http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/EdVallance/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from EdVallance en-us Sat, 26 May 2012 11:11:01 +0000 Sat, 26 May 2012 11:11:01 +0000 The mountainside rumbled under the hooves of 4000 reindeer. When you put such a huge number of this species together something very strange but well documented by science happens and was taking place on a mountain on Arctic Russias Kola Peninsula at that moment the reindeer were galloping around and around in a giant perfectlyformed ring five hundred meters long and a dozen animals thick http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Northwest/Kola-Peninsula/blog-715531.html The nine families nine chums and 10000 reindeer of the second Yar Sale brigade were on their way north their annual 1200km migration begun after a sixweek winter break in the forest tundra of Nadym Region. To a casual observer who somehow stumbled on the nine conical tents amid the flat treeless white expanse of the Yamal Peninsula tundra it would not be immediately obvious that these Nenet http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Siberia/blog-710072.html From the northernmost limits of the former Soviet Union to the westernmost from the Siberian Arctic to the tranquil warm historical European town of Lviv was 3.5 days of train travel and a temperature rise of more than 40C. People came and went the train39s denizens morphing from one sort to another as surely as did the landscape through which we traveled. At Moscow I changed trains the http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Lviv/blog-709960.html In the flat white tundra it was hard to appreciate the vastness of 10000 reindeer. I stood next to our sledge while grunting snorting seas of bodies and antlers flowed around me in one direction then another. Dogs kept them moving while a Nenets man on a reindeerdrawn sledge directing his transport beasts with light blows from a long wooden pole moved from one part of the herd to another lo http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Siberia/blog-696367.html My eyes are frozen shut. I hear only the roar of the snowmobile dragging our sledge across the Gulf of Ob39s frozen waters. After traveling for seven hours in 40C the cold overpowers other sensations so that it is all I feel. Soon we will reach the coast of the Yamal Peninsula but for now we must bear another hour of this burning soulcrushing cold. I relive the last few days as images danc http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Siberia/blog-684256.html The train took us out of Moscow39s suburbia with its usual rapidity and into the land of snowcoated wooden cottages picket fences and endless forest that would greet our every glance through the train window for the next forty eight hours before thinning out into subArctic forest tundra on our journey39s third and final day.We passed Rostov Veliky turrets on the gentle whitewashed walls http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Siberia/blog-690348.html The world is changing. The trees of the endless Russian forest a few weeks ago alive with a million vibrant emerald hues are now becoming dull. The ominously brooding greys and blacks of the sky from which just over a month ago the sun beat down on us at over 30C do not allow the leaves to show off their potentially glorious array of autumn colours. Instead they are lifeless shells drab rem http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Northwest/Karelia-/blog-656084.html Blearyeyed we climbed out of the carriage down the steps and onto the one lonely platform at Uglich39s station. The train we had arrived on stood motionless on the rails its engines finally silent after a ninehour chug through the night. The thinnest sliver of a crescent moon hung a few inches above it lending a purplish light to the justvisible clouds that rippled away in all directions. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/blog-654358.html Russian weddings play out a little differently from in England. This particular one began with me being shaken awake at an unprintably ungodly hour followed by an unprintable amount of time on the metro all the way to the nearly unprintably degenerate station of Vykhino. If city areas were equated to body parts Vykhino would if I was feeling extremely polite be the armpit of Moscow.Having negot http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Northwest/Moscow/blog-630177.html There has only been one trip in my life where literally everything that could go wrong did go wrong. This was on the 10day cycling trip I had planned beginning and ending in the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv.For a start it was raining cats and dogs for several days so that I simply couldn39t bring myself to begin. Then I thought screw it bought full body waterproofs from a market and set http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Lviv/blog-630176.html The main avenues of Lyachakovskoye Cemetry are lined with impressively ornate and expensive tombs marble statues of the deceased playing harps dancing with angels and the like. Colourful little candles have been left around their bases by Ukrainians who come here once a year on All Souls Day to honour the dead.Move away from those pristine bricktiled pathways and deeper into the huge overgro http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Lviv/blog-630159.html Actually I can but I39ve wanted to use that title for a long time. This blog deserves the diametrically opposite title I can believe it39s not Russia but I thought that would be too obscure and not instantly recognisable as a reference to a certain brand of margarine. Anyway the diametric opposition of this blog to its title at least links the two in some way.I found myself in Lviv a http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Lviv/blog-630062.html As I arrived in Pyalma the sun though it would never entirely disappear at this latitude at this time of year was drifting slowly downwards in the vague direction of the horizon illuminating the world with a magical light that I could only recall having seen twice previously on equally clear days during summer in the Far North and Mongolia. This light which quite possibly occurs far more frequ http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Northwest/Karelia-/blog-618230.html as I quickly found to be the case cycling across Arkhangelsk Province which while suffering sub minus 40C temperatures in winter is baking hot in summer and plagued by mosquitoes in greater numbers than are found even in the densest jungles on the planet. Any attempt to take a breather particularly if near one of the many lakes and rivers that interrupted the lush myriad of daffodilspeckled http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Northwest/Arkhangelsk/blog-617318.html Which is pretty much what Peter the Great said in 1703 according to one story when during one of his many extreme drinking binges he decided to found St Petersburg in the middle of a swamp. However although it may be true that he was drunk at the time of his decision seeing as he consumed half a gallon of vodka a day there was also some method in his madness he was in the process of turning http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Northwest/Saint-Petersburg/blog-610118.html My time in Anavgay began naked outdoors in 20C. Readers please don39t get excited no photos were taken since in that situation the last thing one thinks about is fiddling around with a camera. But how did I find myself in such circumstances at night in a woodenshack indigenous village population 600 in the middle of the Kamchatkan wilderness one might ask Good question.We had arriv http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Far-East/Kamchatka/blog-607524.html Considering the title of this blog the fact that the crust rupture in question erupts spectacularly every year or two and not forgetting the other potential attractions in the area such as pretty much guaranteed sightings of the Kamchatka Brown Bear in summer one might expect the nearby town of Klyuchi to have some sort of infrastructure or at least be easily accessible. Not so. Its snowbur http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Far-East/Kamchatka/blog-606152.html Eight time zones and half the world away from Moscow Russia39s Kamchatka peninsula dangles into the Northern Pacific like the straggling tail of a large beast on the run. Despite its wealth in gold and oil despite the deeppocketed tourists who shell out 2000 an hour on helicopter rides over its 300 active volcanoes and pay thousands more to hunt the bears lynxes and wolverines that infest http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Far-East/Kamchatka/blog-591451.html I like my 3monthly meetings with Dmitry in his small neat but infernallyheated office four storeys up on Moscow39s Leningradsky Prospekt. He probably does not know I enjoy them as much as I do as for him it is all just run of the mill business and I try to keep a straight face even when his sheer dishonesty threatens to force a smile to the corners of my lips. I say dishonesty but that is p http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Kiev/blog-590801.html In a country containing 22 of the world39s forest where trees cover an area larger than the USA one might imagine that nowhere could be that far from a patch of woodland. However the name of the 40000 strong town in Yaroslavsky Province where I spent last weekend translates as Pereslavl Beyond the Woods. I was interested to find out if it really merited the name by being any further beyond http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Centre/Pereslavl-Zalessky/blog-585777.html