A letter from Russia: Around the world in 100 days
By BOB BATES
IT has been some time since I have communicated with you, I did hope to do it more frequently but there never seemed to be enough time.
We have more or less kept to our planned schedule and the flight has been going well.
We are in Somara in Russia for a couple of days. It is not far from the border with Kazakhstan and about 150km from the Ukrainian border.
We will be in Moscow in three days and then it will be onto St Petersburg and then to Europe.
From the United Kingdom, the aircraft will stay there and I will return to PNG for about six weeks before returning to the UK and completing the remainder of the flight around the world.
Most of our time so far has been spent in Russia and there is not a lot of awareness of Papua New Guinea in Russia, but we are spreading the word at every stop that we make.
We have received good media coverage in Russia and we have been on Russian TV and in print and I have been trying to make the Russian people more aware of Papua New Guinea and what it has to offer.
The Russian people are aware of Australia and New Zealand but little is known about PNG.
This flight is of course the first flight of a light aircraft flying around the world by starting and finishing in PNG (Mt Hagen), and it is creating a lot of interest in Russia and around the world.
There are a number of reasons why it is creating a lot of interest and they are as follow:
- IT will start and finish in Mt Hagen (PNG).
- IT is 100 years since the first flight around the world happened.
- IN today’s uncertain world, it is a good news story between the peoples of the world and the bonds of aviation.
- THE combined age of the two pilots being 161 years.
The Russian people live well and have all been very friendly, they have looked after us, have treated us as though we were one of them and are very interested in what I have to tell them about my life in Papua New Guinea.
The Russian language is a problem for us but the Russian people try to speak to us in English whenever they can.
The air traffic controllers normally use the Russian language when communicating with aircraft but they save English for us and help us a lot, after all we are a small aircraft travelling at a low level and this is not what they are used to; they are normally dealing with high-flying jets. There are very few high-flying foreign jets passing over Russia these days so the air traffic controllers do not use the English language as much as they previously did, they are polite and they seem to like having the opportunity to speak English with us.
Since entering Russia, we have not met any other “tourists” and have met no one who speaks English as their mother tongue. We seem to be the only two only English-speaking people so far in the huge country of Russia.
We entered Russia in Vladivostok from Japan and will leave Russia in Saint Petersburg for Sweden. Our route so far has been as follows:
1st June – Depart Mt Hagen/Arrive Guam
3rd June – Depart Guam/Arrive Kagoshima (Japan)
5th June – Depart Kagoshima/Arrive Vladivostok (Russia)
8th June – Depart Vladivostok/Arrive Khabarovsk
9th June – Depart Khabarovsk/Arrive Blagoveshchensk
11th June – Depart Blagoveshchensk/Arrive Ulan Ude
13th June – Depart Ulan Ude/Arrive Krasnoyarsk
15th June – Depart Krasnoyarsk/Arrive Novosibirsk
17th June – Depart Novosibirsk/Arrive Omsk
19th June – Depart Omsk/Arrive Somara
We have been meeting average Russian people wherever we stop and they are fascinated with PNG. They love to travel and it is easy for them to get an online PNG visa.
However, the average Russian worker is not well paid. A lot of them do travel to places such as Thailand and Dubai.
Best regards – Bob