North to Finland
Wednesday, July 23, 2014 We left Moscow and immediately faced a traffic jam due to a small crash. Ten kms further we slowed down again due to excessive traffic. After 90 minutes we had travelled less than 10 miles. Then…
Russia
Moscow (Москва)
Sunday, July 20, 2014 The short drive from Tula allowed us to enjoy the afternoon in Moscow. We headed straight to the Red Square and the Walls of the Kremlin. From here we visited Saint Basil’s Cathedral before walking along…
Tula (Тула)
Saturday, July 19, 2014 Day 3 of the drive to Moscow. We had a slightly shorter driving day than the previous two and were able to d a little sight-seeing. Along the way we stopped at Leo Tolstoi’s residence. A…
Voronezh (Воронеж)
Friday, July 18, 2014 Another big driving day north along the M6 and then the M4. The scenery definitively improved with massive sunflower fields and the occasional pine forest. It really felt like we were returning to Europe. And while…
Volgograd (Волгогра́д)
Thursday, July 17, 2014 We woke up to find that we still had a front license plate. It had not been stolen during the night! Big day of driving as we head North to Moscow. This was the first day…
Caspian Sea
Tuesday, July 15, 2014 After the whole police episode was over, we drove south from Astrakhan towards the Volga Delta. Our original plan was to wing it and find someone with a boat. The receptionist at our hotel had given…
Astrakhan (Астрахань)
Monday, July 14, 2014 The drive from the Kazakhstan border to Astrakhan was pleasant enough. As we drove through the Volga Delta area we could already see many more birds along the roadside. Turned out that there were two ways…
Goodbye Kazakhstan, Hello Russia
Monday, July 14, 2014 Had a leisurely breakfast and departed to the Russian border with expectations of good roads. We were very disappointed to find we had shocking roads the entire way. The boring desert scenery combined with the relentless…
Across the Russian/Kazakhstan Border
Tuesday, June 17, 2014 After stopping at Coffee Art for a very nice latte we set off for the short 37 km drive to the border. We arrived at 10:32am to find 6 cars waiting in front of the border…
Rubtsovsk (Рубцо́вск)
Monday, June 16, 2014 Rubtsovsk is twined with Grants Pass in the United States. A place we have very fond memories of. Started the day for a coffee from Arabica Coffee. For some strange reason the coffees here in Russia…
Russia: Border Crossing and Documentation
This post is about the government documentation we needed and obtained to bring our car and ourselves into Russia. Russia in General The Russia government website has a pretty good description of the process to temporarily import a vehicle into…
Barnaul (Барнаул)
Saturday, June 14, 2014 Barnaul is twined with Flagstaff in the United States. And Flagstaff hosts overland expo each year. We don’t often pre-book accommodation, but we did for Barnaul. It is a bigger city and we didn’t want to…
Biysk (Бийск)
Black Friday (черная пятница), June 13, 2014 Woke up early as our room did not have curtains and the sun got up early here. Still, we took our time and enjoyed breakfast and a mid-morning latte (our first ones since…
Gorno-Altaisk (Горно-Алтайск)
Thursday, June 12, 2014 Huge driving day today, covering some 445kms (278 miles) through the Altai Mountains. We had wonderful scenery along the way. It was so nice to see the dust and sand of Mongolia replaced by green valleys…
Kosh-Agach (Кош-Агач)
Wednesday, June 11, 2014 The drive from the border to Kosh-Agach was very painless. We were driving in search of a place to stay based on some loose information we had received from the Land Rover driving Norwegians we had…