Five minutes after arriving in the former capital city of Almaty, Kazakhstan, I was being detained inside a windowless police cell. This wasn’t exactly planned, but it wasn’t completely unanticipated. I’ve learned through participation – when crossing remote, unknown, borders in post-Soviet states, encounters with the law should come as no surprise.

Is there really a solid-gold toilet, inside the former President’s mansion near Kyiv, Ukraine? And, do you really need to know a guy called “Petro” to get inside? Update: maybe.

Surprisingly, ten other people shared my travel contrariness, and we explored for two days in the radioactive wasteland of Chernobyl, Ukraine. Keep in mind I’m from Australia, and there aren’t any winters in Australia.

It’s difficult, often impossible, using words alone, to convince someone that almost everything they’ve ever been told about Iran, is wrong…

Stray dogs, broken down van, radiation scans, failed electronics, and encounters with armed Chernobyl patrol guys dressed all in black. Best overnighter ever.

In the friendly, disputatious, sometimes fatalist, Adidas-tracksuit-wearing nations that make up the former Yugoslavia, “spomenik” simply means “monument”. Futuristic, modernist, and concrete, this page is an explanation and guide to the most brutal set of memorials anywhere on the planet – “The Spomenik”.

Kandovan in remote North West Iran may look like a movie set. But, this is genuinely a working village – and home of the last cave-dwellers on the planet.