WINNER OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER AWARD FOR BEST TRAVEL BOOKSHORTLISTED FOR THE STANFORD DOLMAN TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD'Monisha Rajesh has chosen one of the best ways of seeing the world. Never too fast, never too slow, her journey does what trains do best. Getting to the heart of things. Prepare for a very fine ride' Michael PalinFrom the cloud-skimming heights of Tibet's Qinghai railway to silk-sheeted splendour on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, Around the World in 80 Trains is a celebration of the glory of train travel and a witty and irreverent look at the world. Packing up her rucksack – and her fiancé, Jem – Monisha Rajesh embarks on an unforgettable adventure that takes her from London's St Pancras station to the vast expanses of Russia and Mongolia, North Korea, Canada, Kazakhstan, and beyond. The journey is one of constant movement and mayhem, as the pair strike up friendships and swap stories with the hilarious, irksome and ultimately endearing travellers they meet on board, all while taking in some of the earth's most breathtaking views. Read more

"You do it our way. Here, there is no God." On September 11, 1984, I was taken hostage by the Soviet Union and held captive in Siberia. This is the story of what happened. Few have the courage to follow their dream. Mine led from a small town in upstate New York to a dingy cell in Siberia. Leaving my hometown with a yearning for adventure, my travels brought me to Alaska where I obtained work on a merchant ship skippered by one of the youngest ship captains in the United States. Two years later, on a freight-hauling mission to the Arctic, our ship was seized by the Soviet Union and taken hostage to Siberia. Held at gunpoint and threatened with 30 years in prison, this is the story of how five young American sailors took a stand for their faith against high-ranking officers in the Soviet military. Read more

Lonely Planet: The world’s leading travel guide publisherLonely Planet Russiais your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Brush up on your Soviet and imperial history in Moscow and St Petersburg, explore European Russia and its gingerbread cottages and golden domes, or lose yourself in the wilds of Siberia and the east -all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Russia and begin your journey now!Inside Lonely Planet’s Russia Travel Guide:Colour maps and images throughoutHighlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interestsInsider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spotsEssential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, pricesHonest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks missCultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - history, art, literature, music, architecture, performing arts, landscape, wildlife, environment, religion, Russia todayCovers Moscow, St Petersburg, the Golden Ring, Kaliningrad, the Urals, Volga, Sochi, Caucasus, Siberia, the Russian Far East, and moreThe Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet Russia, our most comprehensive guide to Russia, is perfect for both exploring top sights and taking roads less travelled.Looking for a guide focused on Moscow or St Petersburg? Check out Lonely Planet’s MoscowandSt Petersburg guides for a comprehensive look at all these cities have to offer; or Pocket Moscow & St Petersburg for a handy-sized guide focused on the can’t-miss sights for a quick trip. Travelling further afield? Check out Lonely Planet’s Trans-Siberian Railway, focused on the can’t-miss sights for a trip of a lifetime, or Eastern Europe, for extensive coverage of the whole region.About Lonely Planet: Since 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel media company with guidebooks to every destination, an award-winning website, mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet covers must-see spots but also enables curious travellers to get off beaten paths to understand more of the culture of the places in which they find themselves. Read more

Lonely Planet: The world’s leading travel guide publisherLonely PlanetTrans-Siberian Railway is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Gaze through the window at the unfurling landscape as you pass, glimpse Lake Baikal, Russia’s sacred sea, or gawk at Moscow’s Kremlin at one end of your journey and Beijing’s Forbidden City at the other end -all with your trusted travel companion. Begin your journey now!Inside Lonely Planet Trans-Siberian Railway Travel Guide:Colour maps and images throughoutHighlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interestsInsider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spotsEssential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, pricesHonest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks missCultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience – the history of the railway, history of Siberian travel, Russian culture & cuisine, Mongolian culture & cuisine, Chinese culture & cuisine, landscapes & wildlifeCovers Moscow, St Petersburg, Beijing, the Trans-Siberian, Trans-Mongolian, Trans-Manchurian and Baikal-Amur Mainline routes and moreThe Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet Trans-Siberian Railway, our most comprehensive guide to the Trans-Siberian Railway, is perfect for both exploring top sights and taking roads less travelled.Looking for a guide focused on Russia or China? Check out Lonely Planet’sRussia or China for a comprehensive look at all that these countries have to offer.About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company and the world’s number one travel guidebook brand, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we’ve printed over 145 million guidebooks and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You’ll also find our content online, on mobile, video and in 14 languages, 12 international magazines, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more. Read more

As Peace Corps volunteers, the author and her husband spent two years in the Jewish Autonomous Region of Russia. In this isolated place, people were experiencing new freedoms and old beliefs, dysfunctional bureaucracies and strong friendships, always with a love of the dramatic and a determination to endure. Their passions and intrigues are the heart of this memoir. Read more

WINNER – BOOK OF THE YEAR - East Anglian Book Awards 2023‘A magisterial diary for bird lovers.’ Observer⭐⭐⭐⭐ The TelegraphAs seen on BBC Winterwatch 2023‘Honest, human and heart-grabbing. I loved this book so much.’ Sophie Pavelle, author of Forget Me Not‘Delightful’ Stephen Moss, author of Ten Birds that Changed the World‘Fascinating and thought-provoking’ Jake Fiennes, author of Land Healer‘Awe-filled and absorbing’ Nicola Chester, author of On Gallows DownThe Meaning of Geese is a book of thrilling encounters with wildlife, of tired legs, punctured tyres and inhospitable weather. Above all, it is the story of Nick Acheson’s love for the land in which he was born and raised, and for the wild geese that fill it with sound and spectacle every winter.Renowned naturalist and conservationist Nick Acheson spent countless hours observing and researching wild geese, transported through all weathers by his mother’s 40-year-old trusty red bicycle. He meticulously details the geese’s arrival, observing what they mean to his beloved Norfolk and the role they play in local people’s lives – and what role the birds could play in our changing world. During a time when many people faced the prospect of little work or human contact, Nick followed the pinkfeet and brent geese that filled the Norfolk skies and landscape as they flew in from Iceland and Siberia. In their flocks, Nick encountered rarer geese, including Russian white-fronts, barnacle geese and an extremely unusual grey-bellied brant, a bird he had dreamt of seeing since thumbing his mother’s copy of Peter Scott’s field guide as a child.To honour the geese’s great athletic migrations, Nick kept a diary of his sightings as well as the stories he discovered through the community of people, past and present, who loved them, too. Over seven months Nick cycles over 1,200 miles – the exact length of the pinkfeet’s migration to Iceland. Read more

An experiential guide to the wisdom preserved in Europe’s far north• Includes shamanic journeys to connect with deities and your ancestral shamans• Provides step-by-step instructions to prepare for and conduct a seiðr ceremony• Draws on archaeological evidence and surviving written records from Iceland• Reveals the long tradition of female shamans in northern European shamanismShamanism is humanity’s oldest spiritual tradition. In much of the Western world, the indigenous pre-Christian spiritual practices have been lost. Yet at the northern fringes of Europe, Christianity did not displace the original shamanic practices until the end of the Viking age. Remnants of Norse shamanic spirituality have survived in myths, folk traditions, and written records from Iceland, providing many clues about the ancient European shaman’s world, especially when examined in conjunction with other shamanic cultures in northern Eurasia, such as the Sami and the tribes of Siberia.Reconstructing the shamanic practices of the hunter-gatherers of Scandinavia, Evelyn Rysdyk explores the evolution of Norse shamanism from its earliest female roots to the pre-Christian Viking Age. She explains how to enter Yggdrasil, the World Tree, to travel to other realms and provides shamanic journeys to connect with the ancestral shamans of your family tree, including the Norse goddess Freyja, the very first shaman. She offers exercises to connect with the ancient goddesses of fate, the Norns, and introduces the overnight wilderness quest of útiseta for reconnecting with the powers of nature. She explains the key concepts of Ørlög and Wyrd--the two most powerful forces that shape human lives--and provides exercises for letting go of harmful behavior patterns and transforming simple knowledge into profound wisdom by connecting with Óðinn.Thoroughly examining the shamanic rituals of seiðr, the oracular magic of the Nordic cultures, the author provides step-by-step instructions to prepare for and conduct a seiðr ceremony, including creating your own seiðr staff and hood, and explores the ancestral use of shamanic songs or varðlokur to accompany the ceremony. Woven throughout these exercises, Rysdyk provides archaeological evidence from Neolithic sites supporting the long tradition of venerating wise women, grandmothers, and mothers in ancient cultures and the important role of female shamans at the heart of northern European shamanism. Providing an accessible guide for anyone trying to fulfill their shamanic callings, these powerful rituals can provide personal healing and a clear path for finding our way into a harmonious relationship with the natural world. Read more

In 1984, Jon Humboldt Gates, having spent two years studying Russian and planning his journey, left his rural home on the California north coast and landed on the shores of the Soviet Far East by ship via Japan. He spent the next eight weeks traveling by rail and automobile through Russia and Ukraine, riding the full length of the Trans-Siberian Railway, driving alone for hundreds of kilometers through Russia and traveling south to the Black Sea. Along the way, he met scores of people from all walks of life, most of whom had never met an American; an old woman with six white geese on a country road who pleaded with him for peace, a 14-year-old boy from Siberia who shared his love for dogs, a man who invited him to plunge into the icy waters of Lake Baikal, a group of musicians in Kyiv (Kiev in 1984) who became the seed of a transnational music project, and an ice cream flavor Baskin-Robbins had never imagined. He formed deep friendships, some that were lasting, others that were celebrated in the moment.First published in 1988, this second edition is being re-released in the midst of a great tragedy across the frontier of Russia and Ukraine. These events could never have been imagined in 1984. Many of the people in this travelogue are from Ukraine and Russia, and a few from other Soviet republics. No matter where they were from, people across the USSR in the waning days of the nation were universally hopeful for a better world, a peaceful future, and they enthusiastically welcomed a foreign traveler in their midst. Read more

No one in their right mind travels across Siberia in the middle of winter in a modified Russian jeep, with only a CD player (which breaks on the first day) for company. But Jacek Hugo-Bader is no ordinary traveler.As a fiftieth birthday present to himself, Jacek Hugo-Bader sets out to drive from Moscow to Vladivostok, traversing a continent that is two and a half times bigger than America, awash with bandits, and not always fully equipped with roads.But if his mission sounds deranged it is in keeping with the land he is visiting. For Siberia is slowly dying ― or, more accurately, killing itself. This is a traumatized post-Communist landscape peopled by the homeless and the hopeless: alcoholism is endemic, as are suicides, murders, and deaths from AIDS. As he gets to know these communities and speaks to the people, Hugo-Bader discovers a great deal of tragedy, but also dark humor to be shared amongst the reindeer shepherds, the former hippies, the modern-day rappers, the homeless and the sick, the shamans, and the followers of ‘one of the six Russian Christs,’ just one of the many arcane religions that flourish in this isolated, impossible region. Read more

In 2010, Sarah Marquis embarked on a perilous journey: alone and on foot, she walked ten thousand miles across the Gobi Desert, from Siberia, through Thailand, to the Australian outback. Relying on hunting and her own wits, she traversed fever-haunted jungles and scorching deserts, braved harassment from drug dealers, the Mafia, and camp raids from thieves on horseback. Surviving dehydration, dengue fever delirium and crippling infection, Sarah experienced a raw and spiritual communion after three years of walking at the base of a tree in the plains of Australia. Through an inspirational journey, Wild by Nature explores what it is to adventure as a woman in the most dangerous of circumstances, and what it is to be truly alone in the wild. Read more

Can you name anyone who has published a detailed map of Siberia? I cannot! This is one of the largest geographical regions on earth, comparable in magnitude to the Sahara or Gobi desert areas, or the vast Prairie regions of Canada, but it has never had a travel map. Well, now it does and the last frontier of mapping the world has been breached. The part of Russia east of the Ural Mountains is vast; there is no other word to describe the enormity of this region of grassland and tundra. Technically, it does not extend all the way to the Pacific Ocean, but it does go from the Arctic Ocean to the Chinese and Mongolian borders. This is not a part of the world well traveled, but it could become so with a good, detailed map/ We start in the west at Omsk on the Irtysh River, where the northern and southern branches of the Trans-Siberian Railway line cross each other. I am afraid that most of the cities of the region would not be well-known, but I notice NOvosibirsk, Irkutsk, and Lake Baikal. This is wilderness with a capital W, a region waiting to be discovered by intrepid travelers. Go for it! You can actually drive across Siberia now, as well as go by train. We actually discovered a road going all the way to the Arctic Ocean! Map size: 27*39" Legend Includes: Roads by classification, Rivers and Lakes, National Park, Airports, Points of Interests, Highways, Main Roads, Zoos, Fishing, and much more... Read more

In his eightieth year, Colin Thubron takes a dramatic and often treacherous journey from the Amur's secret source to its giant mouth, covering almost 3,000 miles.'Thubron on top form. Richly detailed, immaculately written and full of insights and encounters that bring a complex corner of the world to life' MICHAEL PALINRising in the Mongolian mountains and flowing through Siberia to the Pacific, the Amur River forms the tense border between Russia and China. This is the most densely fortified frontier on Earth.Harassed by injury and by arrest from the local police, Thubron makes his way along both the Russian and Chinese shores. By the time he reaches the river's desolate end, a whole, pivotal world has come alive.'A masterpiece' William Dalrymple'Unforgettable' Antony Beevor'An epic journey along a frozen, fraught frontier... Fascinating' The Times'This book is a triumph' Daily TelegraphWinner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award 2022 Read more

In The Great Soul of Siberia, renowned tiger researcher Sooyong Park tracks three generations of Siberian tigers living in remote southeastern Russia. Reminiscent of the way Timothy Treadwell (the so-called Grizzly Man) immersed himself in the lives of bears, Park sets up underground bunkers to observe the tigers, living thrillingly close to these beautiful but dangerous apex predators. At the same time, he draws from twenty years of experience and research to focus on the Siberian tigers’ losing battle against poaching and diminishing habitat. Over the two years of his harrowing stakeout, Park’s poignant and poetic observations of the tigers draw a fiercely compassionate portrait of these elusive, endangered creatures. Read more

From rafts made from old germ-warfare suits and felled logs to lifejackets stitched together from soccer balls and wine bladders, river running in the former Soviet Union has evolved much like Australian wildlife, completely free of outside influences. Brothers on the Bashkaus follows the exploits of one of the first groups of Westerners to experience this foreign style of rafting on a white-knuckled, 26-day trip down the Bashkaus River, one of the hardest whitewater runs in all Siberia.In the early 1990s, armed with little more than former guiding experience and the prestigious Shipton/Tilman grant from W. L. Gore and Associates--the first of its kind ever awarded for a river expedition -- four Americans stumble into a chance encounter with ten Latvians and soon find themselves on one of the wildest rides in the world. Along the way they deal with everything from language barriers to armed horsemen and rapids lined with memorials to those who perished before them. They battle the elements and fear starvation, finding sustenance in pork fat, sugar cubes, and fish-eyeball soup along the way.More than just a great adventure story, Brothers on the Bashkaus combines a fascinating study of a culture and history with a riveting play-by-play of the paddling maneuvers and survival skills needed to meet the day to day challenges in the canyon. Thrown together with a common mission, these men soon discover the bonding qualities of the river, a medium that dissolves cultural barriers as easily as sediment. The Bashkaus creates a common bond regardless of race, religion, or nationality--one in which strangers truly come together as brothers. Read more

This is M.A. Czaplicka's review of the literature about Shamanism in Siberia, excerpted from a longer ethnographic work. Siberian Shamanism is important topic because the practice continued there up until historic times, and so there are reliable modern accounts. The details of the shamanistic journey appear to be largely consistent throughout this culture region. This extended description contains important source material on Shamanism.--J.B. Hare Read more

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★ Russian Words That Will Make You Want to Learn Russian ★The Russian language is the perfect canvas for swear words.The flexibility of the language allows people to make use of the limited vocabulary and transform it and join existing words to form all sorts of profanity.But leave that to the pros for now and get started with the basic swear words that you are very likely to hear in Russia.After all, if Russia’s greatest poet Pushkin used them in his poems, why can’t we?This Russian Swear Words Adult Coloring Book has 17 single-sided designs and filled with hilarious offensive quotes explained in English. Additionally, It contains 20 mandala pages to relieve stress.This book is perfect for anyone who is learning Russian or is visiting any Russian speaker country.Product Details:Perfect for all coloring mediumsPremium matte-finish cover designLarge format 8.5" x 11.0" (22cm x 28cm) pagesDurable coverEach image is printed in high resolution to offer crisp, sharp designs that enable trouble free coloring and high quality display.Each image is printed in high resolution to offer crisp, sharp designs that enable trouble free coloring and high quality display.Let's get started.“Buy Now with 1-Click”, and Get Your Copy Now! Read more

Jenkins relates the invigorating experiences he shared as part of a team of three Americans and four Russians who set the world record for bicycling, riding from Vladivostock to Leningrad. "An epic tour of one of the world's most forbidding and legendary regions."--San Francisco Chronicle. Illustrations. Read more

Snow-dusted or sun-kissed steppe and taiga, the Gobi Desert and the Great Wall – the Trans-Siberian routes unite landscapes and experiences into the journey of a lifetime.Inspirational images, 3D illustrations, the best of local knowledge and recommendations from our expert authors.Planning features and top itineraries to help you plan the perfect trip.Local secrets and hidden travel gems that will make your trip unique.Plus in-depth information on a range of routes including the Trans-Mongolian, the Trans-Manchurian, and the BAM (Baikal-Amur Mainline).Coverage includes: Planning chapters, Moscow, St Petersburg, Moscow to Yekaterinburg, Yekaterinburg to Krasnoyarsk, Lake Baikal: Krasnoyarsk to Ulan-Ude, Ulan-Ude to Vladivostok, Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), Trans-Mongolian Line, Trans-Manchurian Line, Beijing, Understand and Survival chapters. Read more