What Happened?

To the fellow travellers, photographers, and friends of Alphatraveller,

For over ten years, this site was more than a collection of pages. It was a map of moments. A gallery of gear, a diary of distances covered, a testament to the light caught through countless lenses and the vistas that left me breathless. It grew, organically and passionately, into an archive that held a significant piece of my life and work.

It is with a heavy heart that I share this: the Alphatraveller you knew is gone.

The immense, living database—tens of gigabytes of images, reviews, and meticulously curated memories—has been lost. The very size that was a mark of its richness became its undoing, making reliable backups impossible. A sudden SSD failure sealed that chapter irrevocably. The images, the visual soul of those journeys and gear tests, are lost.

The feeling is of a quiet room where there was once a lively conversation. There is sadness, and there is grief for the digital artifact that held so much meaning.

But a traveller knows that even the most profound endings are followed by new paths.

I am building again. From the ground up. The articles, the words, the essence remain with me. And now, armed with new tools and hard-learned lessons, I am shaping a new home for Alphatraveller.

This new iteration will be leaner, resilient, and free from the complexities that led to the fall. It will be a databaseless, simple structure that can be safeguarded with a mere copy. New AI tools are helping me reconstruct and reimagine. It will not be a replica; it cannot be. It will be something new, carrying forward the same spirit of discovery, technical curiosity, and the sheer joy of the journey, perhaps with even more to offer.

The first signpost on this new road is here: The New Alphatraveller Gallery!

It is a humble beginning. The walls are still bare in many places. But it is built, it is stable, and it is ready to be filled. It represents the core idea: to share the view, simply and enduringly.

This is not a full return. It is a rebirth. The past is mourned, but the future is being packed for, frame by frame, article by article.

Thank you for being part of this journey for so long. Your readership and camaraderie gave the old site its purpose. I hope you’ll join me as I point the lens forward once more.

The road ahead is waiting.

With hope and a renewed shutter click,

The Alphatraveller, Paul Elisarov.