Travels in Siberia - 1

by Ian Frazier

I don't read a lot of travelogues, and I don't know why that is, because I often enjoy them.

In this, the first of two articles, Ian Frazier heads into Siberia in a beat-up old van, with the head of the robotics lab at the St. Petersburg Polytechnical University as his driver, and with an alpinist building renovator as a companion (somehow, writing this sentence conjures up a reverse-Borat in my mind, but that's not accurate).

Along the way, Frazier supplies a great amount of historical and geographical detail about this gigantic expanse of land that takes up one twelth of all land on the planet.

Most interesting to me were the attempts made by Frazier and crew to discover the remnants of the Trakt, the old road used by exiles on their way into Siberia. It's no longer used, but its remains can be found near the modern road, still exhibiting the tell-tale mounds of the graves of those who could not manage the voyage by foot.

I look forward to the completion of this article next week.