When my friends ask me how I spent this summer, I answer briefly: “On the road around Russia.” From July to August I traveled from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok.
The route was not laid out straight: first to the north, through St. Petersburg and Vyborg, then strictly south to the Black Sea. From there along the Volga, to the Urals, with visits to Perm, Chelyabinsk, Ufa and Yekaterinburg. Further, to the east, there is only one road - Tyumen, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk...
Then we wanted to drive along the BAM, through Severobaikalsk, Chara and Tynda, but nature ruined our plans. After a series of downpours, the water level in the rivers rose to almost 5 meters and the fords became physically impassable, and there are simply no road bridges there, only railway bridges, which are properly guarded. We were forced to obey and went to Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude.
But the thirst for adventure is stronger than circumstances, and in Buryatia we turned into the Barguzinskaya Valley. Four days of spending the night in tents, swimming in Lake Baikal, wading and feeding mosquitoes. Then another four days and more than 3600 km.
We came across gas stations once every 200 km, and hotels with bedbugs once every 1,500 km, but that’s not the worst thing. When there were such dips on the asphalt that our cars were bouncing with all the wheels coming off, we were seriously afraid for our prime minister. How did he drive here a year ago in a Lada?
Despite all the obstacles, we did it: we crossed all of Russia and got to know our vast Motherland. After such a journey, more than 12,000 photos have accumulated on the computer’s hard drive, and there are a lot of impressions in my head. And in order to share everything I saw, I sat down to write the book “Russia through the eyes of AMAROK.”
All that remains is to answer the question: what is more interesting, reading travel notes or looking at pictures with a minimum of captions? We need your opinion!
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