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Comment by mykowebhn | Hacker News Reader

On a similar note, and for a great read, I highly recommend Ian Frazier's "Travels in Siberia." I found out about it because The New Yorker had published some excerpts from it, and I was instantly hooked. Frazier's writing is both engaging and laugh-out-loud hilarious. It was written several years ago, so things are probably a lot different in Siberia now.

https://smile.amazon.com/Travels-Siberia-Ian-Frazier/dp/0312...

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Travels in Siberia is a terrific book, as is Midnight in Siberia by David Greene. Both of those books inspired my own trip through Siberia: https://www.gregkogan.com/journal/russia-trans-siberian-rail...

read two episodes - very good read. was expecting more laughs tho

Just want to say this journal is a fascinating & fun read. Thank you for sharing!

Appreciate you saying that!

Great travelogue!

I'll have to find the title, but long ago I recall my parents listening to an audiobook of a polish emigrant (to Switzerland) deciding to go around the northern hemisphere on car. Asia was crossed by driving through Siberia, though I'm not sure if he followed the same land route to Kamchatka as described in the article. This was in the early 1990s, I think it might have been just after dissolution of USSR, and more than once it was his quick talking that helped.

Ultimately, the road trip ended in USA, where highway patrol took offence to his heavily-modified Land Rover or something like that.

Romuald Koperski, A Duel with Siberia. That is my own translation from the Polish title. It is a phenomenal book, I found it in audiobook format- possibly YouTube, with a great reader. Very engaging, exciting, sometimes funny, and often philosophical. Unfortunately haven't found it in English, and have contemplated having it translated.

I would also suggest a movie called Derzu Uzala, directed by no other than Akira Kurosawa himself. It's about surveyor and a local hunter. Taking place somewhere in Easter Siberia.

It's a wonderful film, and the book it is based off of is also wonderful [1].

FWIW, both the film and the book take place north of Vladivostok in the Sikhote-Alin Mountain range and along the coast of the Sea of Japan. It reminded me of the Pacific North West in the USA and Canada, but it was just foreign enough and a little bit different to make it seem incredibly magical. For example, you would have brown bears and eagles, but you might also see Siberian Tigers. You could meet an indigenous hunter, like Derzu Uzala, but you could also meet Russians, Chinese, and Koreans. I second the recommendation for the film, and I'd also highly recommend the book.

[1] https://smile.amazon.com/Dersu-Trapper-Recovered-Classics-Ar...

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