We were all congregating in a stuffy salon of a private jet, waiting for our flight back to Moscow. Andre Leon Talley was visibly upset. He’d just gotten the news – despite all of the negotiations, the Russian authorities would not grant him a visa extension. Russia was not a free country after all!

Yet, if it were up to him, ALT would have stayed here for at least another two weeks.

Silently we fastened our seat belts, while Andre was telling us that he was lonely, unloved and uncared for in this strange land and we were doing nothing to help him through this difficult situation. Unaware of our small Greek tragedy, the plane began to roll without warning, rapidly gaining speed on the decrepit runway of Novgorod airport.The rattling and shaking increased quickly and dramatically and so did the volume and the tone of Andre’s delivery.Compensating for the roar of the airplane’s engines, ALT began to shout at the top of his lungs. His wrath and the violent shaking of the airplane felt apocalyptic. I began to fear that we were going to crash.

On our first visit, Havana greeted us with her impossible August heat and gorgeous balmy nights. Everywhere, young men and women drank rum, sang songs and flirted under a canopy of chestnut trees. As we walked through the unlit boulevards of the Old City, it felt like pure romantic Latin American heaven. Strangely, it reminded me of some place I’d been before. Only as we approached the port and saw the lights of anchored ships, it dawned on me that the place was Odessa - Ukrainian city on the Black Sea, where I’ve spent many summers of my childhood. The sound of breaking waves, the humidity, Spanish and French architecture, dusty boulevards lined with chestnut trees - well, Havana was Odessa, in every sense, but multiplied by a hundred.

In Nicaragua, the process of initial submersion took a rather short time. From day one the country’s raw beauty and intensity were jumping at me from every corner, breaking through the mildly colorful, “ready for international tourism” surface. On our fourth day in Granada, at around 4:30 in the morning, we were awakened by the most cacophonous religious procession. First, the sound of a multitude of horns, each carrying a different pitch, seeped into my dream, quickly turning it into a nightmare.

Eventually, roused from the depths of my subconscious I cursed the Catholic zealots and began to grasp how the sound of horns could destroy the walls of biblical Jericho. These frightful sounds made me laugh, they made me cry, and finally made me get the hell out of bed and run outside with camera in hand.

For many years I’ve heard about “Miss Exotic World Pageant”, known in the industry as the “Striptease Olympics” attended by divas and devotees of classic Burlesque spectacle. Taking place on a former goat farm, 150 miles from Los Angeles this festival was always as close to me as the nearest mirage on the desert highway. This year, my friend, an ex-stripper herself, insisted that we should go out there, promising me an opportunity for great images.

Music blasting out of the windows of our car we were speeding down Rout 66, towards distant Helendale. The temperature was rapidly rising as we were driving further and further from Los Angeles and deeper into Mojave Desert. We began seeing mirages rising above smoldering asphalt, fewer cars and more Police Cruisers. Soon enough, on a desolate stretch of the road we’ve noticed a group of raggedy looking Hells Angeles stopped by the Highway Patrol. Then another group, driving side by side, engulfed in thunderous music of their devilish engines. We were in no men’s land and the kingdom of the motorcycle gypsies.

It took us more than three hours of map surfing and chaotic driving to find Helendale and the Exotic World - Museum of Burlesque and Striptease Hall of Fame. Why in Helendale, in the middle of the desert? As I found out later, sixty-year-old Dixie Evans, the museum’s curator and a famous stripper in the past, had retired to the Mojave where she began collecting the memorabilia of burlesque.