Harbin didn’t feel like it was far from Chita but the cities could hardly be more different (2024: it’s more than 1000km….I was getting very blase about long distances!). The quiet streets of Chita are only interrupted by the sound of a dusty, soviet era van puffing up the hill. In Harbin by contrast, the …
Author Archives: Will Holland
Das vadanya and ni hao
Drafted on 1st August. It’s 6am and the view out of the window is very different from this time yesterday and we’ve not even gone far due to 10 hours sat at the border. The picturesque wooden cottages of siberia have given way to cream buildings with bright blue corrugated roofs. The steppe has been …
Buryats, buuz and booze
The guidebook didn’t have anything nice to say about Chita and everyone in Irkutsk told me there was no point stopping here too. But here I am eating buuz in a yurt, laughing and joking with a lively group of Buryats and having the time of my life. The transsiberian between Irkutsk and Chita skirts …
The bonnie, bonnie banks of Lake Baikal
Baikal is the most spectacular lake in the world. The view in the photo above could rival Scotland’s finest lochs. But that isn’t even Baikal. It’s the Angara river, draining Baikal and flowing towards Irkutsk city. We had planned a hike today to celebrate my birthday but the girls decided that it would be too …
On food
Today (29/02/2024) I found this sat post in my drafts. Originally written on the 29th of July 2019. I’m not sure why I didn’t publish it; I quite enjoyed reading it back. I’d love to go back to Irkutsk but feel it might not be possible for a very long time. I’ve added some notes …
Irkutsk! Irkutsk!
Siberia has the virtue of not startling or astonishing you right away but of pulling you in slowly and reluctantly, as it were, with measured carefulness, and then binding you tightly once you are in. And then it’s all over – you are afflicted with Siberia* – Valentin Rasputin The sun rose unbelievably fast and …
From Moscow with love
What to do with just two days in Moscow? “Its not enough time!” complain all muskovites I asked but eventually yielded: Red Square (with The Kremlin and St Basil’s), Metro tour and VDNKh.VDNKh is a park full of monuments to Soviet Russia; including cosmonautics, the republics and the 1937 world fair statue: Worker and Kolkhoz …
Southend-on-Sea to Soviet Canteen
I had booked the cheapest flight to Moscow that left as soon as possible. This meant flying overnight from Southend to Moscow Vnukovo via Chisinau, which I found out is the capital of Moldova and we used to call it Kishinev. Southend Airport turned out to be horrible and Chisinau really nice. I landed in …
Eastward Ho!
This is the introduction to my series From Moscow to Osaka by Land & Sea. Two months ago I quit my job at the bank. Today I finally set off on my month long adventure of trains, boats and hikes that will take me from sleepy Rufford, Lancashire, North-west England to Ho Chi Minh City …
Eastward Ho! 