A Journey to Find Russia's Forgotten Space Ships (Classic)

Summary

What It Was Like – "A Journey to Find Russia's Forgotten Space Ships (Classic)"

Host: Julian Morgans (Superreal)
Guest: Greg Abandoned (Urban Explorer)
Date: January 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

This classic episode revisits the extraordinary true story of Greg Abandoned (@gregabandoned), an urban explorer (Urbex photographer) who, along with a near-stranger, journeyed deep into the Kazakhstan desert to infiltrate a Russian military base and document the remains of the Soviet-era Buran space shuttles. Part history, part buddy-adventure, part cautionary tale—the episode is a wild, surprisingly funny exploration of obsession, extreme travel, and human connection under extraordinary stress.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to the Buran Program & Urbex Culture

• Setting the Scene:

  • Julian describes discovering images of derelict Soviet space shuttles on Instagram, sparking his interest in the fate of the Buran program’s shuttles post-Cold War. (03:33)
  • The Buran program was the USSR’s answer to NASA’s Space Shuttle, abandoned after the Soviet collapse. Remaining shuttles now rot in hangars at a Kazakhstan cosmodrome, inside an active Russian military base.

• Greg’s Background:

  • Urbex (Urban Exploration) is Greg’s passion, not his paid profession:

    “I actually don’t get paid for this. I have a normal job.” (07:04, Greg)

  • By day, he is a calculus teacher at an international school in Beijing. Nights and weekends: urbex.

2. Planning the Mission: The Urbex ‘Holy Grail’

• For the urbex community, the Kazakhstan shuttle hangar is “like the Holy Grail. Like its version of Mt. Everest” (09:06, Julian).
• The logistics involved are extreme: flights to Kazakhstan, overcoming language barriers, traversing inhospitable steppes, and evading Russian military security.
• A 40km hike through rugged, dangerous terrain is required just to reach the site. (10:02)
• Greg trained for months, rigorously preparing his body, learning how to manage hydration and weight, all to handle the trek (13:52).

3. Last-Minute Teaming Up and Red Flags

• Greg’s original partner canceled, but at the last minute, he was contacted by “John from Oklahoma”—a fellow urbex’er also reeling from a breakup. (16:07)
• John’s travel misfortunes: luggage lost, money stolen, and a refusal to purchase essential cold-weather gear.

  “For him bringing a tripod or bringing this huge massive lens... was more important than a sleeping mat or bag.” (20:10, Greg)

  • John’s lack of preparation and risk awareness would become a recurring, sometimes comic, sometimes dire theme.

4. The Hike: Danger, Stars, and Tension

• The trek is marked by surreal desert beauty but also hazards: wild animals, ditches with metal spikes, and intimidating military presence.

• “I fell into a ditch... there was a metal spike... if I fell right onto it, it would, like, puncture my stomach. So that was super lucky.” (10:35, Greg)

• Paranoia grows when they spot a lone figure with a dog—likely a security guard—forcing a risky detour closer to the base. (24:37)
• The dangers of unpreparedness become manifest: John shivers through the first night, missing a sleeping bag, and visibly suffering. Greg describes hearing him “weeping” from the cold (36:50).

5. Inside the Hangar: Awe and History

• After hours of tension and exertion, they breach the hangar. Greg’s first words on entering:

  “You look at those shuttles and you... All you have is this, a small beam of light from your phone. It’s this mysterious dark thing that’s in front of you that’s so enormous... Pictures can never tell you how huge these shuttles are.” (32:51, Greg)

• The shuttles are haunting: “impossibly big,” covered in debris, windows smashed—the grandeur and waste of a fallen superpower on display.
• The sense of history and achievement hits hard:

  “That was just purely amazing. The sense of achievement that I felt of being there... it was surreal.” (39:35, Greg)

  • Greg sits in an astronaut’s seat:

    “A literal childhood dream come true...” (41:58, Greg)

6. Ethics, Quiet, and Culture of Exploration

• Urbex code: minimize impact, leave nothing, take nothing, avoid vandalism.

  “Don’t take stuff from it, don’t steal, don’t damage the property... But at the same time... I had the experience of sitting in the astronaut’s seat because some other person smashed a window.” (46:02, Greg)

• The environment inside is loud with birds and wind; they remain vigilant, moving quietly to avoid security (44:00).

7. Rocket Hangar and Growing Division

• They reach a second hangar to see a colossal delivery rocket (49:53).
• John repeatedly asks Greg to share his sleeping mat; Greg, frustrated and feeling guilt, refuses:

  “Why should I be punished because I prepared and he didn’t?” (53:33, Greg)

  • The dynamic becomes increasingly strained, highlighting how partnerships under stress can fracture.

8. The Return Hike – Disintegration and Isolation

• John injures his knee and grows slower. The cold intensifies. Greg tries to keep them moving, worried that stopping could mean freezing to death (58:23).
• John “starts telling me that I should leave him,” but Greg hesitates to abandon him (58:23).
• Eventually, John disappears in the darkness. Greg, after searching, is forced to continue alone:

  “I turned around and he wasn’t there. And I couldn’t find him.” (61:44, Greg)

9. Greg’s Ordeal: Hallucinations and the Long Walk Out

• The solo hike is grueling. Greg experiences fear from wild animals, close calls with security vehicles, and even hallucinations due to exhaustion and stress:

  “I saw a beam of light above me, like a UFO. And I was convinced it was chasing me.” (69:24, Greg)

• Eventually, Greg makes it to the roadside, freezing, and finds refuge in a roadside café, where he sleeps for the first time in days (74:15).

10. What Happened to John?

• Greg loses touch with John but later learns, via his ex-girlfriend, that John had intentionally gotten himself caught by security (75:10).

  “His only way to leave this desert alive was to get caught.” (75:15, Greg)

• The two never reconnect; they see each other at the airport but remain strangers (76:46).

11. Reflections & Lessons Learned

• Greg is grateful for not attempting the mission solo, as some situations would have been more dangerous alone (77:16).

• The experience teaches him to be more discerning about expedition partners:

  “If I am going to do this place, I will do this with someone who is an urban explorer, who’s been around, who I know more than five days.” (78:24, Greg)

• Big-picture reflection:

  “The top line story is your adventure into Kazakhstan... But really it’s also a story about a friendship that wasn’t.” (77:50, Julian)

12. Coda: Greg’s Book and Projects

• Greg discusses his photo book series “Abandoned China,” exploring derelict sites across China, including factories, vehicles, and another rocket. (80:34)
• Find him and his work at gregabanda.com and @gregabandoned on Instagram.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Buran Hangar Ethos:

  "Like it's the Holy Grail. Like it's their version of Mt. Everest."
  — Julian (09:06)

• On Meeting John:

  “He had some pictures of abandoned places... I felt like, okay, he’s one of the urban guys.”
  — Greg (16:50)

• Cold Night in the Hangar:

  “I put every piece of clothing that I had on me... and crawl inside that sleeping bag... and I was still shivering from cold.”
  — Greg (34:43)

• Inside the Shuttle:

  “I sat down at the chair, or the astronaut chair, inside the space shuttle. This is like one of the best moments of my life... a literal childhood dream come true.”
  — Greg (41:58)

• On Partnership:

  “When you make friends... for whatever reason, you’re just not gonna be friends. It’s not gonna work out. ... I had that feeling from, like, few hours into that desert.”
  — Greg (53:57)

• On Survival vs. Company:

  “His only way to leave this desert alive was to get caught.”
  — Greg (75:15)

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Timed Key Segments

• [03:33] – Introduction: Sputnik nostalgia, Buran brief history
• [07:04] – Greg explains his urbex lifestyle
• [10:02] – Discussing the 40km hike; desert hazards
• [16:07] – John enters the story; red flags appear
• [20:10] – John refuses to buy warm gear
• [32:51] – First moments inside the hangar, emotional awe
• [39:35] – The overwhelming historical weight
• [46:02] – Ethics of exploration and vandalism discussed
• [49:53] – Entering the rocket hangar, increasing tension
• [58:23] – The dangerous cold of the return journey
• [61:44] – John disappears; Greg is forced to walk alone
• [69:24] – Greg’s hallucinations and deep exhaustion
• [74:15] – Finding warmth and safety at roadside café
• [75:15] – Discovering John’s fate via a third party
• [78:24] – Lessons learned about picking travel partners

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Tone & Style

The conversation is direct, wry, sometimes darkly comic, and sometimes philosophical. Greg is refreshingly candid about mistakes, anxieties, and the unglamorous reality of epic adventures. Julian strikes a balance between curiosity, empathy, and playfulness, drawing out both the human drama and the historical intrigue of the quest.

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Final Reflections

• The Buran space shuttle story is as much about bold exploration and dramatic history as it is about interpersonal dynamics, preparation, and self-discovery.
• Greg’s main lesson: “Pick the right partner. Know them well. Plan for the worst, hope for the best.”
• The grand, crumbling Soviet relics are a metaphor for ambition, waste, and the poignancy of all human endeavors.

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Find More

• Greg: gregabanda.com | @gregabandoned (Instagram)
• Host: @julianmorgans (Instagram)

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For fans of wild true stories, forgotten history, and the raw honesty of strangers thrown together by circumstance, this episode is essential listening—or reading.

Transcript

[A]

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[A]

Hey everyone. It's Christmas holiday period here in Australia and I'm taking some time off, which means that last few days have been spent reading books, which has been lovely because I haven't done that in a while, and just eating way too much food. So no complaints. All of that is to say that we don't have a brand new episode for you this week. Instead, we're bringing back a classic, one of my all time favorites from the show and honestly, a bit of an underrated one. This is from back when we just first started in 2022, so I think the chances are that most of you haven't heard it. It's the story of two men who journey into a remote corner of Kazakhstan to find some abandoned Soviet space shuttles left behind after the Cold War. And on one level, it's just a great piece of forgotten history, but on another, it's basically a buddy movie. You know, it's two guys stranded in the desert who really don't get along, but they have to work together anyway and it's surprisingly funny, so I love this story. I hope you do too. Also, we won't be running a subscriber only episode this week for the same reason that we're doing a rerun. The whole team is taking a well earned break and recharging for the year ahead. But we'll be back with plenty of new stories next year. Okay, wherever you are, hope you're getting some downtime and I hope you enjoy this classic episode. Russia's Abandoned Spaceships. Hey, I'm Julian Morgans and you're listening to what It Was like, the show that asks people who have lived through big dramatic events what it was like. So I was on Instagram the other day, just scrolling around, you know, wasting time, and I saw some photos of, of something that looked like a space shuttle. Like, picture a space shuttle. Like, you know, the big NASA spacecraft from the 80s that kind of looks like an airplane. Well, the photo that I saw, it looked like that thing, except that it was abandoned. Like, all of its windows were smashed and it was in this rusting hangar and it was covered in bird shit. And yeah, it was just abandoned. And I love abandoned stuff. So I was immediately enthralled. I was like, what is the story here? So I did some reading. And what I discovered is that in the 1980s, the Russians were actually building their own version of the space shuttle. And these were spaceships that were designed to blast into space and then turn around and land, like airplanes. And of course, this is what the Americans were building. This was the NASA space shuttle, as I referred to before. And the Russians, their version was called Buren. It was the Buren space program. And Buren is a word that actually refers to our wind. It's a wind that blows through Russia and Central Asia. I looked it up, and all through the 80s, they were building these enormous aeroplane looking spaceships. And they actually got one into orbit via remote control. It was unmanned, but it was a huge deal at the time. Like, if you were living in Moscow in the 80s, you'd have known about this. Like, it was on the nightly news, it was on stamps. It was the country's affirmation of their technological superiority. And it was a huge exciting thing to be a part of. They actually planned to send off like, crude missions in the 1990s, but none of it happened because the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. You might know this piece of history, but On Christmas Day, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, he resigned, and the USSR officially ceased to be a country. And the Buran space program, well, that was cancelled a few years later in 1993. So what happened to all these spaceships? Well, there's actually still a few around, and many of them are now rusting away in locked hangars at a Russian military installation in Kazakhstan. And that's what I'd seen. A guy that I follow had snuck into one of these hangars and he'd taken some photos. So I wanted to get the whole story, so I contacted the guy and the guy's name's Greg. He's originally from Poland and he's currently living in Beijing. And Greg explores abandoned buildings. That's his whole shtick. His handle is actually Greg Abandoned, and he's an Urbex photographer. Again, you might know this already, but Urbex is short for urban exploration. And there are heaps of these people out there on TikTok and Instagram and they sneak into abandoned buildings. And I follow nearly all of them. And that's what Greg does. So he agreed to tell me his story of sneaking into this spaceport to photograph some abandoned spaceships. And I'll just flag that there was one detail in the story that I didn't really expect, and that's that Greg actually went in with a buddy. He wasn't alone. Two guys hiked in together, but Greg, he came out by himself. Hey, Greg. Welcome to the show.

[B]

Hi, Julian, how are you?

[A]

I'm doing very well, thank you. Very well. So I want to know about Urbex. Like, you do Urbex as a career. What does that mean? Like, you know, do you get paid? Like, what's it like being in this world?

[B]

Well, first of all, that's funny. That's really funny that you say that. That's what you think. I actually don't get paid for this. I have a normal job.

[A]

All right, well, you've answered my question then. So you've got a regular normal job, and then you explore abandoned buildings as a hobby. Yes. We're obviously going to go and spend the entire episode talking about the abandoned buildings, but I'm curious, what's your normal job?

[B]

I teach math. I teach. Okay.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So you teach in an international school in Beijing and you teach calculus to your.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To your students, and then on the weekends you. You explore abandoned buildings.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's. I know it sounds weird, right? Like, it's. It's bit unusual. But look, I. The people that I met that doing exploring, they are from all sorts of different backgrounds. And the thing is that connects everyone is, that is exploring. It doesn't really matter what you do as long as you are willing to take those risks and you are adventurous and you go exploring and then you do, you know, sometimes you do need to have a little bit crazy and certainly certain you have to have a different view of the world and maybe, you know, a bit curious. More curious than the regular people, I would say.

[A]

Okay, okay. All right, well, let's, let's get into it. I want to spend this episode talking to you about, well, really about the former Soviet Union's attempt to crush, create a space shuttle program and how you broke into their sort of construction hangar or their facilities and saw what's left of these things. So set the scene for me. Yeah, well, sorry, you snuck in. You snuck in. Yeah, you don't break, you sneak.

[B]

That's true.

[A]

Hey, I'm just going to jump in here with some added bits of context because there's a few parts of this conversation that I just want to distill for the sake of brevity. So basically Greg and I talked about how within the Urbex community, this, this hangar in Kazakhstan, it's kind of like the Holy Grail. Like it's their version of Mount Everest. And that has a lot to do with its unique history. But it's also really just about how hard it is to get there because getting to Kazakhstan, it's not really a direct route on most airlines. And then when you get there, very few people speak English. And then hiking to this base is really difficult, extremely arduous and, and highly illegal.

[B]

It's not just that you just rock up at the gate and.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you know, you climb the gate. You have to climb, you have to, you have to hike through the desert to get there.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are the distances involved?

[B]

So I, So I did 40km hike through the desert one way. 40 bucks or 80 together.

[A]

Oh, wow. Okay. So that seems, I mean, I've done a bit of hiking, so I'm familiar with what it feels like to hike 40 kilometers and it's, you know, like, I'd say comfortably that's probably a three day hike. So you're saying that you, when you get to the fence of this, of this facility, you've got 40km between the fence and the first shed that contains the shuttles before you're going to get to where you want to be.

[B]

Yeah. So you, I, I got dropped off in the middle of the highway because we're talking about The Kazakhstani steppes. So when I say desert, I don't mean like a Sahara. Gobi Desert. Right. White sands. No, no, I mean it's like a. Steps. Kazakhstani steps. So very much up and down, uneven terrain, a lot of debris inside. Very dangerous. At one stage, when it was very dark, I fell into a ditch that. And that there was a metal spike, and I actually was fortunate enough to just fell on the side of it. If I fell right onto it, it would, like, puncture my stomach. So that was super lucky. So there's a lot of those things we're talking about, like wild dogs and wolves and snakes. I know explorer who got bitten by a snake in that desert. Someone almost got dehydrated and died. So in terms of that whole journey, when you walk and walk and walk, and you have to imagine this, you also have this base on your left. I mean, depends where you from, where you hike, but you have this base which feels very close, and the floodlights from that base, they carry on forever. So if you hiking in.

[A]

And this is a Russian military base.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So, all right, so you read about it in a magazine. You know that it's really hard, but one day you just decide, all right, you know what? The time's now, I'm going to take it on. I'm going to do this hike, go to Kazakhstan. I'm going to see these rockets.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, at that time, I feel like a lot of the times, certain events happened in my life when I just become single. You know, it's like I started a podcast when I just broke up with my girlfriend, I went to Kazakhstan. When I became single, I started exploring because I essentially divorced. So a lot of those things happened. And this was that time of, of, of, of a. In my life where I felt like, yeah, I. I really want to do this. There was another explorer that has a very popular YouTube channel that I was talking to. Josh, exploring with Josh. Maybe you heard about him. I didn't know Josh very well, but we talked quite frequently on. On Instagram, and so he was very keen to do it. And. And it was very difficult to find people that would have the means to do it and would be willing to do it. So originally it was me and him that was supposed to do it, but a month before, he canceled, and all of a sudden I was like, damn, I have to do this by myself. But I was so determined that I was willing to do this by myself.

[A]

Okay. And at this time. And at this time, you've. You've been kind of working out. Like, like training your body, right?

[B]

Yes. So I would, three months before going. Every Friday night, I. Yeah, every Friday night. Because I would finish my work, go home, eat something, and then I would pack my bag and go around the bay in the city. I was living. I was living in Qingdao. And I would walk all night. All night, all night, all night until 5, 4am in the morning.

[A]

You know, you're lucky you're single. Think. I think doing this as a, as a married man or something, you know, there'd be. There'd be questions.

[B]

Yeah, but you see, it's funny. It was funny because I would be. Some of my friends would join me for like the first hour or two. They would walk with me and we would talk and that would kill the time, and that was great. But at some stage, obviously they would. They would go home and I would keep walking. Because the thing was, I was not totally. I was not an expert on hiking or long distance hiking whatsoever. So I did some research. I learned about the distribution of your. Of the weight, how you supposed to put that bag on, on your back, and how to drink water. I feel like I always been really bad when it comes to drinking water. I had kidney stones three times already in my life. But in a way, I. In a way that helped me because I'm not a person who needs a lot of food or to drink in order to survive. I can go on for a couple days and it will be fine, maybe with a little headache. But I managed to condition myself to drink very little water. So the two days I was there in Kazakhstan, I drank four liters of water.

[A]

Only two days. Damn, this is. This is making me feel thirsty.

[B]

Yeah, there you go.

[A]

I'm gonna have a glass of water.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay. All right, so. So you're training for this trip and Josh, Josh, he bails out. So it looks like you're gonna have to do it by yourself now. What?

[B]

Yeah. Okay, so this, this is where the story becomes slightly crazy because essentially I think it was maybe a week before I already had the tickets. I. I'm going by myself. I'm obviously scared. And I get this message on Instagram on some guy. We're gonna call him John from Oklahoma.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Because he was from Oklahoma.

[A]

But his name wasn't John.

[B]

Yeah, his name wasn't John. And he. Well, depends how you spell it.

[A]

All right, his name was John. Go on.

[B]

Yeah, so I. I get this message from him, and he was just dumped at the wedding or just like before the wedding. Oh, no. And and he's like, I wanna, I, I heard that you are going to the space shuttles in Kazakhstan. And I always wanted to go there. I'm super confused. I mean, obviously I sometimes share my stories on Instagram and all that stuff. And he eventually told me that someone that knew me on Facebook told him about this, and that's how he approached me. And ultimately I, I don't know this guy. Obviously. I don't know this guy. The only thing I know is obviously what he tells me. I look at his profile, he had some pictures of abandoned places. So I felt like, okay, he's, he's, he's one of the urban guys. And I, yeah, we, we talked and he decided to do it. He decided to, to go and roll the dice and, and do it. I was very surprised. But you have to understand, like, I also needed that. I, I needed someone to talk.

[A]

But it also, but it also feels to me like you guys would have been quite emotionally aligned at that time. I mean, I think, I think that when you go through a breakup, you always, you always change a little bit. You know, a lot of people, they'll go, they'll start going to the gym. Other people get like a crazy haircut. Like, you guys were in a place where, where you're sort of changing things up in your life and you both arrived at a fairly crazy proposition. Hey, let's go to Kazakhstan together.

[B]

Yeah. No, I feel like you're absolutely right. I was at that time. It was a tough one for me, that breakup. So I, yeah, I feel like maybe you're on to something. Yeah. And then we, we, we went to Kazakhstan and, you know, I started learning more and more things about John.

[A]

That sounds ominous. Hey, me again. I'm just jumping in to explain something else. So when they arrived in Kazakhstan, John announced that the airline had somehow lost his checked in luggage. And then to make matters worse, John took himself out that night to some kind of red light district and managed to have his money stolen. And Greg says that he tried to persuade John to take himself to a shop and buy some new camping gear, but John insisted that he didn't want to use his credit card.

[B]

So I urge him to buy this stuff because obviously we're going to be sleeping on the floor. It is beginning of October when you go through the desert. I would, I expected to be okay during the day, but obviously during the desert you healed. You hear this all the time. At night it gets super cold.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I needed him to prepare for that.

[A]

I've been camping in the desert here in Australia a few times. And you know, it's hot during the day, like T shirt weather. But then at night you can. I've woken up in the desert with a thin layer of ice over the top of my sleeping bag. Like it's. Yeah, it's freezing.

[B]

So this is a, so this, there was another, another red flag where he refused to buy the sleeping mat and sleeping bag because reasons, I guess maybe, you know, he, he got, he lost the money so he didn't want to charge his, overcharge his credit card or some something. But at the same time I'm telling him, man, you just, you just like, this is not something that you're going to do every month. This is a one time in your life situation. Like you have to be prepared for it. You have to bring certain things to it. There are essential things. And this is something that really irritated me because for him bringing a tripod or bringing this huge massive lens, this lens was so big, you know, you see those. When you see any like football games or cricket games and you see those photographers at the side of the pitch taking pictures, imagine this type of lens, it is unnecessary. The hanger is so big that whatever camera that you bring, you're going to fit all of it in there. Don't worry about it, you know. And so I was telling, I was telling him, look, John, you, sometimes in life you do need to cut some losses in order to achieve something. You need to sacrifice something else. But it just seems like I was talking to the wall when I was saying that.

[A]

Did you impress upon him just how utterly freezing cold it was going to be every single night? Because like at the end of the day it's really just about your comfort. Like do you want to be on the verge of hypothermia every time the sun goes down?

[B]

But Julian, I have to tell you this, that I, the coldness and the weather, this is something I underestimated.

[A]

Okay?

[B]

So even though this was at the back of my head, because I've never been to that situation before, I actually didn't realize how cold it's gonna get. I didn't know this.

[A]

So while Greg stocked up on water, food and just a few other extra items, John basically did the journey with whatever he'd brought in his carry on luggage. And then they organized a taxi driver to drive them out of Kiev Lauder, which is the closest city to the spaceport. And they got a cab miles out into the desert just as it was almost dark. And then the driver led them out.

[B]

We got off and we started walking through that desert. Now, as much as I am going to complain a little bit about John throughout this, because I feel like I have a reason for. I have to give him credit for one thing. And this is within maybe two hours we are on this dirt road. It's really like just. Just imagine a jeep driving through a desert. Eventually you would make this like a. A bit of a road, like very. It was actually very uncomfortable walking on that road because it was very sandy.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Walking on that desert was much more comfortable. I'm just thinking, well, comfortable in a way that, you know, your feet is not sliding when you're walking. You're not like burying your feet into the sand in that way.

[A]

Comfortable. Yeah. Soft sands are very uncomfortable to walk on.

[B]

Yeah. And at some stage I see a person with a dog in the distance. Obviously we are talking about miles away from me. So there's this like a little creature and I feel it's all dark, dressed in dark. And at that time, I genuinely didn't think that this would be like a security person or like a military person with a dog. I didn't think that. I just. I refused to think that this would be someone like this because I. For me, it was just ridiculous to think that there would be someone like in the desert.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like, why would be his security in the desert? Sure. Have a security on site, but with desert makes no sense to me.

[A]

Even if, like you were well aware of where you were, you know, you're trying to sneak into a, like a top secret Russian military installation, that's a fairly good reason why there might be a security guard in the desert.

[B]

Sure. Yeah. And we already saw a sign when we were walking in. We already saw a sign that says like this is a Russian territory or, or some sort of sign that says like, you're not supposed to be here. So the conversation with John started about that. That situation. I wanted to carry on because I was like, this is just some guy with a dog. Like, let's just walk. At least let's walk a little bit closer to see what, like, like what's gonna happen. But he insisted that we should probably deviate from the plan and move into the desert now. Obviously, because I. I planned this for so long. I knew that if we now turn into the desert, we are not going to be going towards the silo. There is a. There is this one missile silo destroyed. And that was supposed to be our first checkpoint. So now we went slightly towards the base. We got. We had to go closer to the base, because if we go to the right, we would just almost double our path. So I wasn't willing to do that. So we went. We made the risk to go closer to the base and kind of go around this silo, which unfortunately added a lot of miles to our. To our journey and a lot of hours to it. However, maybe. Maybe 15, 20 minutes later, there was a jeep driving through. Oh, wow. And it was from behind us. So it was from the. From where we got on the desert, we saw a jeep driving there, and that Jeep must have picked up that person because we have not seen that person. Afterwards.

[A]

We're going to take a quick ad break here and we'll be right back with more what it was like.

[B]

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[A]

I just want to reiterate here that this is still to this day, very much an operational facility like Russia continues to launch all of their crewed missions from this cosmodrome. So the security guards, they take their jobs pretty seriously. And Greg actually told me that he'd heard of other Urbex people getting detained and interrogated for long periods of time. Apparently also, everyone always gets their cameras confiscated along with all their photos, which means that if you're making Instagram content and you don't have any photos, that basically the whole journey becomes a complete waste of time. So Greg was really afraid of getting busted. He did, however, have one very positive thing to say about the hike.

[B]

One thing I have to tell you that I remember is that. And if you've been to the desert at night, you probably will also remember that.

[A]

Oh, the stars. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Oh, it's beautiful. I've never seen a sky like this with so many stars.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because when you live in a city, you forget.

[A]

Especially Beijing.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah, you. You totally forget. There's so many stars. So that was beautiful when we were just lying on that desert looking at. At the stars.

[A]

Because I think also the. I think humidity is really low as well. So you. So you're not looking through miles of, like, wet air. You just. It's like. Yeah, it's like you're just looking through the Hubble Space Telescope or something. It's. You can see the galaxy and, you know, it's gorgeous.

[B]

Yeah. So John would really, really struggle towards the end. We would not talk anymore, basically.

[A]

Because was there any conversation? I mean, were you guys like comparing heartbreak stories and like, sort of talking about.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I just felt towards the end I really didn't want to have a conversation anymore because it seem like every story I heard, I was having a feeling of like, who is this person? How is this going to end up?

[A]

Like, what sort of stories did he have?

[B]

So, for example, it's seemed to me that every person that he was romantically involved with, he has an active court case against that person.

[A]

Oh, that's now. Big red flag. Yeah.

[B]

And. And so I was thinking, like, he's suing everyone for something. So he was telling me how he was hiking in Grand Canyon and he was telling me some weird stories. He was telling me how he hired someone to put pictures on Instagram for him because he didn't know how to do it. And I was like, what? It was, it was weird.

[A]

Finally, after about 40km and lots of concerning stories from John, they arrived at their destination. And it was a massive hangar, an enormous structure in the middle of the desert.

[B]

Okay, so you. We are talking about a hangar that's enormous. It's one of like, it's one of the biggest structures I've ever seen in my life. It will take you a while, a long time to walk around that place. It's pitch dark. So at that time, you don't. You're not really aware of where you are or how huge this place is. It's. You just see a structure in front of you where you're walking around. Obviously it is dark, but you can still like recognize certain things, like structural things of the building. So we're walking around it and we're trying to find a way in. There was a way in. We got inside and man, you like. I had my. I didn't have a flashlight. That's so weird. I didn't have a flashlight. But obviously I didn't plan to do any exploration during night. And I definitely didn't want to risk flashing my light at night. Even though I sometimes did it with my phone flashlight just to see the ground sometimes, because after I fell on the side of that spike, it really scared me. Yeah, it really scared me. And so I would, when I was walking through that desert and then towards the hangar because we, at some stage we had to cross like two barbed wire fences and we found like a broken part of it, but you still have to like go under it, right? But I would flash a light from time to time just for one second, just to See the ground that I'm standing on, which, I know it was a bit of a risk, but I felt like it was a risk I was willing to take at that time. But man, when I got inside and you go through like this corridor and you eventually go to this hall to the main, the hangar and you look at those shuttles and you. All you have is this, a small beam of light from your phone.

[A]

Mmm.

[B]

It's this like mysterious dark thing that's in front of you that's so enormous.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

I, I know people, if, if people ever heard me before saying this, you, they probably would say, oh my God. You always say this, but I, the pictures can never tell you how huge this, this, those shuttles are until you standing right next to them, they are impossibly big. I cannot describe how huge they were. That moment, I just, it was bizarre. This moment. Yeah, I right now has like my hair is standing on my hands because it's. I just remember that moment. It was crazy. But very quickly I told myself like, stop it. Just go to the top of the floor. You haven't done it. You haven't achieved anything. I literally was telling this my, to myself, yeah, you have not achieved anything. You just got here. Because I'm that kind of explorer, I'm happy after I finish. But when I'm exploring, I'm quite serious. I'm, I'm just always on alert. My head is turning all the directions. So I still, I still knew because you see, when I was interviewing some of the Russian explorers, they would tell me how the security would sometimes come into the hangar and they would climb like three, four floors and then it would come down because obviously fly me climbing all those store stores stairs all the, all the way to the, to the, to the top. You know, most of the time the security is just lazy. They don't want to do it.

[A]

Security guards aren't paid enough to climb.

[B]

Climb to the top. Exactly, exactly. So I felt like the, the safest way is going to be go to go straight to the top, find some place to sleep. And this is what I did. John told me, you just go, I'll find you. Because obviously for him climbing those stairs, it was just. That was another achievement. I mean, I remember climbing those stairs. Almost dying climbing those stairs. It was so difficult. It was really difficult with all this bag. And after hiking for 14 hours, it's just like constantly. And it was never ending. It felt like you climbing toward to the heavens. And so at the end I put up the, the sleeping mat on the Floor. It was a concrete cold floor somewhere in some hole in some room. And I put every piece of clothing that I had on me, shoes on everything, hood on, and crawl inside that sleeping, sleeping bag that I had. And I was still shivering from cold. It was, it was crazy. Oh, what woke me up is him coming to the room. I don't know how he found me. Yeah, but, but he, he did, he woke me up and then I tried to fall asleep again. And then throughout the night, almost every half an hour I would wake up because I hear him weeping. So he was trying to fall asleep, but his body was like refusing him and he was like crying through his sleep because he was so cold.

[A]

Greg. I mean, I gotta point out it's probably pretty dangerous. Like, man, if he didn't have a mat, if he didn't have a sleeping bag, I'd suggest that his body didn't want him to sleep because he probably wouldn't have woken up.

[B]

And Julian, when we get to the end, you would understand why things happened the way it happened. Because I'm gonna tell you this obvious. Like, there was two of us that went in, but it was only me who came out. But let me carry on with the story. So obviously later on when we, I woke up in the, in the morning next day, I, I remember when I was taking like a selfie video of myself just saying my reaction to, to, to what I was seeing because I saw the shadows underneath me.

[A]

Right, you went, you went and looked out like there's a. Yeah, I went.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I went from top. Like a balcony went on this. Like a balcony. Yeah. And you look down on those shadows and the first thing that I, the first impression that I had, it was like, wait a second, there's a light on, there's electricity there. Well, like, what the hell? What I didn't realize there was a hole in the ceiling and there was a beam of light reflecting something that felt like a little light was on, on the ground. Okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I only realized that later. So I was a little bit scared at the beginning. I was pretty much super, like, anxious all the time when I was there.

[A]

Yeah, because you've been running on adrenaline.

[B]

Oh, sure. For sure.

[A]

So much adrenaline surging through your body.

[B]

But I, I, when I look back at the video that I made, the way I looked, you know, like when you see the picture of me walking into that desert and what I, how I looked when, on that, after that first day, I looked like I went through hell. Like, I looked like I aged at least Couple years and. But it was that moment, it was the best moment of my life. I. That was just purely amazing. The sense of achievement that I felt of being there to. But this, this was surreal, surreal moment because it obviously you see these things. You, you know, people, when. But now you are there, you are in the place when they are making space shuttles, and guess what? You are looking at two of them right now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's just absolutely surreal. That moment.

[A]

It feels to me. It feels to me a bit sad though. At the same time, like, when I've seen, I've seen the photos of these space shuttles and you know they're covered in bird shit. They're. They're in pretty bad condition. Like the, like the windows are all punched out. And I think about just this, the vast amounts of money that this government, that this crazy government poured into this program at a time when it's not like the Soviet Union was flush with cash at that time. Like the whole thing fell apart because they didn't have any money was one of the main reasons. And it just seems to me like such a frivolous waste of just much needed resources and just sort of, I don't know, maybe illustrative of just the insanity of much of the Soviet Union. I don't know. Like, it feels sad.

[B]

Oh, yeah. But isn't that just like so Soviet? Like, you know, in Chernobyl there is the two sides. Obviously there's a Chernobyl power plant, but there's also the, the secret radar, the, the Woodpecker, the Duga radar. But that, that radar that ultimately failed, they fail to accomplish their mission. That the, the, the money they spent on that was like three times what they spent on Chernobyl power plant.

[A]

Is that right?

[B]

Yeah. So it's, it's. That's crazy, the amount of waste that sometimes some, some of those projects just. It boggles my mind. But at the same time, I feel like with the space shuttles, it just feels so special and feels so different because it's not, it's. It's like we have two countries in the world at that time that were involved in the space program. So it's also very unique thing.

[A]

Yeah. And, and these things are designed to carry human beings into space. It's not about, it's not about taking a payload into space or it's not about putting some, some piece of communications infrastructure up in orbit. It's about exploring the universe, you know, like expanding our horizons. It's this sort of. Speaks to this bigger thing about about meaning and purpose on Earth. It's. Yeah, it's big.

[B]

They definitely did, they did plan to have obviously the astronauts in there in those space shuttles because I was, I sat down at the chair or the austronaut chair inside the space shuttle. So this is like one of the best moments of my life. This like a, you know, like a literal childhood dream come through that moment. And it's like I could not ever in the wildest dreams imagine that I would be sitting inside the space shuttle.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's nice. Like 11 year old you was, was just rejoicing. Tell me about some of like the design quirks of these things. Like what did you observe about their construction, about their, about their engineering sort of style.

[B]

So I, well, what I did is I end up climbing on top of the prototype one. You see, the thing is, that's one of my little regrets that I had is I didn't go to the one that was like 97% completed because the only way I could think of, of going inside that one would be to jump from the like a structure that was in front of it on top of the cockpit. That was my, that what I felt like that was the only way of doing it because there was no other way of climbing it. I didn't have any ropes. There was no, like, there was no ladders. I mean there were some ladders but they were huge and metal and so there was, it was physically impossible to lift them. And on top of that, you have to understand we are trying to be super quiet.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This whole place there's. I was constantly on the alert because the windows are broken inwards, which suggests that there is the winds. All this harsh environment of the desert winds blowing all this for years would destroy this building from the outside. So the glass is inside the building that birds would be trapped inside. They'd be flying, they wouldn't be able to leave. So there was so much noise going on inside this, inside this hunger. And I was constantly trying to be very quiet and not make noise because you know, if someone comes in, the first thing they would do is they would just listen if someone was there because you would know, you would really know. And we were obviously we had a whole day to explore. So everyone was tiptoeing and being very, very quiet. So for me to stand on that structure and jump on it, I just felt I'm going to create so much noise. And then on the other hand we have this prototype that it was like a metal stairs. Imagine like stairs for the plane, like the plane stairs. So it was something like that. Obviously smaller, metal. It was very close to the prototype. I managed to climb on the top of the shuttle and then go through the window. Someone smashed the window. There was a small, really small window, probably the size of the chair that you're sitting on, right up the rectangle that your bum is currently sitting on. And. But someone sm. The glass on that window was super thick. So I had no idea how those people did that. And they definitely did not care about the noise.

[A]

Why, why, why would you imagine trekking 40km in into the desert to a military installation, then vandalizing the place? Who does that?

[B]

But, yeah, but that's the thing, you know, Julian, that's the thing. Like this is exactly what I'm talking about when I'm talking to people about respecting the places. Don't take stuff from it, don't steal, don't damage the property. If you cannot find the access, then walk like there's another one. Right. So I try to promote those good values, but people sometimes feel like they want to have a souvenir or something. And in a way, it's really hard to. To judge this one. And at the same time, look, I might be saying, oh, those scumbags broke the glass. Right? And. But what is the reason I went inside the space shuttle? What the. The reason I had the experience of sitting in the astronaut's seat is because some other person smashed a window.

[A]

Okay, that's true.

[B]

It's like. Right, so it's like I am. Would be a bit of a. Yeah. How do you dodge. How do you judge that?

[A]

Greg and John spent the whole day tiptoeing around the hangar, taking photos and generally trying to kill time before it got dark again because they weren't actually done yet. About a kilometer away was a second hangar which contained a rocket. As in the first hangar that had the spaceships, but the second hangar had the delivery system, the rocket, which was designed to carry the shuttle up into space. And Greg wanted to see the rocket, but he knew that they couldn't leave until it was dark.

[B]

We waited probably until midnight. I did some sleeping. I tried to do that. And then we crossing. We got into the next building. Now the rocket building. There's actually two buildings. So there's a. There's a very like a tall vertical rocket building, but there is another building adjacent to it. They are connected. So when we got through the window again through the window to that place, this is where it was really tricky to find the rocket. There was. We would go to many, many different places, corridors, rooms, and there was just a dead end everywhere. And at some point I was thinking that this is impossible. It's. You know. You know, I tried, but it's impossible. And then I saw there was a tunnel in the ground. Like, it was like. It was like the floor was missing. A part of the floor was missing. And when you jump into that tunnel, there was those, like, metal spikes on each side of the wall. And I shine my light on this, on this tunnel, and I was like, surely this cannot be it. Like, no way. This is a bit. But then at the same time, like, you obviously, like, you have to try everything. So I left my bag, I told John to wait, and I crawl through that. And very quickly afterwards, you just cross it, and then. And you enter the hole with the rocket. And so I just quickly came back. I was like, I passed past the pasta, past the bag, and then we went through that. Yeah. So we had to crawl through that tunnel. And then we got to this hangar. Oh, my God, the rocket we're talking about, like, this is like a building. This is like a skyscraper. The size of that thing.

[A]

Yeah, it's.

[B]

It's enormous. But this time around, I had no willingness to climb to the top floor. I just couldn't. So I think we climbed to the third floor and found a little space behind. Sorry, under the stairs. There was like a bit of a space there. And we just. I just put my mat and. And my sleeping bag. Then I. And try to go to sleep. This is where John asked me if he can take my sleeping. Sleeping mat.

[A]

Yeah. This was. This was always going to come up, I think, because you're the schmuck who's highly organized and you planned this out, and you're sleeping in relative luxury every night, and he's sleeping on hard ground. So of course, of course, invariably at some point, he's going to be like, oh, oh, buddy, can I. Can I have a turn of your mattress?

[B]

So there were a few moments that John put me in, like, impossible situations, and I really. I was really thinking, like, why. Why are you doing this to me? This was really difficult situation because obviously, like, I. I feel for the guy. Like, I, Like, I'm not a psychopath. Like, I know that he's suffering.

[A]

I feel. I feel for the guy. I mean, that's me. I'm. I'm often John in life, and I. And I really feel for him, you know, and it sounds like you're. It sounds like you're never John. It sounds like you're really good at thinking ahead and you know, like. But sometimes you just find yourself being John.

[B]

You know, I, I am this kind of person that I would organize things. I would always, like I remember living in London, whenever I go out, I would always know, like, what's the, what's the time of the last metro? Like, I would have that information before I go. I don't know, it's just like the person I am, I would maybe sometimes be like too much when it comes to that, but I just, you know, like, but at the same time, like, Julian, like, this is not something I'm gonna do every year, right? Like, this is something I potentially will never ever do again. Even though I would love to return. I, I planned this for so long. And on top of that, like, you know, you don't want to say, like, I told you so, but at the same time, like, I did tell you.

[A]

Like, I suspect that you did tell him I told you so. I suspect he did.

[B]

Yeah, it came out like, it came out because, because, you know, all of a sudden I have to find excuse.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To tell him no. Like I said to tell him so.

[A]

He, he asked and you said no.

[B]

Yeah. And it's, it's like, it's, it's really. I, I really don't know how to feel about this because at some, at one point I feel like it was that a shitty thing to do. But at the other time, the other thing, I think to myself, like, look, one, okay, we went here together, but it's not like this is like a person that I. He's my friend that I know that we had some history that like, I care about. Of course I care about, but it's not the same level. Right. And also it's like we are two strangers in that situation and both of us should prepare for this. And why do I get. Why should I be punished because I prepared and he didn't.

[A]

And also that's fair enough. You know, I think it's fair enough. I mean, like you, in a, In a parallel universe, you might as, you might have left as friends, you might have walked out of that desert as best buddies. But, you know, it was like, it's pretty annoying that he, he found himself in this situation or he put himself in this situation because he was too much of a tight ass to buy a new mattress and a new sleeping bag. That's annoying.

[B]

But you see, you know, like, when you make friends, I like, it's pretty straightforward how people, Some people connect, but there are some people that for whatever Reason like, you're just not gonna be friends. It's not gonna work out. I had that feeling from like few hours into that desert. I knew it, I knew it's not gonna work out.

[A]

The next day they woke up and John had somehow survived another freezing cold night without a sleeping bag. And they got to work photographing the rocket. And if you go to Greg's Instagram, you'll see these photos and yeah, it just looks like an enormous, very classic rocket with a nose cone at the top and maybe some tail fins down the bottom. Like, it's obviously amazing. But Greg couldn't help but notice that John had started limping Somehow through all this process, John had injured his knee, which was a problem. Of course it was a problem for John but you know, it was really a problem for both of them because they had a huge distance to hike to get back. But John refused to admit that he was in pain. So the two of them waited until it was dark and then they set off again into the night.

[B]

And we waiting and waiting and waiting basically for the darkness. And I think after eight, after eight or nine, we decided to go and yeah, this is where things start to get a bit tricky because when we reached the hunger, the one we were previous day, he wanted to have a break. I'm like, dude, we, we are still on site. Like let's have a first break when we leave the site, when we cross the barbed wire fence and we, we are in the desert and this is where I notice how slow he was walking. And, and I just genuinely didn't know how this is going to work out. One other thing I have to mention is in that rocket hangar I found a thermal blanket. They were like, they look like silver type of things, you know, I know the ones. Yeah, yeah. And so I would. It was either one and I ripped it or it was two. I think there was two of them. I wrapped them around my arms and then I put the, my, my hoodie over them. And the reason for it is because I felt this will keep me warm.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so the reason I mentioned this is because when I'm walking, when I'm walking then through the desert on my way back, I'm making this sound. Sh, sh, sh. That's all I'm hearing because of those, of those things at the same time I would turn around and John would stop, but he wouldn't tell me. He would just stop and not. And I, so then I go back a little bit to him sitting on the ground and I tell him, man, you have to tell me that you want to take a break, and then we will take a break because, you know, it's getting dark. It was still. We were in the desert. It was still. It was dark, but it wasn't like I couldn't see him, right. So I just. I would frequently just turn around just to see where he was. I was a little bit ahead of him, and he would stop and stop and stop. And the amount of time he was stopping, the frequency started to increase and the distance were getting shorter and shorter. And eventually it was like every 600 meters he was stopping.

[A]

He's getting tired. And like, walking on that knee must be really painful.

[B]

Yeah. But the thing is one big thing that I was scared of, and this is when I'm Take a. I'm gonna take a round, take you around to what you said about sleeping in the desert, how cold it gets. Originally, when I was going in, we started at noon during the day. So even though it was cold, it was not that cold. But now we are starting at night, and, man, it was so cold. It was super cold.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

And when. And when I'm walking, that's where I'm generating heat and I am keeping myself warm by walking. So I wasn't like, very keen of having. Or stopping. And also, you know, I'm tired. I, like, I didn't want to, like, sit down or fall asleep in that desert during night because I was. I was just afraid I'm gonna freeze to death there. Like, I genuinely was so cold. And on top of that, when you walk, you generate that heat, but you also generate a little bit of a sweat. And then when you stop the cold weather and the sweat, it just. It. It's. It. You're gonna. You're gonna be ill. You. This. This is really dangerous. So I just kept telling him, man, we, like, we have to go, we have to go. And I just had a feeling. I mean, in retrospect later on, I'm saying that I had a feeling that he had a plan for himself. And that plan didn't. Didn't include me. He started telling me that I should leave him. And this was another moment where I was like, dude, are you. Are you. Are you for real? We. That was the last thing I wanted. We went here. I told him, like, we. We gone here. We went in together, we're gonna come back together. Like, no way. Even though I knew, like, you know, we. I'm not gonna be his friend, whatever. We're not gonna be chatting every day, but, you know, I'm not gonna leave the guy behind. And now it starts to get darker and darker and it gets to the point where when he stops it now, I don't. Like, I really. It was couple times where I had to really go back and try to find him because I couldn't see him.

[A]

That's concerning. So. So he'd stopped, got left behind, and now you couldn't see him.

[B]

Yeah. And on top of that, look, I'm like, we are. The base is still on our right. The floodlights from the gate, from the base, they carry. The light carries in the desert. So what I mean is, like, it still feels like you are so close. So. Because it's funny, like, when you. When we walk in, at some point we saw the hangar, this really tall hanger, this rocket hangar. So we were like, so happy that it's there, but it was still, like, we were still walking for like seven hours before we reached there. So it. It feels like it's there, but the distance is so misleading. So all of a sudden I'm in this desert, it's dark. I cannot just shout and say, john, John, where are you? Because, like, I'm not gonna attract attention to myself. I've just achieved this thing. I want to get home. I want to, you know, edit those pictures. Have those pictures, right?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

And. And then Julian, like, at some stage, unfortunately, I turned around and he wasn't there. And I couldn't find him.

[A]

Wait, he wasn't there? He disappeared?

[B]

I couldn't find him.

[A]

So what happened?

[B]

And. And it was crazy. I. Because I. I just. I was so angry. I was so angry because I was like, what is this guy doing? How can this guy do this to me? And I was also afraid a little bit, because I was afraid first that something's gonna happen to him.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then also I was afraid, I.

[A]

Mean, like, he might have just fallen down one of those, like, pits with the spikes in it that you were talking about earlier.

[B]

Yeah, I. I just. I really. And oh, my God, like, we. I found so many, like, trenches. There were like, rail tracks on one point, but the rail tracks, to get to them, there was like a trench on one on each side of it. And then, like, fell into it, and then I had to climb out. And it's all darkness, so you don't know what you're falling on.

[A]

So this desert just. Just so I understand, this desert's just full of the wreckage of, like, multiple decades of, like, failed, I don't know, spaceship launches and just military shit. Yeah.

[B]

Yes, yes. Yes. There's so many different types of debris there. And. Yeah. So at. At one point, I am walking, hearing the sound, I turn around and just. He wasn't there. And I spent about five minutes trying to find him. I was going back, but at the same time, like, what direction do I go? You know, I just knew that I couldn't go to, like, towards the base, but the other direction. Like, where do I go? And I walked and I tried to find him, and I just couldn't find him. And at that time, I had no choice. I just. I had no choice. Like, what do I do? I just. I need to go. I need to go back.

[A]

Had you pretty much accepted. I mean, like, if it was me in that situation, I'd probably just assume he was dead. I'd be like, you know what? Like, I'm not gonna find him, and he's definitely gonna die of hypothermia out in this desert by himself. So I guess if it was me, I'd have had to have just come to terms with the fact that I was walking out on a dead man.

[B]

But it's. I was so angry because, you see, the thing is, I talked to him about this particular situation maybe three or four times, and I actually once took my phone out and I secretly recorded this conversation because I was. I was. I was actually afraid that this is gonna happen because I always kind of. I kind of almost saw this happening. Because you, like, the. I walk, I turn around, and he is. He's not moving. He's rest. And he doesn't tell me. But this happened, like, seven times, Julian.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Seven, eight times.

[A]

So insurance policy, like.

[B]

Yeah. And also this guy sues everyone.

[A]

Oh, yeah, Right, right. That is really tejas I'm having.

[B]

I am an. I am. Like, I always overthink. I. Everyone tell. Everyone tells me this. I always have so many different things going on in my head, so. But all this is happening in my head, so I. I just. Like, dude, like, it was really frustrating, and it made me super angry. But guess what? 14 hours it took to walk to the shuttles. 8 hours it took for me to go back.

[A]

Really? Because. So after you got rid of him, you were just much faster.

[B]

Yeah, because I was. I was now just by myself, and I was just walking because there was no one. Because I didn't do any breaks. I didn't stop.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

And actually, because, like, one. I didn't. I didn't know what happened to him. I didn't know if he got caught. I didn't Know what's gonna. Like I just, I didn't know. All I knew that I just needed to get out of this bloody desert.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And get to my hotel now. This is the only time in my life where I had. I feel like, because this is the only way I can describe this, that I had hallucinations.

[A]

What do you mean?

[B]

So there were, There were few moments in the desert. I would say there were three moments in that desert on my way back that was for me super scary. First was I heard those wild dogs or coyotes or wolves in the background in somewhere there in the distance. I heard them like barking, wooing wherever. I just. Whatever they do, I heard them. So that was. That was really tricky because, like, I don't know anything about that. I don't know if they would attack you or like, I don't know how they react. So if I was walking there and they were close to me, like, would they see me as like a potential supper? I don't know. So that was really scary. And I was trying to move fast because I heard them. Second thing was I ultimately got to one of those dirt roads that I planned to go originally and I had two phones with me. I put one of my phones on my. On my tummy and I put a strap from the bag so the phone was like inside it. And because now I was. I was super fast. I was walking really fast. I felt like it. I would. This phone would serve me as my light. It was basically my really shitty phone with like a really tiny beam that was. That was shining kind of like towards my legs so I could at least see where I'm going. Because again, like, you know, I. Like I told you before, it's dangerous there. I didn't want to get hurt. At some point, I hear a bit of a noise behind me. I turn around and I see two lights. Two lights. Car. Like a. From a car. There is a car behind me in the distance.

[A]

Like how far? And I'm like talking like kilometers.

[B]

It's far. It's. It's far. It's definitely far. But you know, the lights, you would see the lights because two beams, right?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

And then I put my hand, covered the light, put my hand on my stomach, cover the light and just threw myself. Threw myself to a ditch on the side of the road.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And I'm in like these bushes. There's like a bit of a bush there. And I'm. I'm there lying there, praying that they won't see me. The end, the car, the jeep just Drove by me.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And you're lucky. That was. That was anything. I will return to this because I feel like I know who those people were and what happened, but I will return to that. And the third thing that was. This is where I come into the hallucination.

[A]

I.

[B]

At some stage, when I saw this cafe building in the distance, I knew because that was the only building in the horizon. So I knew if I saw a building, I knew that I'm getting towards the highway. This is where I hiked from originally. So I saw this building. When I saw this building, I was like, so happy. And I was like, okay, now I'm getting closer to the end. And I feel like maybe a kilometer from that highway. This is gonna sound really strange, but there was. I saw a beam of light above me, like a ufo. And I was convinced it was chasing me. And at that time, at that time, I had so many blisters on my. On my feet. It hurts so much because I was. I was too crazy. I was walking way too fast. I. I just really, really wanted to get out of that situation because there was so many things that happened. Not just the fact of achieving this thing of getting there, but also with this guy. So I just really needed to be. Oh, I needed this to be over. So I was. I was just. I was just. Just lagging it. And at that time, when I saw that beam of light, I turned around. I see this being. I was like. Like, I. I panicked. I was like, what is happening here? And I started running with this bag, I. I run. Obviously, if you see me, it's probably what you wouldn't call this run. It was just like me trying, kind of going faster than. Than. Than the walk. But it was crazy. That last kilometer, I felt like I left my soul in that desert. And then it was about. It must have been somewhere like 4:00am, 3:00am in the morning. I crossed that highway and there's a bunch of trucks parked. So like I said, this. This cafe, I felt. I. I was told it was. It would be open 24 hours, but it wasn't. I'm banging on the door. No one's opens. And it's so cold. So I see cars. Parks and park. The car parks in front of it. And I literally would go to the cars. The. I felt the heat radiating from the car from the inside. The guy opened the window and the wave, the heat wave that hit me, it was so comforting. It was like. It was. I felt. It was just. Oh, my God, it's so beautiful. It just felt so nice.

[A]

You must have been so cold.

[B]

Oh. And I'm trying to communicate with the person using like the, you know, finally have a signal so I can use the Google Translate. And I realized the person that was helping me, I had like English to Russian because I was in the impression they speak Russian there in Kazakhstan. But this person like he changed it to Uzbeki. So this was a guy from Uzbekistan. I was probably like driving home and he, I tried to tell him like I actually asked him if I can stay in his car but he, he didn't let me. And then I was, I just told him some story how I got lost basically and, but then nothing happened. I went and just. I was sitting on the stairs in front of this cafe praying the time would go faster and it would be like 7 or wherever the time they opened. But at some, some stage, I think like half an hour later this guy came out of his car and he went to like the side gate of this cafe and start banging on that gate. And the owner came out and when the owner came out I just went to the guy and explained that I was lost, blah, blah, blah. And can he give me, can he please give me like just one room? I can sleep on the floor, whatever. I just like so in somewhere indoors that I can just sleep and I wake up at whatever time, like 8:00am, 7:00am and I'll just leave and you know, you won't see me again. And this guy gave me this room. He. It was just so basic. It was just like wooden bed there and it was the first time in three days I took my shoes off, felt amazing. And I went on this bed, the bed was so soft and I had this blanket, this like old fashioned blanket and just fell asleep. Instantly I was out.

[A]

Now I've seen photos of Greg's accommodation that night and I gotta say it, it wasn't luxurious. But he says he slept like the dead. And then he woke up to experience the full gravity of John's disappearance. He says he tried calling John and the phone would ring out. So he just did what anyone would do with 100,000 followers. And he posted a message on Instagram with John's phone number and asked if anyone had heard from him.

[B]

You know, what happened?

[A]

What happened?

[B]

My ex girlfriend contacted me. My ex girlfriend, the one I broke up with just before this trip and she told me that she contacted him and he said to her that he was, he got caught. I believe that he was in that Jeep in the way. Yes, that's what I believe. No way.

[A]

Okay, so hold on. So he, he deliberately got caught? Like that was his plan. That was his ex.

[B]

That was his plan. Yeah, there was. Because he could not walk back anymore. So his only way to get caught to, to, to leave this desert alive was to get caught. And, and I have absolutely no idea how this happened, like how he got caught. But if he started screaming, flashing light, I have no idea because I have never spoken to him since.

[A]

Why not? You haven't been tempted to just hit him up and be like, hey, John, remember that, that thing that we did?

[B]

I did, I did. Yeah, I did.

[A]

And he didn't write back.

[B]

Yeah, that's, that's really, that's really it. There was one moment, like extra moment that I. It's, it's really sad because obviously when we were planning this, we were flying to Kazakhstan. I already had tickets. He had to buy the tickets. Right. So we were not flying, obviously at the same time, but we were planning to leave at the same time. Especially when we bought the flight tickets from Almaty to Kazakhst to Kiziloda, we bought the return tickets. So we were flying to that city together and we were supposed to fly back on the same flight. And yeah, he saw me at the airport.

[A]

I know. And you guys didn't.

[B]

But I was just.

[A]

Didn't wave nothing.

[B]

I was just like. I was just a stranger to him. I was just a stranger. Yeah, that was really sad. But I was happy that he was alive. I was happy that he was able to leave.

[A]

So John didn't die, which is great news, obviously. And although he was atrociously ill prepared and you know, pretty average company a lot of the time, Greg says that he's actually really glad that he didn't try to do this journey alone.

[B]

I mean, at least there was someone to talk to and I probably would be really freaking out. And also that very first moment when we got off that dirt road into the desert, if I was there by myself, I was wondering if I would do that or not, or if I would carry on walking on that desert. And then 40 minutes later there was that jeep.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. You'd have been busted. You needed him.

[B]

I would have been busted right away. Yeah. So it feels that way. I feel grateful that I did this with him.

[A]

And it feels to me like the top line story here is that it's about your adventure into Kazakhstan to visit these abandoned space shuttles, but really it's also a story about a friendship that wasn't. It's about how you went in with this guy and you guys, there's a bit of friction the whole way through, and then you're left alone. I mean, that's. That's really the subtext here. What? Yeah, it's sad when you look back at the whole thing.

[B]

What's.

[A]

What's your sort of. You know, what do you think you learned?

[B]

Oh, when you. When you try to do. Because when we go exploring, certain places we call missions. Right. So when you do a mission, and I already have a new one, that there's a spot I would like to do, but if I am going to do this place, I will do this with someone who is an urban explorer, who's been around, who I know more than five days. Basically, that's the biggest lesson I've learned from this, that certain things, you just need to be a little bit more careful and plan more carefully than that.

[A]

Yeah, I think it'd be the same lesson. If you decided you wanted to do Everest or K2, or if you wanted to do the. The Appalachian Trail or any sort of long, arduous hike, you'd probably want to veto your. Your friend a bit.

[B]

Oh, sure. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. I don't think I would do those things.

[A]

I mean, they're different, you know, I.

[B]

Oh, no, I know. I know.

[A]

The through line. The through line is H. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. I. Don't you see the. The high. I'm not like a massive hiker, but, yeah, I recently did a hike to the abandoned part of Great Wall, through the mountains. Hike through the mountains. That was. Wow. Yeah, that was hard. But the end result is what you. What you go for. You know, that's the thing that people see on Instagram. They fee. They see that last five minutes of this whole day. And it's funny how people always ask me, like, oh, I would love to go with you. And like, really? Like, are you sure? Because I don't think you would really want to go through what I go through to get that last picture. Because it's not glamorous. It's definitely not.

[A]

Yeah, totally. Greg, we're gonna have to wrap it up in a moment, I guess, really. One last question. And that is I know that you've got a book. Tell us about your book.

[B]

Oh, nice. Yes. So I am a busy man, obviously. I've been to so many places, and because of COVID obviously, I. My travel was restrict. Restricted just to China. I found myself just exploring all over this country, almost every single province in here. And. And yeah. And I decided, you know what? How about I do a book called Abandoned China and. Yeah. So that's where I decided to compile the stories of those places. So I divided the book into three parts and first part that's out now, the book one is about the rocket, the abundant space rocket here that I found in China. Very lucky. And power plants, factories, planes, trains, ships.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Bicycle graveyard and car graveyards. That's going to be the first one.

[A]

So it's heavy industry.

[B]

Yeah. Wheels. A lot of wheels.

[A]

A lot of wheels. That's. Yeah, right, right. That's. That's really the through line. What's. Where can people find this book?

[B]

I think the easiest way would be to go on gregabanda.com and just follow the links for the Abandoned China book and then people can get it there. I think that'll be also easy. Yeah.

[A]

And of course, people can follow you @gregabandoned on Instagram.

[B]

Yeah. If you want. You can do that. Yeah.

[A]

As an avid follower, I'd recommend it. I've enjoyed following you for a while and I've enjoyed our conversation here today.

[B]

Thank you. Likewise.

[A]

Yeah, thanks so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure.

[B]

Thank you for inviting me and yeah, you've been very kind to me, so thank you so much.

[A]

If you've enjoyed today's episode and you're thinking you've got a story that could work for what it was like, then please hit me up. I love to hear from people. I am morgansjulian on Twitter and ulianmorgans on Instagram. Today's episode was produced by Rachel Tuffery. It was edited and mixed by Jimmy Saunders, who also did our theme music. Our cover art is by Naomi Lee Beveridge. And this whole thing has been a super real production. AI is transforming customer service. It's real and it works. And with fin, we've built the number one AI agent for customer service. We're seeing lots of cases where it's solving up to 90% of real queries for real businesses. This includes the real world, complex stuff like issuing a refund or canceling an order. And we also see it when FIN goes up against competitors. It's top of all the performance benchmarks, top of the G2 leaderboard. And if you're not happy, we'll refund you up to a million dollars, which I think says it all. Check it out for yourself at fin.

[B]

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