Best wishes for the summer solstice from a rest day in the city of Omsk. At 55 degrees north, we have some long daylight hours. At 73 degrees east, we are now three time zones east of Moscow. We cycled eight days through Western Siberia from Екатеринбург to reach the Omsk. We left the Urals and this area has been much flatter. We came through many lower marshy areas, birch forests and past many more biting insects. Some agriculture but we also passed a lot of open lands. Our general pattern would be to quickly escape to the tent as soon as we finished for the day and not reappear until time to cycle the next day. Roads have been better than before, though we’ve seen our share of rough roads. Our choices in roads have also lessened as there aren’t many smaller paved roads. Today will be a rest day here before departing further east tomorrow. The city of Novosibirsk (Новосибирск) has a reputation of being difficult to find hotel accommodation without pre-booking so it is not clear where we’ll next take a rest day.

Progress thus far: