Colin bicycled 750km along the “Road of Bones” to get from Ust Nera to Yakutsk

1. Beyond the Horizon: Part 3 pp126-169from outside Ust Nera to Irkutsk, alone(the cyclist below is actually Tim Harvey)

2. Colin bicycled 750km along the “Road of Bones” to get from Ust Nera to Yakutsk [The Road of Bones] was constructed in the Stalin era of the USSR by Dalstroy construction directorate. The first stretch was built by the inmates of the Sevvostlaglabor camp in 1932. The construction continued (by inmates of gulag camps) until 1953. The road is treated as a memorial, because the bones of the people who died while constructing it were laid beneath or around the road.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M56_Kolyma_highway_(Russia)

3. Yakutsk, Yakutian Province, Russia • Colin has been in SiIberia for 6 months • The first major city since Fairbanks, Alaska • Pop. 200,000 • A chance to send mail and repair his bicycle • Along the Lena River, the 10th longest River in the world

4. More images from Yakutsk:

5. Leaving Yakutsk:Bicycling 1150km on the M56 “highway,” south to the Trans-Siberian Highway

6. Two stops between Yakutsk and Tynda (the end of the M56): Aldan(left – the town and the river) and Neryungri(right)

7. Tynda: the end of the M56 and a major hub on the BAM rail line

8. More images from Tynda:

9. Outside of Tynda, Colin met another world-traveller: Rosie Swale-Pope who was on her journey to be the first person to jog around the world unassisted

10. Chita, Russia: 1100km from Irkutsk

11. More images from Chita

12. Crossing the Yenisey River • Familiar ground for Colin: in a previous adventure he rowed the Yenisey from its headwaters to its delta in the Arctic Ocean • The photo is of Colin • The Yenisey is the 5th longest river in the world

13. The “road” between Chita and Ulan-Ude:

14. Siberia: the land of rivers and bad roads?Crossing the Selenga River, the primary tributary of the Yenisey River

15. Ulan-Ude, Buryatia Province, Russialate April

16. More images from Ulan-Ude:note the Selenga River again, as well as the world’s largest bust of Lenin, one the USSR’s founding heroes

17. Vladimir Lenin • Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (22 April 1870 – 21 January 1924), born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, was a RussianMarxistrevolutionary and communistpolitician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years (1917–1924), as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a socialist economic system. • As a politician, Vladimir Lenin was a persuasive orator, as a political scientist his extensive theoretic and philosophical developments of Marxism produced Leninism, the pragmatic Russian application of Marxism.[1] He was also named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century.[2] • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin Marxism is philosophy a political, as well as an economic and sociological worldview, which is based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis and critique of capitalism, a theory of social change, and a view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist

18. Rounding Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world

19. Lake Baikal (bottom right is a satellite image)

20. And finally…Irkutsk, where Colin planned to wait for Tim and Yulya

21. As with all Russian cities, Irkutsk has Orthodox churches and a statue of Lenin

22. Irkutsk to Moscow:Colin formally breaks with Tim, but will meet Julie in Moscow