Tatar Straits

Ajay Kamalakaran is the Consulting Editor of RBTH’s Asian service, and was the Deputy Editor of the Russia & India Report from 2012 to 2014. A Russia veteran, 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 Strait 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.