pouring down, in search of the town of Vardzia. Too bad there are two Vardzias in Georgia …

After a ten-day boat ride — that was supposed to take four — K Johnson arrived in Georgia, the Caucasus country with the best food. As long as you can handle a shot of booze with breakfast …

You can feel the tension in the Iranian town of Piranshahr. Here the police are more alert and better armed than in the rest of the country. They maintain a larger buffer around themselves, keeping locals at arm’s length in the crowded market places and the chaotic streets. This region contains a majority Kurdish population [...]

Catch up on part 1 (which includes an explanation of Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian tourists getting arrested for taking photos of tanks and eager tour guide Ashot’s #1 less for taking foreigners around Nagorno-Karabakh) here. By 10am next morning I was crammed in the back seat of Ashot’s Lada with the two Japonski, as Ashot referred to them [...]

K Johnson went traipsing through Nagorno-Karabakh, a de-facto state closely allied with Armenia, and a mighty thorn in the side of Azerbaijan who will refuse any traveller entry to their country if they show evidence of having been there.

Crimea is a beach holiday destination for many from the former USSR, but it’s the site of a former nuclear power plant that most captured K Johnson’s attention — and frustration.

Transistria, a breakaway republic located between Moldova and Ukraine, only allows a 24-hour tourist visa. K Johnson spends his 24 hours wondering how such a eerie country can be so well-off compared to its neighbours.

When crossing from Germany into the Czech Republic you notice a marked decrease in the quality of the road’s surface. It’s a bumpy journey for all sorts of reasons.

This was underground Riga, in the literal sense of the word underground. We had come down, out of the rain, into this ex-Soviet bunker, through the massive blast door and into a foyer. There was a constant, all pervasive smell of gun powder in this facility.

The building is little more than a façade and houses a massive dome used to shield the entrance of an underground military complex from a nuclear strike on Moscow.