Editor’s note: This recently discovered manuscript closely paralleled our experience in Astana and is reprinted here in full. Ext. Daytime – somewhere in Kazakhstan The edge was coming off the mescaline and my mind cleared just enough that I could …
Our crossing from Russia was efficiently uneventful – the quickest border crossing of outside of the EU so far. The biggest immediate difference was passing from the Caucasian to the Asian in a matter of 500 metres. We looked for …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
We awoke in a field. A solitary motorcycle and sidecar ambled by in the early dust of sunrise over the steppe. It was going to be a haul to cross the country in a day, but we were determined to …
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 …
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 …
