Home » Russia Mongolia » Travel to St. Petersburg and Mongolia (part II)

The train from Moscow to Byisk takes 63 hours and costs $40.My friend Vladislav D. and I prefer hard sleeper without separate rooms (platskartnii vagon). Our closest neighbor, a 16 year old girl fed us with food carefully supplied for her journey by her parents and told us a bunch of stories about her tough life. From Byisk we took a bus to a remote corner of Altay, village Yst-Koksa. The bus ride was 10 hours long and cost $8. After initial fight for seats the atmosphere in the bus became peaceful and friendly. Especially touching was the care which the entire bus took care of a straw hat of a young lady from the old believer village Mylta.

Travel to St. Petersburg and Mongolia (part II)

Alex Mumzhiu
2006-03-22 18:19:28

Displayed times (last time: )

to scan mine pictures also.

Alex Mumzhiu
Vladivostok Russia
Aug 19 2003 8:39pm

ANNOUNCEMENT

As most of you already know My Travel Notes for this trip are available at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alextravel/

Site is open and anybody can access it. And anybody can subscribe and receive TN at his or her mail box.

THIS IS NEW:

Yahoo announced that they will not store pictures anymore, starting from Aug 20 and old picture will be removed. However when they will sent you my E Mails, attachments will be included as it was in the past.

My dear readers,

I already wrote to you a couple times about terrible Russian drivers. Now this topic turned tragic. My two closed friends were hit by a car in St Petersburg. One died, another is in the hospital. As a result I lost interest in writing my funny Travel Notes. However in respect to many readers who like my notes and wait for them, I am sending Notes which were already written and edited before.

FROM MONGOLIA TO RUSSIA

Border crossing from Mongolia to Russia took almost an entire day. Next day Vladia left to St. Petersburg. I decided to visit Djazator, a village located 100 mi from Chyiskii tract. I spent two summers there in 1975-76 working for a surveying expedition as a mountain climbing instructor. Just one month ago a new law was introduced which requires special permission from border authorities for those who want to visit Djazator. Not me, not people whom I hitchhiked with, local Kazakhs, had this permission. These Kazakhs, who live in Djazator, left Djazator the day before for shopping and they were returning to their home. A woman was crying, because she left a small children at home. However, the boarder guard was unmoved. He received firm order: "No one without permission." In more civilized places they would allow first time offenders like these Kazakhs to return to their homes, at ...