Overcast skies seemed suddenly appropriate We hadn’t seen the sun for two weeks. On the six-day train ride from Beijing to Moscow it hadn’t mattered much – half the time had been spent guzzling cheap vodka frantically purchased during our 20-minute stops in various Siberian towns, and the other half with the shades drawn, wishing […]

One year ago, I crossed the Iran/Turkmenistan border by foot and arrived shortly thereafter in Ashgabat, the capital of one of the world’s least visited countries. The place sees fewer foreign visitors a year than Afghanistan and North Korea. A lot has already been said about Turkmenistan’s repressive nature, and cult of personality surrounding the […]

The people of Yanji really like dogs. They have a street devoted to them, and the city is home to an annual dog festival. Yanji does not like dogs the way you might like dogs, because what they like about dogs is eating them.  Now before anyone calls PETA, it’s important to understand why and how Yanji became the dog eating […]

 “It was a really bitter time, people nowadays wouldn’t believe it, it was so, so bitter,”said Lao Wu about his time in the Red Army, while eating a bowl of potato, carrot, tomato and rice that his wife had prepared for us. Lao Wu, 86 years old, lives in the town of Anding in a […]

When you think of Somalia, you probably think about pirates and danger, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But although Somalia is considered too dangerous for tourists, the unrecognised country of Somaliland couldn’t be more different. Here, the safety of their rare guests is paramount, and foreigners are welcomed. Still recovering from a brutal civil war, Somaliland doesn’t technically exist. Somalilanders, not surprisingly, aren’t impressed […]

Always be careful who you’re speaking to. “$20, $20, give me $20” said the border guard between Turkmenistan and Iran. In most cases when a corrupt minor official asks us for money, it’s a simple matter of ignoring them and walking away. When we travel to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, for example, being asked for paperwork […]

Sat in a fast food diner right in the heart of downtown Havana, I ordered a beer and a Cuban sandwich. The latter, for those who’ve never tried one, is like no ordinary sandwich – it comes in a baguette, Cuban bread stuffed to the brim with roasted pork, ham and salami, Swiss cheese, pickles and […]

The first time I visited Yan’an it was the May 1st holiday for International Labour Day. After arriving late at night we went straight to our hotel, it was still chilly in the evenings but there were a group of Uyghurs out selling lamb skewers so we could fill ourselves up before sleeping. “What made […]

Here’s YPT’s favourite moments in DPRK sport history.  Collision in Korea Held in the incredible May Day Stadium, 1995’s Collision in Korea wasn’t so much a showcase of North Korean wrestling talent as a demonstration of the building prowess of the country. The wrestling bash was co-hosted by the US organization WCW (World Championship Wrestling) […]

With one of the most fascinating histories in Europe combined with an incredibly diverse landscape, it is no wonder that tourism to Albania has increased by almost 1000 percent in the last ten years.  This increase, however, has come almost exclusively from Balkan and Eastern European countries, with English speaking tourists constituting only a very […]