Here are a few pictures of a deserted part of California, both because it's close to being a desert and because we seemed to be the only people driving there, apart from rare local cars and a couple of oil trucks.
This highway 33 which is also named Petroleum highway is running along the western side of the San Joaquim valley and it is one of the oldest oil regions of the U.S.A. There's a magic here, and it was great to walk out of the car and let the place impress you, only that the outside temperature (104 ° F) was particularly punishing.
If you drive through this place, make sure to stop at the McKittrick cafe-Hotel and ask to one of the 3 women working there for the best draft Bud of the region...
We had all along this Petroleum highway the best Mexicana I could dream of, with a local radio station that probably provided a homey feel for the many agriculture workers further north on the San Joaquim Valley. Listening to Vicente Fernandez (is there a more iconic song than Los Mandados ?) and his likes added to the magnificent desert landscape. The song Los Mandados (listen below) tells about crossing illegally the border to the US and dealing with la Migra (the U.S. Border Patrol), the song was composed by Jorge Lerma and first recorded by Vicente Fernandez in 1965.
Yerevan, Armenia
April 24 is the Remembrance day in Armenia, when the whole country remembers the one to one-and-a-half million Armenian people who were deliberately killed on grand scale by the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian genocide as these events are known today, took place in 1915 and was the first genocide of the 20th century. Victims included ethnic Assyrians and Greeks. Turkey (now as a result a 99 %-muslim country) denies that any organized genocide took place at that time.
Armenia is a small country in terms of geography today but it has a vibrant spirit to overcome its past and face potential threats (it is said to have the best spetsnaz in the region). Its diaspora is particularly dense in France and the United States.
Volgograd is the new name of what was Stalingrad, a city where an important battle of WW2 took place. Here are a few pictures of that large Russian city.
These pictures were shot in an abandonned pioneer summer camp somewhere in the Kuban region in Russia. In these empty building and playgrounds you could hear long time ago the voices of happy children spending there deserved vacations. These children are now grownups and their memories of the soviet times owe something to these happy few weeks where they shared good time together
Here are a few pictures shot in the immense taïga forest of central Russia (way east from Moscow), a gold mine for all sorts of delicacies, small red or black fruits and countless varieties of mushrooms in particular. All you need, in addition to spotting the berries and mushrooms, is trust the knowledgeable local persons whom you believe will be able finding the way back to the village. I must admit that I wasn't always confident that we would find the right direction back to the civilization. Our party went into 2 weathered all-terrain vehicules along grass roads deep into the woods which I knew was total wildeness in one direction at least.