We at YPT often pride ourselves on taking the road less travelled, but it would be rank dishonesty to claim this of the Pamir Highway – a historic trans-Pamir road that’s been in use, one way or another, for millennia. A crucial link along the historic …

When the draw for the Asian section of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was made, here at YPT we were immediately excited at some of the games we could watch in Pyongyang. Home to Sri Lanka in March 2020, home to Turkmenistan in June 2020, but the big one w …

Halloween (or Hallowe’en, for old-school purists) is that very spooky time of year when people tell ghost stories, terrible horror movies are released, and the Americans adopt the flimsiest of excuses to dress as slutty nurses and superheroes. North Ko …

With nicknames such as the “Hermit Kingdom”, many people believe that North doesn’t have any internet. Whilst it is definitely true to say that the internet situation in the DPRK is somewhat unique, North Korea not only has its own intranet, but is ver …

At the Soviet Europe office of Young Pioneer Tours, one of our greatest passions is promoting tourism in what are known as ‘breakaway states’ or ‘unrecognized countries’. In the former Soviet Union there are four unrecognized states in existence: Trans …

The tale of Coca Cola in North Korea is one that has been told many times. For a long time one has been able to made Chinese-made coke in North Korea, and of course there has always been the homegrown brand of Ryogjin Cola. How to describe this unique …

Syria has recently hit the news again in a big way. After not much attention for a while, it’s back in the limelight. The president of the USA, Donald Trump, announced that he would withdraw US troops from a particular segment of the Syrian/Turkish bor …

Many of you may have read or heard the rumours that Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, the President of Turkmenistan, had passed away. The rumour started from the Russian news agency TASS and quickly did the rounds on the internet. After a week of rumours the …

We live in an age where flights have never been cheaper and snapshot holidays have become a common thing. Itineraries that were simply unthinkable of for the common folk a few decades ago – visiting London, Istanbul and Seoul within a week, for instanc …

YPT is kind of a big deal. We didn’t necessarily envision being where we are now, where we have to think about logistics and stuff, but we are. And on occasion, we find that we need more people to guide and blog and do social media stuff. So here we ar …