Siberia and Beyond .. To Moscow first

When does your travel dawn on you ?

 With my group trips it does when I announce the date. With a rare trip with my family it does when I leave my home, and the rarest of them all ;-) when I travel all alone ,it surely does in the airport departure area,  if not when leaving home.

 I was sure last night at the Mumbai airport it would come ,the feeling of going to a place for the first time. But it didn’t. It took its time and just as I thought it would only come when I read the Russian characters on arrival in Moscow, it came ! Well, the Russian characters did the trick after all, but not on the information signs at the Moscow airport but on my Laptop screen at Istanbul Airport.

All my travels have been to countries where the style of writing has been more or less Latin. Starting tonight Moscow time it will be different. And with all that one hears about Russia and the failure of its citizens to speak or understand English, this trip promises to have its own share of ‘language adventure’ other than the obvious Siberian one, as I dont intend on wasting time in the west. 

Moscow has three international airports! Well not surprising considering that Russia has nine time zones. Travelling from the Far East to the west is crazy, you leave at noon and arrive at noon. Well, that has some time to go. Today however I travel to Moscow and then overnight to Irkutsk in the east. The regions main city. The region of Siberia.

Siberia! What does it bring to your mind? Cold winters ,frozen rivers ,huge mass of barren land and the Trans Siberian railway passing through. This is summer ,and according to the last weather check the coldest inhabited city in the world with a population of above hundred thousand, which goes to 60 deg below the freezing point is still at 20 deg above it in summer.

The weather is not a worry ,actually nothing is when I travel alone without having the thought of my tourists in my mind.

This happened out of the internet, was inspired by www.toehold.in . These guys are based in Bangalore, India and are doing some good work with photography and nature being their foundation. I obviously didn’t want to join a group and wanted to rough it out myself.. So here it goes  .. The real trip begins tonight!

Siberia and beyond ! (the ‘beyond’ is where all the fun is)