Travel blog by Päivi & Santeri Kannisto

Update 2016-12-17: Added Yerevan airport bus information.When heading to Yerevan from Tbilisi, you can choose between train and marshrutka (minibus). Trains go only every other day, which did not fit our schedule, so we took a marshrutka. The trip was a bit of a hassle, but at the same time culturally interesting.

Päivi fell in love with Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. It is romantically decadent, situated between hills and the river Kura (which, funnily enough, means 'mud' in Finnish). Architecture is stunning and Tbilisians are generally friendly, they speak English and — judging from the number of theaters and cultural institutes — they have other values in life besides money.

There are a couple of options for crossing the border between Russia and Georgia. The most direct route goes through Abhazia but requires a visa, which we didn't have. Instead, we went to North Ossetia and crossed the border from Vladikavkaz to Tbilisi via the famous Georgian Military Road AKA Invasion Highway that Russian troops have used since 18th century. The scenery was breathtaking and worth the detour.

The previous time we visited Russia was in 2006, when we were still omnivores. Having been vegans since 2010, we were a bit skeptical of what the Russian kitchen could offer us now when mettwurst, grilled chicken, smetana, and caviar were out of the question. Veganism is only emerging in Russia, and it is generally regarded as a folly. It raises eyebrows and wonder: "What do you eat then?"

We celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary in Moscow, Russia.

Other than visiting family and friends in Finland, we did PR for our newest book The Super-Rich and The Poor. Päivi got her newest journal article published, and we recorded a copyright free 10 episode radio program called Maailmankuvia for Finnish speaking audience.

In March, 2015 we read that Indonesia will be offering a visa-free entry starting from April 1st. The new offer covered the following passports: China, Japan, South Korea, United States, Canada, New Zealand, Mexico, Russia, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait and South Africa. We took the bait.

This blog post has been moved to Web & SEO Designers discussion forum.

Ever since we left Finland in 2004 to travel the world, Santeri has secretly continued developing one of his former company's (SOT Finnish Software Engineering Ltd.) most closely guarded, secret R&D projects, which aimed to create a perfectly distributed operating system. Compared to traditional operating systems, the new SanteriX operating system does not require almost any hard disk space and boots virtually instantly. If the following presentation is too technical for you, click the blue Preview-button below to see how the new system looks.

This blog post has been moved to Web & SEO Designers discussion forum.

This blog post has been moved to Web & SEO Designers discussion forum.

We have spent the last 11+ years as digital nomads travelling perpetually with laptops writing books, designing websites, and making films. This article summarises the lessons we have learned for choosing the best laptop for travelling and working on the road, and a few practical tips. Below is a list of the brands and models we have had, and the problems we experienced with them.

Darién Gap is one of the most difficult areas on earth to travel and it is considered to be extremely dangerous. This documentary film includes footage from a speedboat ride from Turbo to Capurganá, border villages, and the jungle on both sides of the border between Panama and Colombia. There are interviews with two fellow travellers who crossed the Darién Gap, one from Switzerland and another from Peru. Crossing the Darién Gap (40 minutes, Päivi & Santeri Kannisto, 2013 & 2016) has English, Spanish and Finnish subtitles.

Päivi’s new journal article “Extreme mobilities: Challenging the concept of ‘travel’” will be published in Annals of Tourism Research in March 2016 (volume 57, pages 220–233). The article explores extreme mobilities by analysing how ‘global nomads’ create their lifestyles testing the limits of modern-day mobilities and freedom of movement.

Päivi’s latest book recaps the work on global nomads and location-independence she started in 2010 by interviewing 30 full-time travellers. The book is a re-assessment of much contemporary research in the fields of mobility, migration and tourism studies, written for scholars across the social sciences. The book is published by Ashgate that recently merged with Routledge.

We were expecting another India when landing in Sri Lanka, but were pleasantly surprised. There is less harassment of women, and sellers and tuk-tuk drivers leave you alone if you say No thank you or, in a local way, do a lopsided head wobble. Sri Lanka is experiencing a surge in tourism but still trying to catch up with the opportunities lost in a 30-year civil war. The country receives annually 1,5 million tourists, while for example Thailand attracts 25 million. Sri Lankan tourism infrastructure is undeveloped. New businesses are opening and many of them are quickly closed. At times, the amount of tourists seems to exceed the supply, but this is merely because tourists flock to the same destinations.