Ulan-Ude: Russia but not quite Russia

October 27, 2019October 24, 2019 / viabackpack / 1 Comment

✍️: Erin 📸: Jan & Erin

Ulan-Ude immediately feels different when we arrive at 5 a.m. on an overnight train. Our cab driver is cheery, talkative and doesn’t drive 100 mph. There are Buddhist statutes, the first religious symbols I’ve seen in Russia that aren’t Orthodox Christian. And the racial makeup is much more Asian that anywhere else we’ve been, save for the giant Lenin head statue in the town square.

But the biggest surprise: Getting a personal tour of Ulan-Ude’s beautiful opera and ballet theater, which recently underwent a meticulous six-year renovation. We even meet a couple performers, including … the prima ballerina! OMG, I MIGHT DIE!

Irkutsk: The history-filled “Paris of Siberia”

October 24, 2019October 22, 2019 / viabackpack / Leave a comment

✍️: Erin 📸: Jan & Erin

Ignorance met me in Irkutsk, a city rich in Russian political history that I knew little about before wandering in on a bus.

A drawback of visiting a new place on a whim is not having time to read about its history until arriving. This city has plenty of it and, luckily, is happy to share it.

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Great Baikal Trail: Best Detour Yet

October 23, 2019October 22, 2019 / viabackpack / 3 Comments

✍️: Erin 📸: Jan & Erin

Jan turns to me the first morning we wake up on the Trans-Siberian Railway. He says he has an idea: Let’s spend two extra weeks in Russia.

He’s been researching the region around Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world. The train skirts the southern edge of the lake, which thanks to its mountain surroundings holds about the same amount of water as all the Great Lakes combined. It’s also a hiker’s haven and home to the Great Baikal Trail.

So we get off the train early. It’s our first official detour in our year-long journey, and it turns out to be exactly what we need. (Well, save for the unexpected 3-mile walk in the dark with our backpacks, along a highway with no lights or reliable sidewalk, to a guesthouse that rented our room to someone else. We didn’t need that.)

Erin hiking along Great Baikal Trail near Listvyanka

Trans-Siberian Rail: Our Way

October 20, 2019October 23, 2019 / Jan Bryan / 3 Comments

✍️: Jan 📸: Erin & Jan

It’s 12:25 in the afternoon. I’ve forgotten what day it is, Wednesday perhaps. Two days ago, in the Russian Far Eastern city of Vladivostok, beside the monumented remains of Engine 3306, a restored Soviet-era steam engine built by Americans during World War II, we boarded Russian Railways Trans-Siberian Train 001 at 7:10 in the evening.

Since then, we’ve been lumbering westward toward Moscow through the Siberian Taiga on the Trans-Siberian Rail. Our destination is Sludyanka on the southwestern tip of Lake Baikal, just one station shy of Irkutsk. We’ll arrive tomorrow in the early afternoon. But this is the Trans-Siberian Rail. The saying that it’s about the journey and not the destination is more apt here than just about anywhere.