The Huts of Baba Yaga

Russia is a modern state. By that I mean it has all the trappings that you expect, fast food, highways, high fashion, fast cars and an apparently burgeoning middle class. Fortunately, it hasn’t been completely overrun by global homogenization. Roadside …

Highway Patrol

The cops are everywhere. At at least to our eyes there seems to be lots of them, but we were hyper-sensitized by other traveler’s tales of being pulled over by bent rozzers looking for a bribe. In Russia and Ukraine …

What’s Samara U?

Our earliest start of the week ended by mid-afternoon as we wandered like lost kittens in the swirling streets of Camapa, or in English, Samara. Our Cyrillic skills are improving steadily. Part of the trick is remembering symbols from high …

Volgograd and Beyond

Premium, groaned Tom, thank god we didn’t by the cheap stuff! Without too many more details, suffice it to say it was well into the afternoon before Tom took the wheel. We broke camp just outside somewhere and were headed …

Welcome to Russia

Exactly how long Swifty had been leaking oil is unclear, but when we checked her before leaving Galati she was almost empty. We sheepishly replenished her a couple of times before finally crawling around on the ground yesterday morning to …

Deliverance

After only 127 hours that movie’s hero had cut his own arm off with a multi-tool. We were not far from doing the same thing three days ago, if only to alleviate the tension. So imagine the jubilation and tears …

Romania, Ah! Romania!

Our unplanned stay in Romania has led to one really nice development…. we’ve come to appreciate the country and it’s people more than we ever could have on our original itinerary that had us rocketing through here in less than …

Galati

We are not alone. We have met up with another team in the same boat – literally. Jim and Ed of Jungle Bungle and commanding a Fiat Punto were turned away by the Moldovans for not having the requisite letter of authorization …