Frazier caught what he calls Russia-love and spent years going back, culminating in a nine-thousand-mile drive across Siberia in a used van with two Russian guides who argued the whole way. The book is that trip plus the whole history stuffed in around it: The Decembrists, the exile system, the Trans-Siberian, Genghis Khan’s route, the camps, and the ordinary business of getting gas and finding a place to camp among the mosquitoes. He’s the funniest travel writer going and the digressions are the point. He also went back in winter, on purpose.
Travels in Siberia