Start of Hammer, Sickle, & Yoke Tour
November 23, 2025 in Lithuania ⋅ ☁️ 28 °F
World Heritage Sites Air Adventures – Hammer, Sickle, and Yoke
Flight Log #01 – Night Vectors & Baltic Echoes
Guest Co‑Pilot: Yakov Smirnoff
In Soviet Union, night fly you. That is what I am thinking as this sleek black-and-gold Pilatus PC‑12 named Maunakea purrs on the ramp in Carlisle, England, and I sign the waiver that basically says, “If comedian screams, do not return deposit.” Marisa is up front for departure in her usual mode—espresso in one hand, attitude in the other—her Brooklyn wit slicing through the morning chill like a hot knife through butter.
We launch from EGNC into a velvet overcast, turbine humming like distant Moscow subway, only here there is legroom and no one selling questionable sausages. The dogs—Lani, Kai, and Charlie—settle into their custom spots in back, already asleep like union-approved emotional support marshmallows. Cropduster flies the climb smooth and surgical, Freja’s training still in his hands; Marisa runs the radios with that Brooklyn snap that makes every controller sit up straighter.
Over the North Sea, the world shrinks to instruments, de‑ice boots, and the glow of avionics painting everyone’s cheekbones like we are in very small, very exclusive nightclub. Marisa leans back, taps the pressurization gauge, and mutters, “Behave, sweetheart,” in a tone that suggests even oxygen listens. This is romance, Tiger Shark style—oxygen, torque limits, and just enough turbulence to keep you honest.
We slide into Malmö’s ESMS before dawn, runway lights stretching like Soviet parade—only here, nobody has to march. Touchdown: smooth, firm, textbook; somewhere, Freja’s “Valkyrie” instructor soul nods in approval, probably grading the flare an A‑ minus just to keep him humble. We taxi in, shut down the PT6, and the ramp goes quiet except for the happy chaos of three dogs discovering Scandinavian grass is apparently different and needs urgent investigation.
Inside the terminal café, Marisa orders coffee strong enough to interrogate, plus some cardamom pastry she pronounces “evidence.” Freja hugs the crew goodbye for now, heading off to pack her life into luggage so she can join Tiger Shark Squadron full‑time; Joe “Kona” Coffey volunteers to help, which is suspicious because he smiles way too much for a man lifting that many suitcases. In Soviet Union, you don’t move in with squadron—squadron moves in with you. Here, it just looks like two people who suddenly find excuses to share the same baggage cart.
By late morning, the new chapter rolls onto the stage: me. Yakov Smirnoff, guest co‑pilot, cultural relic, and now apparently airborne tour guide to every World Heritage Site the former USSR ever filed paperwork for. Marisa drifts to the cabin with the dogs, promising inflight snacks and unsolicited commentary; she winks at me on the way past. “Try not to break him,” she says to Cropduster. “He’s vintage.” I strap in up front, adjust the headset, look at this wall of Swiss avionics glory, and think, “In my village, autopilot was just cousin Yuri who didn’t blink.”
Departure from Malmö turns the page from Scandinavian Soaring to our new saga: Hammer, Sickle, and Yoke. The PC‑12 climbs out over Öresund, and suddenly we are aimed at the ghost outline of an empire that dissolved but forgot to tell its architecture. The first waypoint is a line of sand and pine that looks like someone pulled a paintbrush between lagoon and sea: the Curonian Spit. From up here, it’s a narrow whisper of land between Lithuania and Russia, dunes rolling like frozen waves, fishing villages tucked in like commas in a long sentence history keeps rewriting.
Next comes Kaunas, modernist queen of the interwar years, all clean lines and geometric confidence. From altitude, you see blocks and boulevards laid out with that 1930s optimism: “What could possibly go wrong?” Answer: everything, but the architecture stayed. I key the mic. “In Soviet Union, building serves state. Here, state now serves building—UNESCO paperwork very loyal.” Cropduster chuckles, trims Maunakea, and gives Kaunas a slow, respectful orbit before we slide northwest toward deeper layers of Lithuanian memory.
Kernavė appears like a quiet secret—green mounds, archaeological shadows, traces of hill‑forts where medieval Lithuania looked out at the world and decided to be stubborn about it. Even from our civilized flight level, you can feel that old defensive posture: stacked earth, river curves, a landscape that remembers when altitude meant having the higher hill, not 15,000 feet and a pressurization schedule.
Then Vilnius spreads below us, baroque and soft‑edged, a tangle of church towers, red roofs, and winding streets that look like they were drawn after two glasses of good wine. Old Town Vilnius is the kind of place where Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, and secular histories all tried to share the same alleyways and usually bumped elbows. Marisa pops her head into the cockpit long enough to point at a particular curve of streets on the moving map. “That’s where the good ramen is, trust me.” I squint. “Lithuanian ramen?” She grins. “You gonna judge it before you taste it, Mister Iron Curtain?”
We drop into EYVI, Vilnius airport, on a vector that feels like slipping into a novel mid‑chapter. On the ground, we park Maunakea, give the turbine its cooldown, and head for a side‑street shop that looks like a Soviet canteen had a baby with a Tokyo alley. The special of the day: Lithuanian fusion ramen—rye miso broth, smoked pork that tastes like it remembers every winter, dill oil on top because of course, this is the Baltics. Noodles with attitude, broth with generational trauma, and black bread on the side, because if your carbs don’t have backup carbs, are you even Eastern European?
Fed, caffeinated, and only mildly guilty about sodium intake, we climb back into the sky and aim northeast toward Riga. Latvia’s capital glows under us in late‑day light, its historic center a patchwork of Hanseatic warehouses, art nouveau facades, and the kind of Jugendstil balconies that clearly expected more champagne and fewer occupations. In Soviet Union, ornament was suspicious; here, ornament survived like stubborn relative who refuses to leave family reunion.
We skim Kuldīga next, small but perfectly staged: old brick, the broad Venta River, and that long red bridge that looks like someone laid out a Märklin train set and forgot to remove it. From this altitude, the waterfall barely shows, but you can sense it in the river’s texture—a line of white where water decides it is tired of behaving. Kai whines softly at the window; maybe even dogs know when gravity gets dramatic.
Tallinn rises on the horizon like a fairy‑tale city that hired a very serious IT department. Old Town towers, walls, and church spires sit above a coastline now lined with glass and fiber optics, medieval meets startup. We give Toompea Hill a respectful circuit; from up here, the old fortifications look less like defense and more like good real‑estate decisions. I say into the recorder, “In Soviet times, Tallinn was where you went to see West on Finnish TV. Now West comes here for weekends and good Wi‑Fi.” History has sense of humor.
We arc inland toward what our flight plan calls “Štruve region”—the legacy of the Struve Geodetic Arc that once used churches, hilltops, and patient astronomers to measure the size of the Earth. Somewhere below is one of those old survey points, now a World Heritage Site because somebody looked at 19th‑century math and said, “This deserves plaque.” Maunakea’s GPS laughs gently from the panel, doing in milliseconds what took them seasons, but there is reverence in how quietly Cropduster overflies the line.
Turning southeast, Belarus fills the windshield with flat land, rivers, and pockets of history that survived more regimes than anyone cares to count. Mir Castle appears first—brick and stone, Gothic and Renaissance stitched together like someone Frankensteined their favorite centuries into one defensive status symbol. From above, the moat traces a clean oval, reflections of towers rippling like memories that refuse to sit still.
Not far away, Nesvizh and the Radziwiłł family complex spread out: palace, park, and water, an aristocratic exhale in the middle of farmland. You can see the geometry—axes, alleys, the Baroque logic of “if I stand here, everything must line up around my importance.” In Soviet Union, estate belongs to people; in practice, it belonged mostly to maintenance backlog. Now UNESCO paperwork tries to make amends.
We swing toward the Białowieża Forest, one of Europe’s last primeval lowland forests, straddling the Belarus‑Poland border. From cruising altitude it looks like just another dark, dense patch of trees, but the instruments know better and so does history: this is where European bison still lumber, where forest structure remembers a world before clear‑cuts and spreadsheets. Lani stares out the window, ears forward, like she can smell wild on the wind even through a pressurized hull.
Sun drops lower as we finally angle south toward Lviv, that layered Ukrainian city where Central Europe, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Austro‑Hungarian nostalgia all meet for coffee and argue over pastry. The historic center glows in copper and amber, a tight grid of streets, squares, and facades that have heard Polish, Ukrainian, Yiddish, German, Russian, and now too much news. We orbit once, silent on the intercom; even comedian knows when not to add punchline.
Descent into UKLL feels like closing a very thick book halfway through and promising to come back tomorrow. The approach is gentle, the landing firm but kind—Cropduster signature move, more reassurance than drama. On the ramp, the evening chill smells like jet fuel, wet concrete, and distant woodsmoke. We tie down Maunakea, check the dogs, and walk toward a small restaurant where the plan is simple: borscht, varenyky, maybe a local take on ramen if the chef is feeling experimental, and a quiet toast to every city we only visited from altitude today.
Marisa bumps my shoulder as we step inside. “Not bad for a first day in the old neighborhood, Yakov.” I grin. “In Soviet Union, heritage sites watch you. Up there, we watched them. Is improvement.” The door shuts on the cold, and the first chapter of Hammer, Sickle, and Yoke ends not with slogan, but with soup, dogs under the table, and a PC‑12 sleeping on the apron, ready to chase the next piece of history at sunrise.Read more
Thanksgiving in Turkmenistan
November 27, 2025 in Turkmenistan ⋅ ☁️ 52 °F
World Heritage Sites Air Adventures – Hammer, Sickle, and Yoke
November 27, 2025
Flight Log #03 – Black Seas, White Peaks & Silent Fortresses
Guest Co‑Pilot: Olga Kurylenko
Morning in Odesa begins with steam—jet fuel on the ramp, the Black Sea breathing salt into the air, and a bowl of beet‑bright Ukrainian ramen warming my hands while the PC‑12 Maunakea glows black and gold under a pale sky. Cropduster walks his quiet circle around the airplane, fingers brushing the skin like a doctor greeting an old patient; Marisa passes up coffee dark enough to rewrite a life and murmurs, “Your log again, Olga—just don’t let him file it under ‘light reading.’” I smile, take my seat in the right cockpit, and watch the coastline slide sideways as we climb, leaving Odesa’s embattled beauty in the mirrors of our wake.
Our first waypoint is a different Black Sea shore: the Ancient City of Tauric Chersonese and its chora, faint geometry of old fields still etched into the land by farmers who never imagined satellites or turboprops. From there we trace the coast east and almost immediately get the call we’d been warned about—Sochi International, URSS, requesting a quick stop “for documentation.” The whole cockpit trades looks; Marisa and I both assume they want a word with the Ukrainian actress in the right seat, maybe the one in the cabin too, and we’re still rehearsing answers when Maunakea kisses the runway at Adler in a landing so polite it ought to come with a visa stamp.
On the ramp the script flips in a heartbeat. The officials who stride out with clipboards walk straight past me and Marisa and make a beeline for Cropduster and the dogs—asking, in very formal English, if they may please meet “the famous captain and his security team from the flight logs.” Lani sits like a statue, Kai offers a paw to an officer who forgets he’s supposed to look serious, and Charlie leans into a photo op as if he’s done this on every continent. Marisa and I are half laughing, half offended in the best possible way, trading a look that says, Sochi bureaucracy: zero interest in Bond girls, total devotion to Tiger Shark Squadron. Twenty minutes, three group selfies, and one hastily shared cup of terminal coffee later, we’re climbing back out over the Black Sea, Sochi sliding under the wing like a misplaced chapter title as we turn toward the high white wall of the Caucasus.
Farther east the mountains rise and Georgia folds itself beneath our wings—Upper Svaneti’s villages clinging to slopes like they were nailed into the rock, stone towers poking through cloud gaps like raised fists that outlived every invader. Gelati Monastery appears next, a patch of ordered stone and faith on a green hillside, with the dark swaths of the Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands spreading beyond, a remnant of a world so old it makes our airways feel temporary. We arc toward Tbilisi and the Historical Monuments of Mtskheta come into view, churches perched at river confluences where kings once chose baptism and battle in the same breath.
North wind bumps the wings as we cross into Armenia, but the air smooths as if out of respect when the Monasteries of Haghpat and Sanahin line up under us—two stone siblings on opposite ridges, script and arches repeating like a prayer you whisper twice to be sure it reaches. A few minutes later, the Cathedral and Churches of Echmiatsin lie quiet and composed, and just beyond them the broken halo of the Archaeological Site of Zvartnots circles the earth; from up here the ruin looks less like collapse and more like a crown temporarily set down. The Monastery of Geghard and the Upper Azat Valley pull us into a deeper stillness—chapels bitten straight out of the cliff, courtyards where pilgrims once shared bread in the same basalt silence that now swallows our engine noise.
By late morning the mountains thin and Azerbaijan rises out of the haze; the Historic Centre of Sheki with the Khan’s Palace flashes tiled roofs and latticed windows, a reminder that glass and color can be as political as any border. Beyond, the Cultural Landscape of Khinalig People and “Köç Yolu” Transhumance Route unspools under us—high pastures, seasonal tracks, a village clinging to a ridge like a question mark asking how many centuries a way of life can endure. Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape greets us next, stone outcrops scratched with animals and dancers beside the Caspian, messages from people who measured time in migrations instead of flight hours.
Baku appears ahead, a city of glass and flame‑towers, but we dip first over the Walled City of Baku with the Shirvanshah’s Palace and Maiden Tower, its tight lanes and limestone walls wrapped inside the modern skyline like a memory someone refused to evict. We roll into UBBB just before lunchtime, and the ramp explodes into a new kind of heritage—the Tiger Shark support crews in the DC‑3, C‑17, and C‑130H have turned a row of pallets into an improvised American Thanksgiving brunch. There is a deep‑fried turkey crackling in a homemade rig, trays of stuffing and sweet potatoes lined up beside coffee urns, and, because this is Azerbaijan, platters of pakhlava and crescent shekerbura that taste of honey, nuts, and someone else’s childhood New Year folded into pastry.
Marisa works the tarmac like a film festival, trading jokes and gravy refills with loadmasters; Cropduster gets cornered again, this time by ground crew who “need” photos with him purely as an excuse to talk about the dogs and how much they love reading about them in the logs. Lani patrols the edge of the feast like a customs officer, Kai and Charlie charm entire aircrews out of turkey scraps, and for an hour the Caucasus becomes one long shared table, somewhere between a deployment holiday and a neighborhood picnic.
After Baku we point east again, chasing the drying light into Turkmenistan. Kunya‑Urgench drifts beneath us as a scatter of mausoleums and minarets glowing in the sand, fragments of a city that once commanded caravans from every direction. The Parthian Fortresses of Nisa—Old and New—appear next as dark geometric ghosts on the plain, walls and platforms still holding the outline of an empire that believed in strong wine, strong walls, and stronger opinions about where the border should fall.
By late afternoon we cross the last invisible line and Itchan Kala rises out of the desert like a ship made of brick, earth‑walled city, turquoise domes, and minarets catching a low sun that turns every tile into a flame. From this height the old town is a compact maze of roofs and courtyards, a reminder that for most of history defense meant narrow streets and high doors rather than radar and NOTAMs. We settle into UTAA with the kind of landing that feels more like a handshake than an arrival, and when the turbine winds down all that is left is dry air, distant city glow, and three very tired dogs trotting down the airstairs as if each of them personally discovered Central Asia.
Evening at Ashgabat turns into its own ceremony, quieter than Baku’s ramp carnival but no less deliberate. In a corner of the courtyard the cooks drag out a brazier and a battered cezve, roasting beans over open flame until the whole airfield smells of smoke and caramel, then brewing coffee in slow, Turkish‑style rises of foam that demand patience and tiny cups. Dinner is Turkmen comfort on a long table: deep platters of plov, rice stained gold with carrots and lamb fat, bowls of dograma where torn bread and mutton float in broth like small islands of home, and a house‑special lagman that bends toward us—a noodle soup threaded with peppers and onions that Marisa instantly christens “Silk Road ramen.”
When the last cups are poured, I reach into my flight bag and pull out a narrow bottle wrapped in a blue‑and‑yellow scarf: Starshyna Reserve Horilka, a clear Ukrainian spirit I have been saving for a night when the map felt especially heavy. A careful splash goes into metal mugs for the adults, just enough to scent the coffee with orchard and fire, and we raise them toward the dark beyond the fence—“To all the borders we crossed today, and to the ones we refuse to draw inside ourselves.” The coffee, the plov, the unexpected ramen, and that thin line of Ukrainian heat stitch the whole day together—Black Sea to desert, empire to air route, heritage to heartbeat—as Maunakea cools on the ramp and the dogs curl at our feet, finally convinced the world can rest until morning.
End log—Chersonese to Itchan Kala, one long arc of memory; one aircraft, one squadron, three dogs, Starshyna in the mugs, and a Thanksgiving written in stones, steam, and skyRead more
Almaty, Kazakhstan
November 28, 2025 in Kazakhstan ⋅ ☀️ 50 °F
World Heritage Sites Air Adventures – Hammer, Sickle, and Yoke
November 28rd, 2025
Flight Log #04 – Black Sands, Silent Minarets & Red Horizons
Guest Co‑Pilot: Olga Kurylenko
Morning at UTAA arrives with precise drama: a hard orange line on the horizon, ramp lights fading one by one, and air cold enough to turn every breath into smoke. I step out of the truck and Marisa is already at my side, our shoulders almost touching, the easy formation of two people who stopped needing to discuss plans a long time ago. Maunakea waits in black and gold while Cropduster walks his slow inspection circle, hand gliding over metal; Lani shadows him like a small, serious bodyguard, gaze tracking every movement on the ramp but always coming back to her captain.
Marisa appears at the airstairs with two mugs of coffee, passing one to me with a grin that says she has at least three contingency plans and one prank ready for the day. Before I can take a step, Kai and Charlie press in like over‑enthusiastic fans, tails drumming my shins, eyes bright with the uncomplicated devotion they reserve for “their” co‑pilot. I scratch Kai’s chest, tap Charlie’s nose with a gloved finger, and they fall in behind us up the stairs, triumphant. Lani trots past without a glance, all business beside Cropduster, but when we reach the top of the airstairs she pauses just long enough to sweep her eyes over Marisa and me, as if ticking us off a mental list of people successfully accounted for.
We climb into a pale sky and the desert tilts away beneath us, the day unrolling under our wings. Ancient Merv surfaces first, a broken halo of walls in the sand; Bukhara follows, tight and intricate; Samarkand appears in turquoise and sharp lines, catching the sun like it knows it is being watched. Marisa and I trade quiet commentary on the intercom the way some friends trade gossip—short, pointed, layered with years of private jokes and shared close calls. She traces a path with one fingertip on the screen, noting which streets would be best for slipping away unseen; I answer by adjusting altitude and remarking how conveniently flat the surrounding terrain is for anyone who prefers to be seen arriving from above.
Lunch at UZSS and coffee at UCFB slide into a rhythm that only long friendship makes effortless. On the ground, we move as a pair through terminals and fuel bays, one reading people while the other watches doors, switching roles with a glance and a half‑smile. Kai and Charlie orbit between us, torn between escort duty and the sheer joy of being near their favorite two humans at once; whenever I stop, they settle at my boots, leaning in with the possessive comfort of true fanboys who believe they are helping simply by existing. Lani remains glued to Cropduster’s side, but if anyone steps too close to our little cluster of crew and dogs, she angles her body just enough to put herself between the newcomer and all of us, loyalty radiating like a quiet warning.
Back in the air, Sarazm’s faint grid, Shakhrisyabz folded into its hills, the tugay forests of Tigrovaya Balka, and the long diagonal of the Zarafshan‑Karakum corridor drift beneath us like entries in a shared diary. Later, Sulaiman‑Too rises from the plain—solitary, self‑possessed—and the cockpit slips into respectful silence. Beyond it, the Cold Winter Deserts of Turan stretch out in disciplined emptiness. I feel Kai’s stare from the cabin; when I glance back, he thumps his tail once, utterly sure I will get us across it. Charlie has draped himself against Marisa’s leg, snoring softly, content in the certainty that if anything unexpected happens, his two favorite women will handle it. Lani, still at her captain’s heel, keeps her ears half‑turned toward the cockpit, guarding the whole little tribe even as she follows him.
Almaty’s lights finally rise ahead like a scattered necklace on the dark steppe, and Cropduster sets us down with a landing so smooth it feels like a secret handshake with the runway. We taxi in, dogs trotting down the airstairs in order of temperament: Lani first, sweeping the ramp; Kai next, beelining back to my side; Charlie weaving between Marisa and me as if trying to decide who needs his company more. We walk toward the terminal together, shoulders brushing, trading low remarks about the day’s officials and airfields, laughing in the easy, tired way of people who have seen each other at their worst and still choose every new flight together.
The logbook will show a clean progression—UTAA to UZSS to UCFB to UAAA—and a tidy list of names: Ancient Merv, Bukhara, Samarkand, Sarazm, Shakhrisyabz, Tigrovaya Balka, the Zarafshan‑Karakum corridor, Sulaiman‑Too, the Cold Winter Deserts of Turan. What it will not say is that the real architecture of the day was this: one aircraft flying like an accomplice, one captain with a shadow‑loyal dog, two women moving through the world as a matched set of sharp edges and softer jokes, and two adoring canine admirers who are certain the sky itself shows up each morning just to see what we will do next—held together by Lani’s steady watch, protecting her whole odd little squadron as fiercely as any fortress we passed beneath our wings.Read more
UACC/NQZ Airport, Kazakhstan
November 29, 2025 in Kazakhstan ⋅ ☁️ 30 °F
World Heritage Sites Air Adventures – Hammer, Sickle, and Yoke
November 29th, 2025
Flight Log #05 – Tanbaly Suns, Steppe Skies & Midnight Ramen
Guest Co‑Pilot: Olga Kurylenko
Almaty International Airport, UAAA. Dawn is doing that noir thing it loves here—city lights fading under a bruised purple sky, snow on the peaks pretending to be innocent while the ramp smells like kerosene, cold metal, and somebody’s improvised breakfast shawarma. Maunakea sits in black and gold, sulking like a sports car forced to admit it’s technically a utility vehicle, while Cropduster walks his ritual circle, fingers along the fuselage like he’s checking a pulse only he can hear. Marisa appears at the airstairs with two mugs and a look that says she has already planned today’s escape routes, backup escape routes, and three different ways to steal this airplane if the paperwork gets weird.
The coffee is Kazakh‑strong and suspiciously good, the kind that tastes like a life choice, and breakfast is “local fusion”: lagman broth deepened with beef bones, hand‑pulled noodles, chili oil, dill, and a dollop of yogurt that melts across the top like fog over the steppe—someone’s idea of Central Asian ramen and, annoyingly, an excellent one. Kai and Charlie pinwheel around my boots like overexcited stunt doubles trying to improvise their own entrance, while Lani shadows Cropduster with the professional focus of a bodyguard who would absolutely pass any state security audition on the first try. By the time I slide into the right seat, the sun is just breaking over the Tian Shan, Maunakea is humming, and Marisa leans into the cockpit to murmur, “Okay, drama queen, today it’s rock art, saints, mountains, and birds. Try not to narrate us into a no‑fly list.”
We launch west and north, leaving Almaty’s sprawl to flatten into winter‑faded fields until the land kinks into low, dry folds and Tanbaly Gorge cuts a quiet line through the Chu‑Ili mountains. The Petroglyphs of the Archaeological Landscape of Tanbaly sit out here, thousands of carvings chipped into open rock faces—solar‑headed figures, animals, strange costumed beings, and processions scattered across about 48 complexes with some 5,000 images stretching from the Bronze Age into the early 20th century. From above, the gorge reads as a narrow green stitch in brown cloth, but knowing what is on those walls feels like flying over the storyboards of people who never expected an audience in the sky.
I key the intercom. “Imagine carving your whole belief system into stone because you think that’s the most permanent medium available,” I say. “No streaming, no cloud backup, just rock and hope.” Marisa chuckles in the cabin. “So, like, the original editing nightmare—no undo button?” Down below, the sacred core of Tanbaly and its surrounding burial grounds and settlements form a kind of open‑air archive of pastoral life and ritual; up here, Maunakea hums through thin morning air, and for a moment our little turboprop feels like a very temporary annotation over something that has already survived millennia and several empires. Kai presses his nose to the window, fogging the glass, while Charlie sprawls at Marisa’s feet, unimpressed by ancient rock art unless someone confirms it is about snacks.
We swing northwest toward Turkestan, the steppe smoothing out into long, low horizons until one improbable geometry interrupts it: the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, rising in the northeastern quarter of the city like a test shot for an entire architectural era. Built between 1389 and 1405 under Timur, it looms above the older town, a massive Timurid complex of brick, conical domes, and glazed tile, anchored over the burial place of a 12th‑century Sufi poet and mystic whose small original mausoleum attracted pilgrims long before this giant version arrived.
From our altitude, the plan of the building is obvious—huge central hall, radiating chambers, courtyards around it like a composed frame—and the turquoise‑tinted dome catches sun even through thin cloud, throwing back a color that does not belong to the surrounding plain. This mausoleum helped set the pattern for later Timurid monuments, both in scale and in its use of innovative structural techniques and ornamental tilework. On the intercom, Marisa tilts her head toward the window. “Big guy really woke up one morning and said, ‘Let’s build a theological celebrity center with bonus research into load‑bearing brick,’ huh?” I smile. “Well, it worked. He got an architectural prototype, Yasawi got a bigger front door, and now we get a fly‑over cameo.” Lani watches the world through the cockpit doorway, ears pricked, as if personally assessing the defensive potential of 14th‑century walls.
We turn southeast and climb, trading steppe for folds and fractures of rock until the Western Tien‑Shan rises under us, grey and white and unexpectedly green along the valleys. This World Heritage site stretches as a transnational network of 13 protected areas shared between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, part of one of the great mountain ranges of Central Asia. Elevations swing from around 1,100 meters up to roughly 4,000, and that range of height and climate has created a mosaic of habitats sheltering rich biodiversity, from wild fruit and nut forests to alpine meadows and high ridges where snow clings like old secrets.
Maunakea rides a thin layer of turbulence, wings twitching as updrafts nudge us; the dogs sway like professionals, long past caring. Marisa leans into the cockpit again, sunglasses on despite the instrument panel glow. “So this is where the planet does its casting call for mountain backdrops,” she observes. “Nice production value.” I glance out at the ridgelines and think of all the routes hidden in them—shepherd paths, smuggler tracks, border patrols, hikers with expensive boots—layered like subtitles in different languages. Western Tien‑Shan feels like a reminder that some of UNESCO’s list exists not because people built something monumental, but because they managed, for once, not to destroy what was already complicated and alive.
The mountains fall away behind us like a closed book, and we chase the horizon north until the world flattens into Saryarka—Steppe and Lakes of Northern Kazakhstan—where grasslands and water cut a quiet geometry into the map. This site protects two main clusters, the Naurzum State Nature Reserve and the Korgalzhyn State Nature Reserve, together holding extensive temperate steppe and a chain of fresh and salt lakes that function as a major crossroads on the Central Asian flyway. From above, some of the lakes gleam silver, others dark, punched into the pale land like thumbprints; between them, the steppe rolls on and on, broken only by faint tracks and the occasional glint that might be a road or a small settlement.
These wetlands serve as crucial stopover and breeding sites for migratory waterbirds shuttling between Africa, Europe, South Asia, and Siberia, including globally threatened species, while the surrounding steppe offers refuge to a large share of the region’s plant life and animals like the saiga antelope, now critically endangered after poaching and habitat loss. I look down and imagine the invisible highways above and below us—birds using thermals and instinct, antelope following their own routes, our PC‑12 slicing through with GPS and fuel calculations—as if Saryarka is a quiet control center for migrations that never file flight plans. Marisa taps my shoulder and points to Kai, who is watching the landscape with the rapt attention of a creature who fully believes those lakes exist purely for him to swim in later. “Don’t tell him about the antelope,” she whispers. “He’ll start a petition.”
Astana Nursultan Nazarbayev International Airport, UACC, rises out of the dusk like someone scattered models of future cities across the steppe and then left them under glass. We slide into approach behind a departing jet, Maunakea riding the last of the day’s crosswind, and Cropduster puts us down with that trademark landing: assertive, dead‑center, and just smooth enough that everyone pretends it was effortless. The ramp smells like frost, jet fuel, and fast food, the universal perfume of airports; somewhere a ground crew radio crackles, and Kai explodes down the airstairs like he personally owns Kazakhstan.
Inside the terminal fringe, we find exactly what the day has been promising: a Kazakh take on ramen that looks like someone let lamian, lagman, and a Tokyo chef share one kitchen. The broth is built on beef bones and shank, sharpened with garlic and chili, brightened with vinegar, then finished with hand‑pulled noodles, dill, scallions, a soft‑boiled egg, and slices of smoked horse sausage that announce exactly which steppe we landed on. Marisa stares into her bowl and grins. “You realize this is your third ‘ramen but make it local’ in three days, right? At this point it’s a food group.” I sip the broth—it hits smoke, heat, and home in rapid sequence—and shrug. “There are worse legacies than leaving a trail of improvised soups across Eurasia.”
We finish the night on the quiet side of the ramp, Maunakea ticking softly as she cools, dogs curled into their preferred positions: Lani at Cropduster’s heel, Kai at my boots, Charlie half across Marisa’s lap like a badly folded blanket. Above us, the sky is hard and clear, full of routes that birds and airplanes will trace tomorrow, some following the same ancient lines we flew today without ever seeing the petroglyphs, the mausoleum, the mountains, or the lakes that justified them. End log—Almaty International to Astana Nursultan Nazarbayev, Tanbaly’s carved suns, Turkestan’s blue domes, Tien‑Shan’s ridges, Saryarka’s mirrored basins; one aircraft, one improbable squadron, three dogs, and a bowl of steppe ramen convincing all of us, for one more night, that the world is still worth crossing slowly.Read more
UIUU, Russia
November 30, 2025 in Russia ⋅ ☁️ -0 °F
World Heritage Sites Air Adventures – Hammer, Sickle, and Yoke
November 30th, 2025
Flight Log #06 – Altai Icing & Baikal Soup
Guest Co Pilot: Mikhail Zoshchenko
At Astana, UACC, situation developed in strictly normal tragic order. Weather was bad, visibility philosophical, ceiling undecided. Immediately our more intelligent comrades—Marisa and Olga—announced important cultural mission: emergency shopping. For this, of course, they required Spartan C‑37 with full crew. For simple flight in snow and crosswind, we required only small PC‑12, one overworked captain, three optimistic dogs, and myself. From UACC to UASS in Semey we flew mostly inside cloud, seeing nothing except occasional instruments and our own poor life choices. At Semey we refueled among concrete, wind, and people who clearly had better things to do than admire our heroism. Then we proceeded toward Golden Mountains of Altai, a great UNESCO wonder which, according to brochures, contains magnificent high‑altitude landscapes and rare ecosystems; according to today’s windshield, it contains mainly cloud, snow, and brief suspicious shadows of mountains when turbulence shakes truth out of them.
In Gorno‑Altaysk, UNBG, civilization expressed itself as hot soup. Some culinary theorist invented “Altai ramen”: strong beef broth, noodles with clear work ethic, dill, garlic, and steam so thick even class struggle would defrost. After this, it seemed almost impolite not to continue. We climbed again, this time toward Lake Baikal, which is oldest and deepest lake in world and, on days like this, also most invisible. Occasionally clouds parted, and we saw enormous dark surface, ice along the shores, and felt very small—like minor footnote in hydrological textbook. Approach into UIUU, Ulan‑Ude, was officially “marginal VFR,” which in plain language means: you see runway about same time runway sees you. Cropduster guided us between layers with calm expression of man who has already filled out all insurance forms in his head. We landed, rolled out on wet concrete, and shut down. Dogs stretched, shook off the flight as if it were small nap; I considered that comrades in Spartan C‑37 were probably buried under shopping bags somewhere sunny. Still, from standpoint of dialectical materialism, our leg was also successful: aircraft intact, crew present, soup consumed, two World Heritage sites overflown, and one more modest contribution made to great history of people trying to get somewhere in bad weather.Read more
UEEE, Yakutsk, Russia
December 4, 2025 in Kazakhstan ⋅ ☁️ 32 °F
World Heritage Sites Air Adventures – Hammer, Sickle, and Yoke
December 4th, 2025
Flight Log #07 – Ice Fog & Runway of the Imagination
Guest Co‑Pilot: Mikhail Zoshchenko
At Baikal International, UIUU, morning arrived in its usual dialectical contradiction: airport present, world absent. December here means sharp frost, low haze, and a horizon that has resigned for health reasons. Naturally, on such a day, progressive forces decided we must fly to Yakutsk. The glamorous part of our delegation—Marisa and Olga—chose the Spartan, with multiple engines and, presumably, better heating. The proletarian vanguard—one PC‑12, one long‑suffering captain, three overqualified dogs, and myself—received the heroic task: horrid IFR across Siberia.
En‑route, existence reduced itself to cloud and instruments. At one point the sky, perhaps out of pity, tore a small hole and briefly showed us Lena Pillars below: a stone forest of vertical cliffs along the river, famous to geologists and visible to us for roughly three seconds between layers. UNESCO has many beautiful pages about its unique landscapes and fossils; our version was shorter: “There, you saw it. Don’t get used to it.” The dogs missed the entire world‑heritage moment, busy snoring and proving that class struggle does not apply to cabin comfort.
Yakutsk, UEEE, then offered a practical seminar in Applied Existentialism. On final approach the windshield showed absolutely nothing—no runway, no lights, only a very committed white‑gray void. Inside, the instruments insisted an airport lay straight ahead, like a party committee swearing there is definitely a factory where everyone can plainly see only swamp. Altitude unwound, my sense of humor with it. The captain, however, stared at the needles with the calm of a man who has already decided that if the altimeter is lying, debate is pointless. Then, at the last legal millimeter of decision height, the runway exploded out of the fog: edge lights, centerline, concrete, all exactly where the instruments had promised. A rare, touching moment when reality cooperated with documentation.
We landed, rolled out, and the airport immediately attempted to disappear again, buildings fading into ice fog a few hundred meters away. The dogs trotted down the airstairs off‑lead, perfectly disciplined: Lani patrolled the ramp with the air of a small internal security ministry, Kai conducted morale operations among the ground crew, and Charlie leaned against frozen technicians until they remembered why surviving winter might be worthwhile. Somewhere out in the same soup, the Spartan with our cultured comrades was also fighting its way in, bringing shopping bags and criticism.
Operational summary in proper Soviet style: task completed, aircraft intact, crew and dogs present, one stone forest glimpsed for three seconds, one runway seen exactly at the last possible moment, and one more glorious victory for the instruments over human eyesight and common sense.Read more
UHHH - Khabarovsk-Novy Airport, Russia
December 5, 2025 in Russia ⋅ 🌬 9 °F
World Heritage Sites Air Adventures – Hammer, Sickle, and Yoke
December 5th, 2025
Flight Log #08 – IFR Soup & VFR Salvation
Guest Co Pilot: Mikhail Zoshchenko
At Yakutsk, UEEE, I climbed into the right seat next to Cropduster and immediately remembered why optimism is a dangerous habit in this city. The METAR gave us freezing fog and low cloud, visibility collapsing toward 300 m with vertical visibility around 200 ft—good, honest IFR in the coldest international airport on Earth. Taxiing out, we moved through a world made of halos and guesswork: centerline lights in jittery fragments, taxiway signs lunging out of the mist at the last moment, hangars dissolving into white before you finished counting their doors, while behind us Olga, Marisa, and three overqualified dogs treated the whole affair as mildly tedious commute rather than existential experiment.
We rotated into a windshield of pure nothing, climbed on instruments alone, and at last burst through into pale sun over a solid white sheet that hid Yakutia and all its problems. Cruise down to Khabarovsk was a straight 1,545 kilometer line on the map and a small, humming universe inside the PC 12: Cropduster running the machine with his usual unflappable precision, me narrating our theoretical progress, Olga reading, Marisa offering dry theater reviews of the turbulence, and the dogs distributed with silent, practiced efficiency so that every human was within reach of one calm pair of eyes. Up there between overcast and sky, it felt less like travel and more like a temporary suspension of disbelief held together by fuel, metal, and habit.
Khabarovsk Novy, UHHH, greeted us like a different planet: wind 250 at 12 m/s, visibility 10 km or more, low drifting snow, no significant clouds, temperature a brisk -17 with QNH 1007 hPa—clean, straightforward VFR that would be considered showing off back in Yakutsk. We dropped through a thin layer, rolled out on final with the runway exactly where the chart promised, rode a polite crosswind to a firm, centered landing, and slowed on a surface we’d actually seen well in advance instead of at the last second. Engines wound down, clear cold air rushed in, the dogs flowed off the airstairs like a small, disciplined landing party, and I wrote the log in the quiet that followed.Read more
