During the 2nd World War, Germany invaded European Russia.
To avoid losing the entire Russian manufacturing industry, Stalin packaged every factory in Euro-Russia.
Stalin then shipped the factories to this city to be rebuilt, in order to produce an endless supply of tanks, planes, and weapons.
Welcome to New Siberia
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Delhi, India is actually 2 different cities; Old Delhi, and New Delhi.
New Delhi is the gentrified areas full of malls, new apartment blocks, highways, and pretty much the same thing you see in every corner of the world right now.
Old Delhi is where the wild west is, and you can tell…
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I’ve been to Moscow and St. Petersburg, but there was a desire to see the OTHER far-eastern end of Russia…
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Almost immediately upon arriving into Fort Kochi, India, you feel how ancient everything is.
Add in the architecture from multiple religions that co-existed at one point here, and you have a mess of a very deep and vivid history.
You literally have a mix of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Communism, and British and Portuguese Colonialism, all in one.
Also, there is a fun element of animals wandering around freely here, goats, cats, chickens, dogs… but no cows this time?
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It’s rain season, so everything is wet… but everything is also beautifully lush and green.
Oh, and there was an abundance of mosquitos…
But luckily I brought 2 canisters of mosquito repellent. So for the rest of the few days of being in the freshest air in the world… we smelled like industrial chemicals – But atleast no mosquito bites, right?
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Arriving in Mysore, you immediately feel that it is WAY less chaotic than Bengaluru. Still just as dirty with garbage thrown around on every corner, street, green field, crevice and what not, but otherwise, less chaotic.
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This is a very approachable self-development read, with a witty sense of humor, and a very fun way of communicating ideas.
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All of those fairy tales and hype you hear about India are just that… hype.
The mystical, spiritual place that is supposed to be India, is the most contrasted place to all other nations I have ever been in. A full 180 degrees in the opposite direction of sanity and order. But at the same time, there is beauty in the Chaos as the saying goes.
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But once we were about 30 minutes away from New Delhi, the plane started doing circles, and an announcement indicated we could not land due to a crazy rain storm. We ended up landing in Ahmedabad, India, and were told to stay in the plane.
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My fascination with neanderthals has to do with apparently being 2.8% neanderthal myself (genetically speaking).
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Walking around the old-town, you can feel that some of the buildings haven’t been repaired since their soviet-era days, with the decades-old decay of their exteriors. While others have been refurbished for the rapidly growing tourism industry in Vilnius.
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Lisbon, Portugal was my first destination of a long 1-year tour of the world. The city immediately displays its Roman-esque red rooftops, and low-rise buildings in the central core.
You definitely feel like you are in old-europe, and yet, deep down, I wondered how much of Brazil looked like old Portugal.
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Taking the train from Lisbon, Portugal into Porto, Portugal, is one of the most scenic experiences you can get!
The view of the bridge, crossing the 2 cliffs, is a sight to be seen, most definitely.
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I looked on google maps to see the routes in Salvador, and it basically looks like an ant colony… squiggly lines going everywhere, with no clear direction. Clear evidence of an amazingly deep historical growth and evolution.
Nonetheless, Salvador was colonized almost 500 years ago through a series of shipwrecks, and eventually became an epic hub of slavery and despair for native Americans and Africans from all over the world.
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Vancouver is considered one of the top 10 best cities to live in, year after year. I had 4 days of sun while here, so it was a great time to explore.
The city itself is very safe, and organized, yet there are several drug addicts roaming around the streets.
There is a very modern feel due to the current rapid development of the city.
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The Shannon Falls hiking trail, located 1 hour north of Vancouver, British Columbia, is amazing!
It’s a straight climb to the top, so get your quadriceps ready. There are 3 peaks, with a bonus one for fun. The paths are not always linear, and you can get lost here from peak 2-3.
The view is amazing, and you will definitely thank yourself for coming here and climbing to the top.
One of my favorite hikes of all time (so far).
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“It is not death that the very old tell me they fear. It is what happens short of death—losing their hearing, their memory, their best friends, their way of life. As Felix put it to me, “Old age is a continuous series of losses.” Philip Roth put it more bitterly in his novel Everyman: “Old age is not a battle. Old age is a massacre.”
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“We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out—and we have only just begun.”
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For an Italian, time considerations will usually be subjected to human feelings. “Why are you so angry because I came at 9:30?” he asks his German colleague. “Because it says 9:00 in my diary,” says the German. “Then why don’t you write 9:30 and then we’ll both be happy?” is a logical Italian response. The business we have to do and our close relations are so important that it is irrelevant at what time we meet. The meeting is what counts. Germans and Swiss cannot swallow this, as it offends their sense of order, of tidiness, of planning.
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Every single epic or terrible idea that you have ever had in your life, has never been your own.
In fact, every idea in human society, has been a collection of ideas that have ‘evolved’ from a long history of ideas.
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