Murmansk

I am working on an idea that I first got a couple of years ago, but never got very far with due to the paperwork of getting a visa to Russia: Going to Murmansk, the Kola peninsula.

As much as I love to go adventure travelling, sleeping at borderline dodgy hotels, what is really outside my comfort zone is paperwork and administration. But this time, I need to get over my fear of paperwork.

Plenty of people have done it already, and there are agencies you can pay to deal with it all: application, photo (you just upload your photo and they will print it in the right dimensions for the application), invitation letter, etc. So really, there are no excuses.

The route

Clockwise, along the Norwegian coast and fjords, all the way to Nordkapp. That would be a week or so. I think.

Then into Russia at the Storskog border crossing, south east of Kirkenes. A short detour would take me (us?) to the deepest hole in the world, the Kola Superdeep Borehole.And it is man made. It is a hole drilled 12 kilometers straight down. It is not the longest, but it is the deepest. How cool is that?

The landscape on the Kola peninsula should be very cool.

Going to Murmansk to check out what is going on there. They seem to claim Murmansk is the city of friendly people, so that sounds great.

Then south into St. Petersburg, aka Leningrad, aka Petrograd. Big city, the second largest after Moscow. We usually avoid larger cities, but if we know what we are aiming at and have a route plotted, outside rush hour, then it is usually not too bad.

Then west into Finland, continuing into Sweden and back home.

That could be a pretty cool ride, don’t you think?