17 September 2013 – Ulaanbaator, Mongolia
We climbed one steep hill to enjoy (and bring you!) the panorama of UB.
We climbed one steep hill to enjoy (and bring you!) the panorama of UB.
Founded: 1723 Pop: 1.4 million Other names: Sverdlovsk Yekaterinburg Train Station We had just 6 hours in Yekaterinburg, which wasn’t a great deal — but enough to see memorials to the town’s somber history. Russia’s last tsar and his family were shot and then bayoneted to death in Yekaterinburg in July of 1918. The building…
Founded: 1005 Pop: 1.1 million Gleaming Kazan train station. We were most impressed with Kazan from the moment the train pulled into the station. Clean, modern, even slick. Beautiful city, colorful, interesting people (and many of them). Budget friendly too – we paid only 100 rubles for bag storage at the train station, whereas in…
Back to the city, back to wifi, warm showers and comfortable beds, back to civilization, back to UlaanBaator.
Founded: 1221 by Grand Duke Yuri II Pop: 1.2 million Other names: Gorky Monument to NN founder Yuri Vsevoldovich and his teacher Simon We took high speed train – Sapsan – from Moscow, which got us there in just 4 hours. Fun fact: St Petersburg is the same distance from Moscow as Nizhniy Novgorod, but…
Greetings from the steppe and a tour of a Mongolian ger!
Our last day in Russia – spent in Ulan Ude. We saw the city, visited Russia’s center of Buddhism, and of course caught up with internet work and blogging before taking off for Mongolian steppes!
Day two on the island of Olkhon, where we enjoyed an incredibly scenic hike around Southern part of the island.
Day one on the island of Olkhon, where we went to explore the northern part of the island and learn some of the many legends of the Buryat people.
We make a pit stop on a train station somewhere in Siberia, between Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, Russia.