Soul of the city: Kiev, Ukraine

It took me two weeks to work out what was wrong with Kiev and that’s because, on the surface of it, there’s nothing particularly wrong with it at all. Eventually I came to realise that all was not as it should be. Strolling its boulevards and broad streets, the European will feel at home amongst the grand 19th century architecture, after all this was an era when Tsarist Russia was so enamoured by life to their west that French was…

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Memories of the nuclear age

Ukraine’s atomic past of Chernobyl and mutually assured destruction If there was one day trip to get the warning klaxons honking, you would have thought that a visit to the world’s biggest nuclear disaster in a country at war with Russia would be it. Reality suggests otherwise: the site of the Chernobyl disaster has already become a well-worn tourist trail and the war bit of Ukraine is the best part of 500km away and shows little sign of extending an…

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The dictator has just left the building

A visit to the house of Ukraine’s former president Yanukovych With the success of the Maidan square protests in Feb 2014, President Yanukovych beat a hasty retreat to friendlier pastures with the aid of a Russian helicopter from his property on the outskirts of Kiev (or Kyiv as the Ukrainians would prefer to the russianised version we are familiar with). The citizens of Kyiv immediately jumped at the opportunity to find out for themselves if the rumours of the opulence…

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A week in Assam, India

The village of Charenghi Pathar has nothing to appeal to the average tourist. So effective was this deterrent that I turned out to be the first one they had ever seen there. Although its lack of appeal was motivation enough for me to want to see it, the same could be said of many places, so it was no random event that brought me there. It was the birth place of my dear friend J who had his first opportunity…

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