welcome back this is see the headline. news involves the first anniversary of its revolution or will the monuments of the monitor set himself alight and who's down families to protest movement that gave birth to the arab spring but many people in the country are frustrated as a lot of change since the uprising and still hope for real reform. kazakhstan's authorities impose a three week state of emergency in an oil town in the west of the country saying it's back under control after friday's riots that left at least eleven people dead the rest began during celebrations marking twenty years of the central asian country want independence from the soviet union. on the trial of that seventy i

knew you called voters that iran provided material support to al qaida or the nine eleven attacks in the america critics however say tehran is not guilty on the verdict is merely a pretext to demonize iran. and more of those stories in about thirty minutes time after we're taking you on a trip to russia's far northwest corner. in russia's european northwest lies one of the country's oldest inhabited areas the north. with records dating back to the mid night century this is a place with a rich history a powerful medieval republic it was famed for the quality of its first on the depth of its scholarship before it was a next to the greater russian state in the fifteenth century. the region is around six hundred kilometers from moscow and an overnight train journey will drop you right in the center of its capital. i've arrived in the famous old city of great.

but i'm not actually going to stay here because i've heard that this region supposed to be one of the most beautiful in russia so that's. so this is telling me exactly the right way to go my problem is how do i get from a . to b. and with lakes and dense forests making up sixty percent of the region that's not always an easy task. one thing about traveling through the novgorod wilderness is that you are likely to come across some fairly sizable obstacles including the largest area of swamp land in northwestern russia and if i'm going to get across that i'm going to need some serious help i think these gentlemen might have just a ticket here. d.v.d.'s nice to meet you nice to meet you

guys right so we have a swamp tank and when you're dealing with a somewhat unusual means of transport you have to take a seat where you can. comfort. it might get a little colder but there were some great views in good company and the breeze certainly keeps the mosquitoes off. we plowed forward and it wasn't long before we would deep in the swamp we were heading for some toll spires in the distance and our tank was taking the direct approach. so we're safe. in fact the only thing that did slow

us down was a quick break to pick up some local delicacies. the journey passed quickly and before long demon was showing me around some imposing ruins dating back one hundred years. see you've picked a pretty interesting place for a weekend break here yeah indeed just imagine a huge unlimited swamp the just white spot in the windows is the lake i'm in this city in the middle of this spot there's a. considerable fee just huge building off forty meters i think it's amazing to think the the monks and the nuns who lived here must have been very very into the solitudes yeah yeah they really believed. in it let's go up to the heaven.

the monastery may have been abandoned for the best part of a century but finally some restoration work is underway and if you don't mind some rickety scaffolding nearly covered ruth let you see for miles around. well try taking a bird's eye view of the surroundings it was time to hop back on our chariot and head to my next destination. i. think you've come back. the only way to travel. i've been dropped to the edge of the picturesque city of star rusa it's around a hundred kilometers from north and it's supposed to be one of the region's historical highlights i'm standing on the banks of the policed in the peru sierra

rivers here and if you have a gets a postcard from starry roofs it's quite likely to have this on it which is the city's main cathedral states back to the nineteenth century there have actually been churches on this site for almost nine hundred years. to star in a recession that is one of the oldest cities in the entire country and in its medieval heyday this was a bustling regional trade center. nowadays it's much sleepy bunts alongside its beautiful architecture there are a few natural surprises for visitors to. now this is another famous story roussillon barkeeps mineral water stream this pipe goes down around one hundred eighty meters and the water is funneled off under its own natural pressure so let's see what it tastes like.

well i can see why they don't bottle it because to me that pretty much resemble sea water. but it's this water that's the center of the city's tourist industry. roy well i find all the very drink for that doesn't mean that it's not useful over here at the sari roost sanatorium it's the main ingredient in all the treatments. people have been coming here to ease their aches and pains for more than one hundred fifty years and their cure all treatment is kept right out back. at the good is this mud consists of self made and silt and originates from a lake that has numerous medicinal properties and we have been using it here since eight hundred thirty nine years around one point five cubic metres

a day departure. but collecting all this miraculous mud is no easy task. write it to learn the technique here. stick. down and then there's definitely a max of doing this quickly but eventually i had enough to make a delivery. of the precious mud. there each crate to their apparently holds almost four hundred kilos and they do ten of them every day. which is enough to make almost one hundred fifty eight suffer treatments i think i might need one after less. right and once we got off. lucky people get to see me i don't manage to tip this over in the process. but i thought i deserved it. but sadly it

seems the mob treatments are reserved for paying customers so either i could shell out and then there's this story rue says most extreme remedy a very wintry mineral water through him. and twenty odd seconds of pure health giving agony oh. oh oh oh oh oh oh. oh oh. oh well if that doesn't kill me it would have made me stronger. it wasn't the gentlest introduction to the areas waterways but i wasn't going to let that put me off. my next destination was supposed to be the most beautiful lake district in the whole of the north region. one thing about getting back to nature it means that you sometimes aren't taking the best roads so going from a to b.

can be a pretty long walk. unless you can find someone to give you a lift so the game has been working with horses all his life and he and hero regularly take visitors along the scenic route to the city of valdai one of the region's most popular tourist destinations. yes nice to know the source is indispensable in the region which is why the fact is that a motor vehicle would find it hard to clear some places in this bracket terrain what a horse can do so easily left to go left right for right back to make him stop anyway let's go. to me you know how to control him of course and see if i can get here or. the cross. into the. line is bordered by huge areas of forest if you're looking to avoid the motorways this is a great way to appreciate them and keep out of the rain. and

once you arrive in valdai itself you'll find it's most famous exports are all housed under one roof. nowadays if you hear a siren coming up behind you on the roads in less you know you should get out of the way things really work that different two hundred years ago in russia but back then of course they were using bells if you had a ring ring horse coming up on the roads it let you know there was a v.i.p. there and most of those bells were funny faction here. and this is the largest bell museum in the country. those were made in the city until nineteen thirty and according to the curator as are all the cool stories surrounding their origins. these are some of the famous valdai tales that made their appearance here in the early nineteenth century legend

has it that sar ivan the third ordered the nov go rebel to be brought to moscow but the bell never made it there it refused to leave its native no gourd region as it were it broke up as it rolled on the hills with the result that fragments of it were scattered over a large area those fragments the legend says give birth to the famous valdai bells which you. alongside the homemade versions of souvenirs force home across the centuries from russia's european wars and rescued from churches during the soviet union and they still sound just as clear today. this is the lawyers on the banks of lake valdai the north corrode region second largest body of water and

a mecca for one particular type of tourist. with these it isn't hard to see why hunting is such a popular sport in these parts along with a little wander into the woods myself i just need to pick up a couple of extra pieces of equipment. and a little companionship and. find. i won't have to use this today unless we get in the unexpected. i think this is going to be more of a journey of discovery. and i think that. here. is going to lead to something interesting. things to do. but eventually one particular sent out to look like i might be doing some shooting.

historian craftsman and in this area he's never short of supplies. mixture of the. so these are all made from the local wood well. as. such those are quite common among hunters in europe in the middle ages as a rule. told just slightly lower. it was more comfortable for hunter while he was in the woods. so i thought i'd join him in a little target practice so i can remember how to do this.

and it wasn't long before i was ready to exchange the. some home comforts. i do have. and this few. i think a little and what better place to recharge my batteries than here on the edge of a lake. british science.

market. can. find out what's really happening to the global economy with. no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report. it's amazing what plenty of fresh air and a good night's sleep can do for you and also an evening on the banks of lake i was ready to get moving again. and my aunt's a friend also put me in touch with some of his fellow craftsman. the not growing region is full of forests and there's a thriving woodworking industry here and plenty of talented guys working in it and

i'm off to see some of the best examples roman and his father in law henrik run a successful house fronting business and almost every piece is locally sourced from the region's trees. and they do some stunning to spoke work to. with green you know me doing this is the kind of furniture we make you know it's all handmade. we construct them out of branches that we pick up in the forest so deal with. their house front things are all handmade and put together by a team of expert competence and the occasional novice. writes so my little lesson here this is what we're aiming at. this is what we've got us. all going to get out of it before i. well at least my heart was in it. there were no girl decorations made with love but the

environment here doesn't just play a vital part in the region's economy it's also an important scientific research site for the famous valdai hydrological institute it's safe to say that this is a very wet area of russia and over the last fifty years they've been studying the rainfall here in facts the valdai control system has become a world renowned mature logical technique but a lot of lots is down to these. the cut bush's negate the effect of wind on rainfall allowing scientists like fyodor to collect highly accurate measurements. he. takes the instruments from snow being picked up by the wind i'll show you the individual shrubs have been trimmed in such a way that all of them are two metres high they take up an area of seventy square metres. aside from the special grows the institute also takes

a range of samples to measure the differences in rainfall levels and it was time for the daily rounds. so these are going to be our measuring instruments containers that we're going to change you. normally the scientists would take up to twenty different measurements bert's with the temperature plummeting close to zero i was working a bit of a rush job. see what we've got collected from this is in here. approximately two point two millimeters in here so no great scientific breakthroughs in the last twenty four hours pretty typical seasonal day valdai. but it's not just rain water that's of interest to the boffins here as well as offering some pretty spectacular views lake valdai here also has a scientific claim to fame supposedly it's the second poorest lake in russia just

off the lake by karl and using this rather interesting device apparently i'm going to be able to see that for myself. so just as you. so. scientists from the hydrological institute and he's going to take me out. ok. formed millions of years ago by migrating glaciers the lakes clarity various during the year and vladimir and his colleagues are always on hand to make a note of it it's just a matter of finding the right spot. this with quite a few meters deep here. hopefully it should be a good place to take some measurements. let's do it and see how far we get so. we keep it coming here so that is six races.

six. so we can still see our describe the boss all the way down there and considering the part of the average for a normal lake it's two and a half. months so valdai has its well deserved reputation as the second cleanest lake in the country but he may drop me off on the shore and it was time to hit the road again i was gradually heading back towards north grotto but i wasn't done with the waterways just yet this little village that i'm passing through is called a pitch inskeep inside it's actually one of the earliest recorded inhabited places in russia they think back to the tenth century now i'm on why way to the largest lake in the region lake elman. but i'm looking for a bit of a shortcuts. the town lies on the banks of the mistah river and it's perfect for a more direct route assuming you can find the right transportation tolbert to where larry and the boys are experience for office and the mistah river has some of the

best whitewater in europe in russia. everything seems pretty gentle but i was warned not to get too comfortable. don't be lulled by the quiet waters this is just the cam before the storm. it's much tougher in spring when the water rises as high as the top slabs of the bank meant. that point the water is to be metres higher than what it is right now. the mistah used to be a vital supply route and a few hundred years ago the river would have been jammed with ships making their way to st petersburg. apparently back in seventeen eighty five the british ambassador wants to fight the express command of the czarina catherine the great and rode the rapids here and i could hear them the distance. things are just starting to speed up a little bit. and the last time i did this it was. about twenty five degrees

celsius out a little bit different today. five degrees in the water. but there are two things worth getting out of the wrong people. i'm doing a little extreme sightseeing on this trip as well because just. this place me one of the largest caves. in europe. and it's also got one of the longest underground streams as well going fourteen hundred meters back. and along the river banks you can find fossils buried in the rock face. and you're combining a white knuckle ronnie's with

a trip back in time. so we made it. illumines does round the corner. not a great little sightseeing trip along the way. i didn't even get wet. and the great lake is edged by a wild and beautiful landscape. i'm here on the banks of the mighty lake illumined approximately fifteen hundred square kilometers of water. and over there in the distance you can see green. and i'm actually on a pathway that was originally designed to be a roadway to the capital it was bought up by catherine the great in the eighteenth century but as you can see the builders didn't quite get it finished my trip was nearly over but i had one more highlight left on my route aside from all the foot

work i really feel like i've also had a journey through the history of the novgorod region and i know that around here this should be somewhere which could be the icing on the cake. and lo and behold zain what manner of cloth is this me thinks i have found the right place. this is lou beets and i and it's a picture perfect reconstruction of a tenth century slavic village. well our. people will make law here the father has made it very good little bits of data that. everything is based on archaeological data from the design insulation of the building this to the lifestyles of the inhabitants right

down to the games they used to play. and apparently correct key was a real favorite. say look i've got a cross between. skittles here. and a good girl radke school equals respect in this village so it was important but i got the swing in a miss. i didn't like ten centuries. finally success and rewarded me with a gift fresh from the village often. this base of bread will be just enough to feed you on the way. so picked up some fashionably retro new clothes some supplies i'm ready to hit the

road and off the road. i'm most of the old funny look along the way but as i entered the capital again and walked past its magnificent old kremlin my health it felt rather appropriate but i couldn't be brown the boy off forever well i've hiked driven role and ridden my way around the region and i'm finally back in great novgorod it's been quite an adventure but i think it's time for me to get back to the twenty first century before i make my way home.

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