Travels in Siberia

Ah, my journey to Siberia with Ian Frazier has ended, and I'm sad that it finally did. It took me almost two weeks to read what it took him seventeen years to travel. While I'm glad it was him instead of me who went to all of that effort, I really enjoyed reading this book. Frazier's quirky sense of humor adds a lot to the atmosphere of the book, and I found myself smiling frequently as I read. Russia fascinated Frazier, and he could only sate his appetite by going there. Siberia drew him like no other place in the country, and at the time of the book's publication, he had gone there five times. The book covers all of these trips. Having been to Romania myself shortly after the fall of Communism, the book brought back many previously show more forgotten memories for me. While probably not the book for everyone, I found it fascinating and hated to see it end. I doubt if anything else will measure up for a long while. show less

As well-respected travel writer Ian Frazier approached middle-age, he found himself drawn to Russia, particularly Siberia, "the greatest horrible country in the world." Between the early 1990's and 2009, he made five trips to Siberia (in addition to numerous trips to European Russia). This book chronicles, as the title denotes, Frazier's "travels in Siberia." But it is much more, including a history of Siberia, from the Mongol hordes, to the exiled Decembrists, to the Stalin gulags, to the present day Putin's nationalization of the oil companies exploiting Siberia's vast oil reserves.

The book opens with the statement, "Officially, there is no such place as Siberia." For many people, Siberia is not an actual place, but a metaphor. The show more book's five parts roughly correspond to Frazier's five trips. Part I describes his first trip to Ulan-Ude and Lake Baikul. In this part, he describes the soot, garbage and mosquitos that are ubiquitous, as well as the "unbelievably disgusting" public restrooms. (I travelled to European Russia many years ago and well remember this latter detail.) He also discusses many of the prior Siberian explorers (including Chekov), and quotes liberally from their various journals and memoirs.

Part I also includes his second journey to Siberia, when he flew from Alaska to the province of Chukota on the far northeastern coast of Siberia just across the Bering Strait from America. On this trip, he stayed in the prisoner-built city of Povideniya, now consisting mainly of decrepit and crumbling military installations. He also spent time on the tundra in a fishing camp with some indigenous Siberians.

Part II is mostly devoted to Russia's history, as well as Frazier's preparations for a planned road trip across Siberia.

Part III is devoted to that road trip, from St. Petersburg to Vladisvostok in a tempramental van with Sergei and Volodya, his two Russian guides, who he alternately mistrusts and trusts, and with whom he regularly bickers. He states, "Travel, like much else in life, can be more fun to read about than do....{M}oments of soaring consciousness are rare. Worries and annoyances...tend to deromanticize the brain."

Some of the places visited on this trip:

--Ekatrinaburg--the westernmost Siberian city where the last tsar and his family were killed.

--Tobolsk-the former Siberian capital, where the chemist Mendeleev is from.

--Omsk--"The usual row on row of crumbling high-rise apartment buildings, tall roadside weeds, smoky traffic, and blowing dust." Dostoevsky spent prison time here.

--Novosibirsk--established in 1893 during the building of the Trans-Siberian railroad. Now the third largest city in Russia.

Kuznets Basin--beriddled with strip mines and large scale environmental damage.

Achinsk--where most of Russia's concrete is manufactured. "...an almost dead zone."

--Krasnoyarsk--according to Chekov the "most beautiful city in Siberia."

--Tulun--"When Russian cities are uncheerful they don't fool around, and Tulun was as uncheerful as they come." "...{T}he usual dust and heat and drabness were abetted by a special extramiserable quality...."

Irkutsk--"the onetime Paris of Siberia." Many Decembrists were exiled here.

Chernyshevsk--From Chernyshevsk to Magdagachi there was no vehicle road, and all cross-country drivers had to stop and load their vehicles onto Trans-Siberian railroad car and truck carriers. There was always a bottleneck here, with routine waits of 48 hours.

Volochaevka--where the last battle of the Russian civil war was fought.

Frazier arrived at the Siberian Pacific coast on September 11, 2001. He waited several days (a week?) in Vladisvostok while all incoming air traffic in the U.S. was grounded.

A few years later, Frazier decided that for a fuller experience he needed to travel in Siberia in wintertime. Part IV describes his winter journey in northern Siberia, traveling from east to west. He flew into Irkutsk, and went south to Ulan-Ude. He then drove the Lake Baikul ice road to the railroad city of Severobaikalik on the northern shore of Lake Baikul.

Through-out his trips, Frazier frequently mentions his desire to visit a former gulag camp, only to be discouraged/denied by Sergei, his guide. Finally, at the end of his fourth trip, travelling from Yakutsk to Topolinoe, on the rudimentary road between Tyoplyi Kliuch and Topolinoe, he was able to stop for a short while at an abandoned ruin of a gulag camp. "What struck me then and still strikes me now was the place's overwhelming aura of absence. The deserted prison camp just sat there--unexcused, un-torn-down, unexplained."

In Part V, Frazier discusses his final trip, made in 2009, without guides, to the city of Novosibirsk. Much of this part of the book deals with the state and mood of current (in 2009) Russia--the ascendancy of Stalin's reputation, the vast mineral reserves in Siberia and their exploitation, climate change as it affects Siberia (giant methane gas bubbles and "drunken forests"), Putin, and other issues.

Although Frazier called Russia the greatest horrible country, he states that he no longer tries to reconcile the great with the horrible. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and found it to be both fact-filled and entertaining. I did feel that it could have been a bit shorter (with less of what one reviewer called "what the author had for breakfast" stuff). I was also a bit disappointed that Frazier had so little personal contact with former gulag camps, which is the first thing that pops to mind for many of us when Siberia is mentioned. Nevertheless, a fascinating read.

4 stars show less

Ian Frazier's is a masterful writer and his Travels in Siberia may be his best work He weaves nuggets of history and geography with his intrepid travels through the land mass of Siberia--one-twelfth of the earth's land. Before making his first foray into the land, he approaches his subject from Alaska, never quite making it. In his second venture, he travels by van eastward into ever remote areas of the land. I especially appreciate his boyish enthusiasm for his adventures and the travelers like George Keenan, a fellow Midwesterner who went before him in the 1860s. Indeed, he remarks on how the Ohio natives and other Midwesterners make up a disproportionate number of American travelers who were drawn to Siberia. Frazier has the ability show more to bring the exotic world of Siberia to life with him back to New York where he finds sensory reminders of Siberia in sable coats and Russian gas stations. In a later trip he finds one of the hundreds of abandoned gulags connecting it as the physical symbol of Stalin's cruel mind. His powers of perception observe both incredible beauty in the land, women, and food as well as dark stores of horror by travelers driven mad from their travels. Read it. show less

Ian Frazier's "Travels in Siberia" is an excellent travel book on a place I do not want to travel to. In it, he reports on five visits to that enormous place, intertwined with interesting reports on Siberian and Russian history, and with vignettes of (relatively) current Russian mores and manners. ("Relatively" because the book was written in 2010: an update would be much appreciated). Frazier's reporting is personal, witty and often horrifying. Travel in Siberia was incredibly difficult: when he took it, the main trans-Siberian road had a gap that had to be filled in by hauling cars and passengers across a 500 mile roadless waste. Cold is of course a feature for all but a few months of the year, but so are bugs, and ubiquitous show more mountains of trash. Some bits sound interesting -- Lake Baikal, for one -- but in general the book damped my already minimal interest in going to Siberia. For arm chair travellers, however, it's a great read. show less

I really enjoyed this somewhat laconic and dryly funny travel memoir about Frazier's several trips to Siberia. His adventures were fun to follow- real seat of the pants traveling, in a part of the world still resembling wilderness. I love his crankypants honesty and self-deprecating humor, and all the information he shares about the history and people of this spectacular and hidden part of our world. Full review: http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/2012/12/review-travels-in-siberia-by-ian-frazie...

The title is a bit of a misnomer. There isn't that much Siberia to begin with (the writer doesn't get to Siberia proper before page 200), nor is there much travelling going on: speeding non-stop across the Eurasian land mass in a van doesn't really provide for much of a a travelogue. "Clueless Petulant Older White Male" would do this book more justice. Frazier writes well (when he takes the effort - see below), but for a travel writer he has a severe lack of empathy (the patronising descriptions of his Russian companions, who for him are little more than modern-day Dersu Uzalas, are cringe-worthy, and the way he insidiously implies that some laughing and dancing with Siberian belles by his companions led to much more, won't have made show more for a warm welcome when these Russian men returned home in the Russian West. What happens in Siberia, clearly doesn't stay in Siberia, as far as Frazier is concerned). This is especially ironic since the author has a bit of a roving eye, and marks virtually every Siberian city for the beauty of its womenfolk. In spite of his own frequent assertions to the contrary, his Russian is clearly flimsy at best. He doesn't seem to realise that female family names are different from male names (he keeps going on about Princess Trubetskoy), and other painfully tentative conversations indicate that he has a very weak grasp of the language. But since he spends most of his travelling time holed up in the back of the van, sulking, this might only be a minor detail.
Despite allegedly having been 15 years in the making, some parts of the book are still rather sketchy: entire pages are little more than copies from his diary entries, as the staccato shorthand and irrelevant details indicate. Other parts are verbatim translations of conversations which he must have taped - translations that makes them sound like mad scientists from the '50s. These and other elements make the book feel a bit ramshackle.
Frazier complains (a lot) about his Russian companions growing distant for no discernible reason. When you read this book, you will understand why. What with his sulking and derogatory, clichéd view of Russia and its inhabitants, it is a small wonder they didn't push him under the ice. show less

It is a very interesting and well written account of Frazier’s ultimate trip across Siberia, few people, and I am sure even few Russians have ever undertaken. Throughout this journey, or many trips he took in the end, Frazier shows true engagement with the country and its history and a real affection for its people. It’s a fascinating account, even though I think that he might have missed something very Russian there. Maybe, the fact that he didn’t drink and went to sleep early, missing night parties at the villages he and his guides stopped by, prevented him from experiencing this very Russianness, but what he came up with is nevertheless very engaging.

I have a feeling that he tried to model his account on the Lewis and Clark show more journals, with every little thing accounted for, and even though I felt a bit surprised by this type of an account at the beginning, I really came to like it.
Frazier drew sketches of the places he visited and some of them are in the book- they are quite good actually, and I enjoyed them. Since I both listened to and read the book, I must say that he was good reading his stuff too. Overall, it was a very honest and enjoyable read. show less