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And the winner is… Azerbaijan!
Azerbaijan — a country that was on no one’s mind a mere week ago until a television audience of millions watched it soar to glory in the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest on the weekend. But where is it?...
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Red Ink Run: the last GULAG in Russia
“What about this?” I pulled the bottom of my t-shirt through the V-neck to make an ersatz crop top, extended my arm and raised a thumb. Another wave of cars rounded the corner and rocketed past us. I...
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Red Ink Run: an uncomfortable adventure in couch surfing
I considered it a glaring omission from an otherwise comprehensive travel CV that I had never been couch surfing. I’m usually the last one to climb aboard with these sorts of things, happy to leave it...
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Red Ink Run: playing with nuclear bombs in Bunker 42
To get to Kotelnichesky Lane from Moscow’s Taganskaya Metro station you have to go through an outdoor market. From streetside stands babushkas, with their head wrapped in kerchiefs, peddle fresh and...
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Red Ink Run: from Riga with love
“Do you even know what’s it’s like up there anymore, Mr Bond?” I asked him, sneaking a quick glance at the weapon in his hand. I could see the barrel dead on, it yawned like a dilated pupil. “You have...
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Red Ink Run: Twenty-three and a half hours in Transnistria
The bridge between the city of Rezina and the city of Ribnita, over the river Dniester is eerily silent for a road that connects two major cities. There are no lane markings and the bitumen has been...
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Red Ink Run: Tanks for the memory — part 1
Fanaticism thrives on peripheries. I was thinking about this when the mashutka (minibus) pulled up at the exit to the bus station and flung its doors open. In poked the head of a man holding a...
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Red Ink Run: Tanks for the memory — part 2
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...
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Red Ink Run: moonshine at 9am, welcome to Georgian hospitality
Apprehension can be measured by the density of smoke in a room. So it was on our cargo vessel, Greifswald, as it sat motionless in the Black Sea just outside Georgian waters, the room thick with the...
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Red Ink Town: riding through rain-filled avalanches
The most useless sign in the world is triangular. It has a red border and a silhouette of a cliff-face with rocks tumbling irrevocably over the edge. Its lo-fi quality is almost cartoony, like...
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