MIR Corporation's Travel Log:
Russia's Southern Urals & Lower Volga
Follow along with Bill Altaffer and a group of travelers through the Urals and Lower Volga and into some of the lesser-known towns along the way.
Bill Altaffer, 64-year-old ski instructor, photographer and travel company owner from Mammoth, California, was declared the "World's Most Traveled Man" in 2005. This year he is in third place and running as fast as he can to catch up. Of the 757 countries, territories, autonomous regions, enclaves, geographically separated island groups, and major states and provinces counted by the MostTraveledPeople.com, Bill has been to 676 of them, with 81 to go. His favorites places are the obscure Russian oblasts that he writes about in this blog.
Days 1-2: Ekaterinburg
September 21-22, 2008
 | | Two girls stand in front of their home in Ekaterinburg |
Ekaterinberg is clean, modern and full of life. It is most known as the place where the last czar, Nicholas II, and his family were imprisoned and executed by the Bolsheviks, but is also the city where Boris Yeltsin began his political career. As with most Russian cities, it has many monuments and statues. The most dramatic and moving of these is the Black Tulip, a bronze of an exhausted, traumatized soldier sitting on the ground holding his gun. It captures the frustration, suffering and hopelessness suffered by the troops sent to Afghanistan in the last years of Soviet power. Just west of the city, we visited the monument on the border of Asia and Europe, straddling the line so that we stood on both continents simultaneously. Worth seeing was the Church on the Blood, built over the spot where the Romanoff family had been executed in July, 1918. We also visited the monastery complex standing on the site of the mineshaft where their bodies had been burned and dumped. The site contains seven beautiful chapels constructed of logs in the traditional Russian style, each representing one royal family member. The area is famous for its mineral wealth. We enjoyed seeing the 2,000-plus minerals on exhibit in the Urals Mineralogical Museum, including alexandrite, which had been discovered there and named for Czar Alexander II.
For the next few days, we covered about 1,500 miles, traveling in a comfortable Mercedes van. We developed a real appreciation for a territory rarely visited by outsiders. Most of the cities we visited had been closed to foreigners until the Soviet breakup. Our first day, our drive to Tyumen took us by the field where Gary Powers had landed after his U2 was shot down during the Cold War. Soon after, we passed a large concrete monument marking our arrival into Siberia. Tyumen is a prosperous city, the capital of the Tyumen Oblast, which contains more than 90% of the country's oil and gas. It is also the oldest Russian city in Siberia. Our afternoon was spent on a city tour. That night, we had the first of our visits to a family home for dinner. It was one of the highlights of our trip. The entire family spoke English to some degree. Besides providing a delicious dinner, they had prepared entertainment and games for us. Their warm hospitality and sincere interest in us made for an unforgettable evening.
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