Khabarovsk

Khabarovsk. The first bigger city we stopped at with Hans.
As always in a city, finding a decent parking spot is difficult. Landcruising Adventures, a Dutch overlanding couple, had shared their option at the cathedral, so we head there first. It is a Sunday and on arrival the parking lot is fairly crowded with groups of youngsters, BBQing, fixing their cars, smoking hookahs, who knows what else. We persuade ourselves that they will leave once it gets dark and explore the surroundings a bit more. The cathedral is beautiful, there are two more war memorials and a fancy looking hotel, not much else. Time passes and instead of people leaving, even more cars arrive.
Even without opening our rooftop, we wouldn't feel safe sleeping here. So the search begins again. It's dark by now, we don't want to go far, but we need a quiet and secluded spot. After circling around about 3 times, we opt to stop next to an old building in a quiet street, maybe 100m from our original location. This will do for the night.
Converting the car to sleep "downstairs" takes a bit of time as we're not as used to it, but we manage and almost instantly fall into deep and exhausted sleep.
The next morning, we're happy everything worked as well as it did, drive up to the cathedral again, have breakfast and walk to the city centre to explore Khabarovsk a bit more.
The Riverside boulevard is well maintained and lined by parks, the streets are wide and the buildings big and beautiful. We're especially surprised to be approached by a young woman on the street. Galiya (we later get to know her name and family) simply wanted to practice her English and meet some new people and we were super happy to be able to talk to locals! Hence we all headed for a second breakfast, trying some local blinys (buckwheat pancakes) and exchanged some stories about each other. What a pleasant experience!
But then it is time for us to go again... Still a few 1000kms to go!Read more