August 4 6.15 am train to Ulaanbaatar. The entire train is Russian, except for one Mongolian carriage built sometimes in 1960s, which is of course the carriage they booked all the foreign tourists in. I get the logic. It’s cheaper and faster to fly, so basically only crazy foreigners think it’s a somewhat romantic idea … More 42 – Trans-mongolian Railway
July 30 There is nothing much to do in Irkutsk, so I decide for a day trip to Listvyanka, which is supposed to be pretty, and I want to take the journey back to town on a ferry via Angara river. Well, that’s the plan, at least. On the way to the northern shore of … More 41 – Buryat Republic
Who is Sylvain Tesson, you may ask? Mr. Tesson is a (very good-looking, by the way) french traveller-journalist who took part in all sorts of crazy projects, from cycling around the world, crossing Himalaya on foot, walking from Yakutsk to Calcutta (following the alleged tracks of Slawomir Rawicz) to living for 6 months alone in … More 40 – Understanding Sylvain Tesson (the mighty Lake Baikal)
Which is more or less what Krasnoyarsk means in Russian July 22 I am impressed by how punctual the Russian long distance trains are. I arrive to Krasnoyarsk in the morning and go straight to my hotel. First emergency: find a washing machine. Almost all of my clothes are either wet from rafting or filthy … More 39 – The red banks of Yenisey
SO, now I experienced Russian domestic airlines. I will not joke about clapping on arrival, because, well, people on any Ryanair flight from Stansted do all sorts of silly things, including clapping. I am obviously joking. A little bit. However, what you normally don’t see on european flights are children with unfasten seatbelts during landing … More 38 – Transsib, finally
Back after 10 days of being wonderfully unaware of the outside world. I kept a hand written diary (something I managed to avoid when I was a teenager, and it’s a bloody hard work). I have 6 hours to kill at tiny Gorno-Altajsk airport, so here it is: July 11 The morning starts well. I … More 37 – Trekking the Altai and rafting the river Katun
11 July – 3 am. I am jet lagged and I cannot sleep. Having slept for most of the day probably hasn’t improved my current state, either. Night flight from Moscow got me to Barnaul at 7 am yesterday morning exhausted. The flight was ok, Siberian Airlines provide better service than British Airways have been … More 36 – Short update from Siberia
July 7 – I am going to lose so much weight just by carrying my backpack around. I reduced and reduced the amount of stuff I packed to the indispensable minimum, and still the 500m walk from the bus stop to my hotel in St. Petersburg nearly killed me. I also discovered that Moskovskaya station … More 35 – St. Petersburg. The Venice of the North
So it all begins – as any journey should, and as most important things in life do – with a massive hangover. I grow older but no wiser, or else I would have by now stopped randomnly mixing wine, beer and spirits, not necessarily in this order. And just to make things better, I just … More 34 – Dimmi, ragazza sola, dove vai?
It’s been a couple of weeks since I came back from my last (for a while) european holiday. Sorry about taking it slowly to report, I’ve had over 200 photos to go through (and I even managed not to take as many as I normally do). I am about to travel the world and the … More 32 – Southern State of Mind
Kacenka on the road 