[Ed: I'm omitting the garbled cyrillic version of this post]
Dlya rossiyan ya byl ne Chingiz-khanom, a Chingiz-Khaimom. Tak chto Chingiz-khana iz menya ne vyshlo -- prishlos' perekvalificirovat'sya v puteshestvenniki!
Khotya v Rossii ya ponimal, chto mne govoryat, no poluchit' nadyozhnuyu informaciyu tam bylo ochen' trudno. Tut zhe, v Kitae, s informaciej polegche, no ya ne ponimayu, chto mne govoryat. Tak chto tak na tak -- puteshestvuyu vslepuyu. A tut vdobavok ya eshchyo i glukhonemoj. No vyzhivayu.
Sejchas ya v kitajskoj provincii, imenuemoj Vnutrennyaya Mongoliya. Segodnya posetil mavzolej Chingiz-khana, gde predpolozhitel'no khranit~sya ego pepel, a takzhe luk i strely, sedlo i prochie parafernalii.
Tak chto k Chingiz-khanu vsyo zhe prikosnulsya posylayushchij vsem privety vash znakomyj Chingiz-Khaim!
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Ulaan-Baatar, Sept.19, 2004
Short information on my future plans.
My Russian odyssey is over. Though I did some places in Russia -- unfortunately less than I wanted -- I did not feel very comfortable there. In spite of having no language problems it was difficult for me to undertand how the system works. And the inavailability of elementary information did irritate me. Besides the weather was turning worse and worse -- cloudy, rainy, cold.
Anyway, I am already outside the country.
Tomorrow, on Monday, I hope to obtain the Chinese visa and proceed to Inner Mongolia, Ninxia, Gansu, Sichuan, Yunnan, Hanan Dao, Guandong to Hong Kong. Still do not know for how long and for how many reentries will be the visa -- may visit Myanmar from Kunming.
After Hong Kong will go to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, possibly Indonesia.
Your Leo.
My Russian odyssey is over. Though I did some places in Russia -- unfortunately less than I wanted -- I did not feel very comfortable there. In spite of having no language problems it was difficult for me to undertand how the system works. And the inavailability of elementary information did irritate me. Besides the weather was turning worse and worse -- cloudy, rainy, cold.
Anyway, I am already outside the country.
Tomorrow, on Monday, I hope to obtain the Chinese visa and proceed to Inner Mongolia, Ninxia, Gansu, Sichuan, Yunnan, Hanan Dao, Guandong to Hong Kong. Still do not know for how long and for how many reentries will be the visa -- may visit Myanmar from Kunming.
After Hong Kong will go to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, possibly Indonesia.
Your Leo.
Thursday, September 9, 2004
The Urals. Ekaterinburg, Sept.10, 2004
The distance of 1,000 km from Yakutsk to Tynda was covered by the van in 26 hours. Not bad as the so called road is in terrible shape though occasionally paved.
Ttynda is the capital of BAM. No, BAM stands not for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, but for Baikal-Amur Magistral (Mainline) -- the railroad which branches off the Trans-Siberian line east of Krasnoyarsk, touches the Northern tip of Lake Baikal and continues through the wilderness all the way to Tatarsky Strait between the mainland and Sakhalin Island. -- totally about 3,100 km.
The last tonnel was finished just 10 months ago. And 2 months ago there was a big celebration of the 30th anniversary of the start of intensive construction of the line in 1974. On this occasion there was installed on the wall of Tynda terminal a memorial plaque:
" To those... and brigades from... who accomplished the enormous task .. in RECORD TIME"
While the efforts of many workers definitely deserve high recognition mentio9ning the RECORD TIME is a mockery at the common sense. 100 years and mor ago with the primitive technology much longer and more complicated projects were accomplished in substantially shorter time than 30 years.
Anyway, now I am riding the BAM throuhg 3 time zones westward to Krasnoyarsk. It will take 2,5 days. The landscapes behind the window are beautiful. The railroad follows many streams -- from large creeks to big rivers -- but majority of them are not even shown on the map. And plenty of thick taiga around. The birches are beginning to turn yellow, but the larches are still solid green. Yesterday it was cloudy and rainy, but today the skies are blue and the sun shines.
Finishing these notes onm August 31 at 15:15 local time == 10:15 Moscow time, east of Severobaikalsk.
Leo
The previous tekst I wrote on the train. Since then I was in Izhevsk. As my efforts to extend my visa faied I had to turn back . Now I am going back to Mongolia, then China -- must cross Russian border not later than Sept 20.
Internet connections in Russia are terrible -- si I will contact you later from another country.
Best wishes.
Leo
Ttynda is the capital of BAM. No, BAM stands not for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, but for Baikal-Amur Magistral (Mainline) -- the railroad which branches off the Trans-Siberian line east of Krasnoyarsk, touches the Northern tip of Lake Baikal and continues through the wilderness all the way to Tatarsky Strait between the mainland and Sakhalin Island. -- totally about 3,100 km.
The last tonnel was finished just 10 months ago. And 2 months ago there was a big celebration of the 30th anniversary of the start of intensive construction of the line in 1974. On this occasion there was installed on the wall of Tynda terminal a memorial plaque:
" To those... and brigades from... who accomplished the enormous task .. in RECORD TIME"
While the efforts of many workers definitely deserve high recognition mentio9ning the RECORD TIME is a mockery at the common sense. 100 years and mor ago with the primitive technology much longer and more complicated projects were accomplished in substantially shorter time than 30 years.
Anyway, now I am riding the BAM throuhg 3 time zones westward to Krasnoyarsk. It will take 2,5 days. The landscapes behind the window are beautiful. The railroad follows many streams -- from large creeks to big rivers -- but majority of them are not even shown on the map. And plenty of thick taiga around. The birches are beginning to turn yellow, but the larches are still solid green. Yesterday it was cloudy and rainy, but today the skies are blue and the sun shines.
Finishing these notes onm August 31 at 15:15 local time == 10:15 Moscow time, east of Severobaikalsk.
Leo
The previous tekst I wrote on the train. Since then I was in Izhevsk. As my efforts to extend my visa faied I had to turn back . Now I am going back to Mongolia, then China -- must cross Russian border not later than Sept 20.
Internet connections in Russia are terrible -- si I will contact you later from another country.
Best wishes.
Leo
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