Ajay Kamalakaran is a journalist, travel-writer and iconoclast, based in Mumbai, India. He was the editor of the Sakhalin Times in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia from 2003 to 2007. The now-defunct newspaper was the largest and most widely-circulated English-language newspaper in the Russian Far East from 2001 to 2009.
Ajay’s Russia is the gigantic Trans-Siberian landmass known as the Russian Far East, which stretches to North Korea and China in the southeast and the Bering Straits near Alaska in the northeast.
During his time in the Russian Far East, Ajay often treaded the path that few foreigners take, including camping in the frozen wilderness, visiting towns with absolutely no tourist sites, hitch-hiking in the most distant outposts of the country, and occasionally getting lost in a dangerous or sensitive place. Amazing hospitality, great friends and stunning sights more than made up for the occasional misadventures that Ajay faced.
While in Sakhalin, Ajay made guest appearances on the several radio news programmes on BBC's Channel 4 and wrote Sakhalin Unplugged, the first English-language guidebook to the Sakhalin Region.
You can follow Ajay on Twitter.
More by Ajay Kamalakaran
Tatar Straits
Stereotyping Russian women? India needs to rethink...
January 20, 2012 Ajay Kamalakaran, specially for RIR
Post New Year break, Russia faces the January blues
January 11, 2012 Ajay Kamalakaran, RIR
It is against the Russia’s labour code to make an employee work between December 31 and January 10. While the holidays are a wonderful time for toasts and social gatherings, getting back into the work groove tends be a real challenge.
Gita row: Is there a hidden agenda? In the name of Gita, don’t spoil India-Russia relations
December 20, 2011 Ajay Kamalakaran, specially for RIR
Right after the visit of Manmohan Singh to Russia, media reports on the Tomsk prosecutors’ move to ban Svami Prabhupada’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita mar the aftertaste of the meeting between Indian and Russian leaders.
The Russian doctor who saved Bombay from plague
September 27, 2011 Ajay Kamalakaran
Not many in India know about Dr Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine. He was a Russian doctor who came to India quietly in the late 19th century and developed a cholera vaccine that saved thousands of Indians from the deadly blight.
