Russia
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3 July 2014 – Moscow, Russia
A nice view there, eh? Sergey’s aunt and uncle flat in Moscow.
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2 July 2014 – St. Petersburg, Russia
Back to the motherland for us — we flew via St Petersburg and got to spend a couple of exciting hours exploring the city with our new friend that we met in Georgia, actually. Here we are (sans the friend at that point) on the tram.
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9 June 2014 – Tusheti, Georgia
First Tusheti hike turned out pretty ambitious. We walked most of the day, exploring some tiny village which boasted a population of 3 inhabitants and ten times as many houses. We also came across plenty of hungry sheepdogs vociferously guarding their charges, as well as, masked horsemen. We later learned that Caucasus tradition of stealing
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4 June 2014 – En route to Moscow, Russia
Flying over fascinating bits of the globe — Himalayas, Afghanistan, and the Aral Sea on our way from Hanoi to Moscow. Cheers!
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Month 9 Roundup
These 9 months of travel have been an incredible learning experience. We’ve seen a lot of good bits: spectacular nature, beautiful people and fascinating cultures. Part of the trip though has been seeing first hand the utter devastation that we as humans are capable of. It has been painful, challenging, and thought-provoking.
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Ulan Ude – Transsiberian stop #6
Founded: 1735 Pop: 404,000 Other names: Udinskoye, Verkhniy Udinsk Our last stop in Russia was in Ulan Ude, the capital of Buryat Republic. Ulan Ude is famous for two things: the largest head of Lenin is the world and being the center of Buddhism in Russia. Giant Lenin head in downtown Ulan Ude, Russia. Apparently,
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Lake Baikal, Olkhon Island
Rolling hills of the Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal, Russia. How many times can you say beautiful, stunning, amazing, vast, breathtaking etc, etc? Doesn’t matter, because it won’t capture the feeling of it all. Island of Olkhon is the largest island in Lake Baikal, and it – along with the Lake (or Sea, as most
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Irkutsk – Transsiberian stop #5
Founded: 1652 Population: 588,000 House Museum of Volkonsky noble family exiled to Siberia after a failed Decembrist revolution. Irkutsk, Russia. Irkutsk was the most anticipated stop on the whole journey for us because of the much celebrated Russian lake Baikal – the world’s largest reserve of fresh water, as well as, the deepest lake in
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Sviyazhsk, Russia
Founded: 1550 by Ivan the terrible, as a military fortress-town on an island to conquer Kazan’. Pop: 250 With two days allocated for Kazan exploration, we spent first exploring city portion of Kazan. On the second, we decided to venture into countryside. The idea evolved from our desire to take Volga river cruise, which was
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Month 1 Roundup
We have some differences over what to consider the official start day of our trip. When someone asks – how long have you been traveling, Sergey announces that we have been on the road since 3 August, which is when we moved out of www.victorianinbloom.com in DC and became homeless; for Jenia, the trip started
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Krasnoyarsk – Transsiberian stop #4
Founded: 1628 Pop: 974,000 Train station in Krasnoyarsk We rolled into Krasnoyarsk at 7:30 am local time / 3:30 am Moscow time. In just 6 days we conquered 4 time zones. Luckily train is conducive to sleeping so the jetlag was hardly noticeable. Notable fact: we shelled out the big bucks for our 34-hour ride
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Yekaterinburg – Transsiberian stop #3
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