Intrepid Adventure

Heading west from Christchurch, Peter Campbell travels through some spectacular scenery to visit New Zealand’s glaciers, and discovers an imposing new landscape left by the retreating ice. It is one of my many regrets that I am not a geologist. The closest I come to geology is reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, and as far as…

Witnessing a random incident of thuggery in St. Petersburg’s historic centre, Peter Campbell raises the question of how and what we observe, experience, remember and report. When it comes to describing any culture or society, a relationship is always developed between the observer and the observed, making the description as much a reflection of the narrator as it is of…

Once a top-secret Soviet facility, Stalin’s secret bunker is now open to the public. Peter Campbell from Intrepid Adventure writes the first full account of the bunker to be published in English on the internet. Thirty-five metres underground the air feels denser, cold and clammy. Welcome to Josef Stalin’s secret bunker. The bunker, located in the centre of Samara (known…

Samara sits concealed on a bend in the Volga River. Inconspicuous and forgotten, Samara is Russia’s sixth largest city and a major contributor to Russia’s aerospace industry. This little known city was closed off to foreigners during the Cold War and this has perhaps contributed to its obscurity. Despite this, Samara is an exciting, dynamic city with good restaurants, hotels…

Returning to Russia is not returning home but as Russia has played an important role in the last 14 years of my life, returning after a five year absence felt like a homecoming. I left Russia at the beginning of 2008 shortly before the financial crisis in mid winter. Snow clung to buildings and streets alike. Cold permeates everywhere and…