Blogs from Far East, Russia, Europe - page 7

Views of The City's River Port. The Port works allowing the commerce and the touristic trips by the Lena River. The Lena River is the Biggest and most important River in Russia, and one of the longest Rivers in the world. It starts in the Baikal Mountains and flow into the Artic sea, its 4,400 km (2,800 mi) Long. On winter the City's temperature its around -50 ^C , that means that the Lena River can only be enjoyed in Summer (right now the temperature its around +30^c). On winter it works like a 6 lanes Highway. I love running everyday by the Port's way, its just 200ms from my house. ... read more

Another experience May 24th the plane left Schiphol airport to fly via Seoul (South Korea) to Yuzhno Sakhalin Airport where the plane touched ground at 17.00 May 25th. The same day we went directly to the office and meet the project team. After a brief introduction and arranging our safety gear we all went to the GaraGara hotel and signed in. On the ground floor of the hotel was a Karaoke bar with good sushi. The next day at 7.00 the breakfast was ready and 7.30 most of the project team went walking trough a park to the office, this was a nice walk of about 10 minutes. The week before there was still lots of snow and now plants start popping up from the ground and growing so fast you could hear it. The port ... read more

My time in Anavgay began naked, outdoors, in -20°C. Readers, please don't 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 wooden-shack indigenous village, population 600, in the middle of the Kamchatkan wilderness, one might ask? Good question. We had arrived here, at the end of the road north, with lorry drivers who still had thirty six hours to drive along frozen river surfaces to the isolated town of Palana. Having stepped out of the lorries and quickly realising that sleeping in the tent was a very undesirable option, we stopped the first passer-by we saw, a girl in her late teens, and dropped the one name we could: Nikolai ... read more

Eight time zones and half the world away from Moscow, Russia's 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 deep-pocketed 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 its endless mountain ranges and forests, the corrupt officials who run this easternmost province have ensured that it remains the most woefully godforsaken of all the far flung Russian regions I have visited. "Get out of our capital, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, as soon as you can," a local vulcanologist called Ilya, who I had been in contact with through Couchsurfing, told me before I arrived. "It's one of the most disgusting ... read more

Finally got off train today in irkutsk in russian siberia, as I wrote previously on wrong day oops. Had shower at hostel, was desperate for one after washing over a sink for four days!. Then we went out exploring for food and an adapter. Russians here not as friendly it appears as moscow and on train, bar one guy who phoned our lift for us when noone there to pick us up from station. Getting on tram was easy enough but they were not very patient at all as we worked out how to pay! We were then barged past on number of occasions and one taxi driver even reversed back into my leg despite fact there were lots of people behind his taxi and he would clearly hit someone. Found a fast food place for ... read more