travelrussia

Ulan-Ude: Russia but not quite Russia

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✍️: 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!

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Olkhon Island: Beautiful views, with cropped photos

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✍️: Erin 📸: Jan & Erin

We detoured to Olkhon Island, the largest island in Lake Baikal, on the recommendations of a several locals who raved about its beauty and remoteness.

Sadly, the latter wasn’t our experience. Maybe we didn’t see what they did, or maybe they haven’t been in recent years. Much of what we saw looked like unregulated building and classic over-tourism.

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Great Baikal Trail: Best Detour Yet

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✍️: 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
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Trans-Siberian Rail: Our Way

/ 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.

  • Locomotive Monument
  • Engine 3306
  • Big Engine
  • Lend Lease
  • Vladivostok Station
  • Read to board the Trans-Siberian Train
  • Trans-Siberian Route - Moscow to Vladivostok
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Vladivostok: The Master of the East

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✍️: Jan 📸: Erin & Jan

Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East, sits about 100 miles from the northeastern corner of North Korea. It is seven time zones from both Moscow and Los Angeles. The general response from most people — Russians included — when we told them we were planning on spending a couple of days here was a mixture of blank stares, the question “Why?” or simply “That’s far …”

Our primary reason was to board the Trans-Siberian Railway at it’s far eastern terminal and roll west. But as we researched our trip, we found more and more reasons to spend some time in the city called “Master of the East.”

Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia from exile via Vladivostok
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Rafting the “Ryka Bystraya”

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✍️: Jan 📸: Erin & Jan

Вперёд! Стоп!
Левый табань! Правый вперёд!
Стоп! Вперёд!
Навались! Навались! Навались!

Erin and Jan rafting in Esso, Kamchatka, Russia

Our “captain” barked those words at us as we rafted the Bystraya (translation: quick) River down the middle of the Kamchatka peninsula. For most of the day, those are the only words we heard.

And, let me tell you, when the captain yelled “Вперёд Навались!” we pulled our oars hard as the current pushed us toward a huge, jagged volcanic rock jutting menacingly out of the frigid whitewater spray.

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