The Wandering Scot

An occasional travel journal

  • Baikonur Tour Logistics

    I visited the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Dec 14th-17th 2010 for the Soyuz TMA-20 launch. (Here are highlights and a photo archive.)  For anyone considering this trip, here are a few details on tour logistics.

    Permissions and Entry Formalities

    Baikonur is inside of Kazakhstan but is under Russian administration. It is a secure zone, with controlled access.

    You can NOT travel around Baikonur on your own. You need to have special permission from the Baikonur authorities, which means that you need to travel as part of an authorized tour group, with a guide. It can take up to 45 days to get this permission, so book early.

    We flew from Moscow to Baikonur. At the Baikonur airport there were both Russian and Kazakh officials meeting our flight. Our Baikonur guide was waiting for us, with a permit listing our names. The Russian official looked quickly at our passports to check that our names were on this approved list and then waved us through. Our passports were not stamped. The tour permit meant we had permission to visit the Baikonur area, but not to enter the rest of Kazakhstan.

    I asked our guide what would happen if I had a Kazakh visa? She assured me that in that case I could ask the Kazakh official at the airport to stamp a Kazakh entry stamp into my passport and then I would be able to travel on into other parts of Kazakhstan. Note that I didn’t actually try it, and perhaps my guide was mistaken. But it seems like a plausible solution: there must be occasional travellers who would like to enter at Baikonur and then travel to other parts of Kazakhstan.

    You will need a double-entry Russia visa if you plan to fly back to Moscow.

    During the tour, our guide was always with us. There were frequent security checkpoints inside the Cosmodrome. I think our guide was supposed to stay with us even in Baikonur City itself, but in practice no one seemed to mind when I quietly wandered out of the hotel and strolled around the city on my own.

    Flights

    There are regular Ural Air flights from Moscow Domodedovo (DME) to Baikonur Krainiy airport.  Currently these leave Moscow around 09:10 on Tuesday and Friday mornings, returning from Baikonur around 16:50 on Tuesday and Friday afternoons. [Update June 2012: The Ural Air flights seem to have been discontinued. Drat.  That leaves only charter flights.]

    The tour companies will schedule your trip around the available flights. For example, with the current Ural Air schedule, for a Wednesday launch they would fly you in on Tuesday and back out on Friday (a four day tour). For a Monday launch they would fly you in on Friday and out on Tuesday (a five day tour).

    If you are very lucky, you might arrive two days ahead of the launch, in which case you will be able to see the Soyuz rollout from the assembly building to the launch pad. The tour companies promise this as a feature of their tours, but you need to be a little lucky for the flights and launch times to align correctly.

    Tour Companies

    Several Moscow tour agencies offer Baikonur tours from Moscow. I went with Country of Tourism (aka BestRussian) who currently charge 3200 Euros for a shared room or 3500 Euros for a single. RusAdventures also look good, they currently charge 4600 dollars.

    The Moscow agencies don’t actually operate the tours themselves. In Baikonur we were met by a guide from a local Baikonur company “TourService”, who told us they operated all the tours from Moscow.

    So the main differences between the Moscow agencies are in the support they offer at the Moscow end (for example RusAdventures include Moscow airport transfers and a Moscow hotel stay before and after the trip). Also, keep an eye on whether they are promising a single room, as unless you are explicitly promised a single you may find yourself sharing with a stranger. This happened to two people in our group.

    I was happy with the support offered by BestRussian. They did a good job of keeping me up-to-date on the shifting launch schedule and were helpful on Moscow departure and return.

    It is possible you might be able to save some money by bypassing the Moscow agencies and arranging a tour directly with TourService. (In Russian ТУР СЕРВИС. In English they spell their name as TourService or TourServise or TourServis or TurServis.) I haven’t been able to find a website for them unfortunately. The Bradt Kazakhstan guidebook recommends them and says their email is BaikonurTour@bk.ru Another possible email is BaikonurTourServise@mail.ru

    Visiting Baikonur from Kazakhstan

    In 2008 I was visiting Kazakhstan and I tried to arrange a visit from Almaty to Baikonur for a Progress cargo launch. But I failed miserably. I tried to contact about six different agencies who claimed to offer Baikonur launch tours, without getting anywhere. The normally very helpful StanTours gently advised me that they were unable to recommend any tour agency. You may have better luck, but it seems that the launch tours are targeted at tourists coming from Moscow. If you want to try visiting Baikonur from Kazakhstan, I would suggest contacting TourService in Baikonur and perhaps arrange for them to pick you up and drop you off at the Baikonur train station (the station name is Tiuratam aka Tyuratam).

    Guide Books & Launch Status Updates

    The Lonely Planet Central Asia guide doesn’t have much to say about Baikonur.  The Bradt Kazakhstan guide is much better, with eight useful pages, but no map.  Baikonur city maps are hard to find, but TourService gave us a detailed city and cosmodrome map as an arrival gift.

    The Russian space agency RosCosmos publish frequent English language press releases, including lots of information on the progress of any upcoming launches.   CBS news publish detailed launch schedule information.  A broader overview of upcoming launches is available at SpaceflightNow.

    Tour Details

    Our tour group in December had a total of six people. We were told we were all the tourists visiting the launch. There were also press and various Roscosmos/ESA/NASA guests, but still probably under 200 total observing the launch. Our little group of six travelled in a small minibus. Having such a small group worked out really well. Most of us were of course really keen space buffs.

    We were told there might be as many as 100 visitors for a summer launch. “Half students, half tourists”. Apparently people avoid winter launches from a fear that they will be very cold. In fact in December it was only a few degrees below freezing; it felt chilly rather than arctic. Based on my experience I’d recommend a winter launch: the small group size made up for the chill. Baikonur is in a very dry area, so you are unlikely to see much snow.

    At Baikonur, we were put in the soviet-era Tsentralnaya Hotel. This is a little dated and basic, but quite adequate. We were taken to a nearby restaurant for all our meals (including breakfast). The food was good and plentiful!

    The tour companies make various claims about how far you will be from the launch. This will vary a little depending on which pad is used. The TMA-20 launch was from the Gagarin pad (hurrah!) and according to my GPS log, our observation point was 1.4 km (0.9 miles) from the pad. Which is pretty good.

    We were allowed to drive over to the pad about one hour after the launch. We were allowed up to about 50 meters from the pad, so we saw the launch gantries up quite close. But (despite what the tour companies promise) we were not allowed near the flame pit and we did not get to feel any warm concrete!

    In addition to the launch, as part of our tour we got to:

    • visit the Baikonur Cosmodrome Museum (which was great fun)
    • visit the Baikonur City Museum (rather less interesting)
    • clamber around on a Buran/Energia transporter vehicle (it’s #$%@ enormous)
    • walk around on the Buran/Energia pad (with an enthusiastic narrative from one of the Buran engineers)
    • visit inside the Soyuz assembly building (seeing boosters and an assembled launch vehicle)
    • visit the unexpectedly interesting International Space School, a local children’s school which just happens to be well stocked with original artifacts from the Soviet space program.
    • visit Gagarin’s cottage, Korolev’s house, the Gagarin summerhouse, etc.
    • visit various monuments in Baikonur City, including laying flowers at the Nedelin monument.

    The tour was well organized and our guide was very helpful. At various of the sites there would be an on-site Russian speaking guide and our guide would translate.

    For souvenirs we were taken to Baikonur’s main market, where a few stalls sell mostly Kazakh souvenirs (e.g. hats and toy camels). Led by a very determined rocket-seeking Frenchman, we eventually hunted down a good selection of space related souvenirs (such as model Soyuz rockets) cunningly hidden in an optician’s shop. Take the Arbat about two blocks north from the main square, and look for a small optician’s about ten meters west down a side street.

    Conclusion

    Overall it was a really fun trip. If you are a space buff, I strongly recommend it!

    If you are planning a Baikonur trip and have any questions, feel free to email me: “thewanderingscot” at the site “yandex.com” and I’ll do my best to answer.

  • Baikonur: Soyuz TMA-20 Launch

    I was at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to watch the Soyuz TMA-20 launch.  It was spectacular.  I strongly recommend it.  (Tour Logistics.)  (More Baikonur photos.)

    I found myself in a tour group of six: our guide told us we were all the tourists visiting the launch. There were also some press, and various Roscosmos/ESA/NASA guests, but it looked like there were still well under 200 observers in total. So it was a much more intimate event than a shuttle launch at Kennedy.

    Before the launch we got to see lots of cool toys from the Soviet space program, including a lot of the machinery for the Energia/Buran shuttle. This included sitting in the pilot seats of a full-scale Buran mock-up, clambering over a giant Buran transporter vehicle and then waking around a launch pad. The transporter and launch pad felt like relics from some alien civilization: enormous, exotic, and standing mysteriously abandoned.

    Our hosts still suffered from a little Cold War competitive spirit: we were vigorously assured that the N1 rocket was the most powerful launcher ever, and that Buran was much larger/better than the shuttle. (This is not quite how Western sources see it!)

    They let our little group into the Soyuz assembly building, so we got to see some Soyuz boosters and then a complete Soyuz launch vehicle up close. A lady guard wagged an indulgent finger when I dared to reach over and touch an engine.
    The TMA-20 launch itself was striking. On the pad, the Soyuz sits slightly below ground level, with about half of the first stage boosters below ground. So we couldn’t directly see the initial ignition, just a sudden out-pour of smoke and spreading fire across to one side, which for a fraction of a second made me fear an accident, but no, the craft started to rise and then abruptly there was an intensely bright flame, presumably as we could now see the engines directly for the first time, a dazzling bright fireball, rising very quickly into the sky. Then a few second later a very loud rumbling sound arrived. After we first saw the engines, I never saw the craft itself – the engines were far, far too bright.
    It was spectacular. Much more striking than the STS-129 shuttle launch I saw, probably both because we were so much closer (0.9 miles versus 6 miles) and because this was a night launch.
    They let us visit close to the launch pad (which was the original Gagarin pad!) about an hour after the launch. So we could see the re-assembled launch gantries and the launch pad itself up close. But they wouldn’t let us into the flame pit, so we couldn’t actually feel the residual launch heat. Drat.

    If you are a space buff, I highly recommend this tour.  I’ve posted a page on Baikonur Logistics to provide more information on entry formalities, flights, tour companies, etc.

  • Lord Cochrane in Valparaiso

    Lord Cochrane in Stained Class, Valparaiso

    For all you Patrick O’Brian fans:

    In Valparaiso, Chile, I discovered that Lord Cochrane is regarded as one of the great Chilean naval heroes and is suitably commemorated in Chile’s main port city, with a street named for him, a large monument, a stained glass window in the Naval Museum, and inside the Museum a large room honouring his career and exploits.

    Cochrane (see his wikipedia page) was a mad Scotsman (yes, yet another) who was one of the main inspirations for Jack Aubrey. For example, Jack’s boarding of the Cacafuego closely follows Cochrane’s description of capturing the Spanish Xebec El Gamo. And like Jack, Cochrane was first dismissed and then reinstated in the Royal Navy after conviction in a stock swindle.

    I’d forgotten that Cochrane was also the founder of the Chilean navy. So it was an unexpected pleasure to find him so prominently remembered in Valparaiso!

    Lord Cochrane Monument, Valparaiso
    Lord Cochrane Monument, Valparaiso

  • Stalin in Virginia

    Stalin in VirginiaThe US National D-Day Memorial is in the small rural town of Bedford, VA. Overall it’s a fine, elegant and well designed monument, commemorating a key WWII event.  But it has recently become noteworthy for a certain small addition…

    The Memorial include busts of the principal allied commanders and of all the principal allied leaders. The Stalin bust is on the unfashionable, little visited Eastern edge of the Memorial.  It is the only publicly displayed Stalin bust that I know of in the US. The biographical plaque takes prominent note of the elimination of the Kulaks, the Great Terror, and the relocation of nations.

    Unfortunately all the leader busts are quite weak. Stalin is a bland representation of a stern faced foreigner with a moustache. It lacks the personality one sees in the better Stalin busts or photographs. There is no hint of the sly, insightful look in the eye, or that subtly malicious, knowing smile. Oh well: the Churchill is even worse and the Truman is almost unrecognizable.

    Other parts of the Memorial are much better. There is a well conceived memorial pool with bronze soldiers wading to the beach from a landing craft. A series of hidden high pressure fountains erupt sporadically among the troops. Noisy and unpredictable, they simulate incoming rifle fire and add dynamism to the scene.

    Well worth a visit if you are in central Virginia.

  • Moscow: Museum of Cosmonautics

    I took the Metro out to the VDNKh stop. As you emerge, you see the stunning soaring tower of the Monument to the Conquerors of Space. 100 meters of titanium clad concrete, thrusting a rocket ship into the cosmos. Build back in 1964, as a tribute to the bold new Soviet Cosmonauts and the Brave New Soviet Future, it seems like a strange relic of an almost forgotten past, but it is also truly striking: sometimes Soviet art could make the leap to inspirational.
    The base of the Monument has a much more mundane example of Soviet art: a dull triumphal parade of heroic workers, with Lenin pointing the way.
    Gagarin
    		 Nearby are busts of the early Cosmonauts and a full statue (in almost Lenin-like splendor) of Sergei Korolev, the legendary Chief Designer of the Soviet rocket program.
    Korolev
    Korolev

    Underground, below the Monument, is the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics.  This has a large and impressive collection of spacecraft and cosmonaut paraphernalia.  There are many models and replicas, but also some startling original pieces.

    In the entry hall is a replica of Gagarin’s Vostok-1 capsule.  (The original capsule is at the RSC Energia Museum outside of Moscow.)   The capsule was more spacious than I expected – it seemed significantly bigger than John Glenn’s in the Smithsonian.



    Nearby, the stuffed doggies are Belka and Strelka, the first Space Dogs to return safely from orbit, posing beside their little capsule.


    Several of the Soyuz capsules were clearly authentic, with real re-entry burns.  I particularly liked the dramatic layout of “Cosmonauts in the Snow” with the cosmonauts awaiting their recovery helicopter.  The accompanying Soyuz craft boasts some extremely authentic looking re-entry scars.

    And there is a wide assortment of later artifacts, including Michael Collins’ Apollo suit and a replica MIR space station.

    Overall, definitely a Five Star museum.  *****

  • Moscow: Armed Forces Museum

    Moscow’s Central Museum of the Armed Forces doesn’t specify a country in its title, but the answer becomes clear when you step inside. This is the Armed Forces of the USSR, comrade!

    Allowing for the Soviet focus, it is an excellent museum of its kind, well laid out, with many shiny artifacts. Outside are arrays of planes, tanks and missiles.

    The center piece is a hall celebrating the Soviet WWII Victory.  Two standard Soviet victory images are the raising of the Red Banner over the Reichstag and the throwing of Nazi banners into the dust in Red Square.  Provincial museums must make do with photographs or paintings, but this is Moscow and the Holy Relics themselves are on display!

    A perspex case houses the Banner of Victory from the Reichstag. While I was watching, several groups of school age children in military uniforms were herded in to pay their somewhat puzzled respects.

    A special floor-level display case houses a sample of the captured Nazi banners from the 1945 Victory Parade, arranged in artful disarray, just as if they were freshly thrown into the dust.

    The Museum has many other halls. In one, I found the remains of Gary Power’s U2, as recovered after being shot down over the USSR in 1960. Of course the room tells the history from the Soviet perspective, focusing on the Soviet pilots who brought down the plane.

    Soviet Museums tend to ignore the Western front in WWII (just as Western museums tend to underplay the Eastern front) so I was pleased to find a display on the D-Day Landings. There is also a propaganda painting showing happy celebrations as US and Soviet troops link up in Germany. Even more unusually there is a small display commemorating the US material aid to the Soviets, with a photo celebrating the 5000th US plane (!) being delivered from Alaska to Siberia.

    		 Lenin and the Red Army

    Practicalities: Open Wed-Sun 10 to 5. GPS 55.784956,37.616669. Take the metro to Dostoevskaya then go about 100m North on Ul Sovetskaya Armee and look for the ICBM.

  • Abkhazia and Sukhumi

    Before I arrived in Georgia, I had applied to the Abkhazian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sukhumi for a visa to visit Abkhazia. After a little toing-and-froing I was assured that my visa would be waiting in Sukhumi and my name would be on the “approved list” at the incoming border checkpoint.

    I took a taxi from Zugdidi to the Abkhazia border, arriving at around 8:50am. On the Georgian side, there was much careful writing down of my particulars (name, nationality, passport number, date of birth, place of birth) and a couple of phone calls “to officer” to get the OK. Everyone was quite friendly and it took about ten minutes.  I was warned to beware of thieves on the Abkhazian side.

    On the way towards the border, still on the Georgian administered side, there is a strange sculpture of a giant revolver pointing towards Abkhazia, with the barrel tied off.  Interpretation is left to the viewer.

    There was then a long trudge, perhaps 1.5 km, down a road and over a bridge to the Abkhazia checkpoint. Naturally the route was in dismal repair, with giant puddles.  There was moderate rain. Sigh.

    On the Abkhazia side, with no thieves anywhere in sight, a cheerful young passport officer with no English confirmed that my name (with maybe a dozen others) was on a handwritten list on his desk. I was then waved through. It took less than 5 minutes.

    I was out and in the minibus for Gali around 9:30. But (perhaps due to the rain) it was a slow day and it wasn’t until around 10:30 that we had a full bus and left for Gali. We got to Gali around 11:00. After a little dithering, and the persistent assertion that there would be no bus for several hours, I agreed to pay for a taxi to Sukhumi. We zoomed off, then a few minutes later abruptly U-turned and zoomed back. It turned out the driver needed to go home to collect his license (I guess he normally doesn’t need it?).

    The area of Abkhazia around Gali is very decrepit. Although many buildings seemed OK, I also saw several ruined buildings, probably from the 1993 war. Much of the farmland seemed untended and growing wild. The road was very bad, and we were continually veering from side to side to avoid potholes and puddles. (The rain was now heavy.) After we reached the coast (Ochamchire) the road and countryside improved dramatically. By Sukhumi the road was fine.

    Abkhazia Visa (redacted)The driver dropped me off at the Hotel Ritsa. I dutifully hunted down the correct bank (“Сбербанк”, hidden in the Customs Yard) to pay my 641 Russian Rubles visa fee, got my payment voucher and headed off to the MFA building. While searching for the Consular office, I accidentally wander into a small theater area and hurriedly backed out again. But after some searching, I found that this really was the room being used by the Consular Section and the people on the stage with desks and PCs were the consular staff, not actors holding a rehearsal. Eight minutes later, I was duly issued my Abkhazia visa. Hurrah!!!

    The Hotel Ritsa is trying hard to be a first rate hotel. It has been recently renovated and my room has first rate fittings, with rather erratic installation.  For example, the elegant chrome toilet roll holder fell off in my hand and all the faucets were loose. But it was actually all fine and comfortable, just slightly eccentric.

    Later, I ambled around central Sukhumi in occasional drizzle.  The city is a little drab, but the central areas have now (mostly) been repaired.   I  passed the burned out, but structurally intact, Presidential Palace. (A victim of the 1993 war.) There is a large empty plinth in front, which I suspect once held Lenin.

    The following morning, the rain stopped and the day cleared up nicely: Sukhumi is much more fun in the sun!  It is at about the same latitude as Nice after all.

    The Abkhazians clearly love their palm trees and their beautiful pebbly beach. I dutifully wandered through the pleasant Botanical Gardens and admired their many semi-tropical plants and also their fine water lilies.

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