Veronika Wild

This says "Russia" in Russian. Reading Russian is a bit like cracking a secret code. I was really excited when I first worked out that CTON meant STOP. I am glad I didn't drive. It would have taken me so long to decipher the road signs that I would have ended up in Vladivostock. There weren't many roads in Siberia though. Trains are the main form of transport. I'll tell you about them in the next couple of posts. Also about some of the great places I visited and the people I met in a journey of over 10,000 kilometres. The Russian Odyssey I had always wondered about Russia . For most of my life it was shown as a large blank space in the Philips World Atlas. Now that Russia is finally letting in independent travellers – even shoestring ones like me, I thought I should have a look around and give you an idea of what it is like. I can tell you now that it has 145 million people, at least twelve different ethnic groups and eleven time zones! I’d always ...

Its hard to explain the allure of Mongolia to those who haven't been there. Sometimes it's even a mystery to those who have. The landscape can be monotonous, even desolate and its largest city is lately remembered more for the efficiency of its pickpockets and the zealousness of its immigration officials than for the splendour of its architecture or the charm of its streetscapes.Yet those who have been here often come back again and again. The fleet is newer The pollution seems worse For those coming from densely packed European cities, the USA and Japan, those wide open spaces and endless unfenced horizons are impossible to forget. Nor will I forget Katje's face as she tells me about her time in the countryside helping poor herders with their animals. Katje is German. Her face is fresh and tanned and her blue eyes shine ."I have never been so dirty in my life!" she says proudly. There is still that exotic combination of the ancient and modern The Temple of Heave...

The first wildflowers are out in Mongolia but.... The magnificent wild horses looked thin and threadbare this year when I dropped into Mongolia on the way north. At first I thought it was simply a natural consequence of coming a little earlier than I did last time, but it seems that things are far worse than that. A Zud occurs when there has been a drought followed by a particularly harsh winter. This year it was so severe that more than 17% of the national herd died. The Gobi is littered with dead animals and many herders have lost their livelihood, swelling the ranks of the unemployed in the capital, Ulaan Bataar. Blue Prayer flags adorn a tree near the spring sacred to Chinggis Khan. Usually a source of the sweetest water it is now little more than a mud puddle Pessimists see these phenomena as a harbinger of climate change which could permanently threaten the nomadic pastoral life which has sustained Mongolia's diverse tribes for thousands of years. Like many countri...