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