The Golden Abode of Buddha Shakyamuni, Elista: a Buddhist republic in the middle of the European steppe. Source: Aleksei Kharin, CC BY 3.0
Kalmykia is the only Buddhist republic in Europe. It’s an oddity you can reach by bus, even as a schoolkid from Stavropol.
In eighth grade school had nothing to do with it: we’d formed a little gang of friends, somebody got hold of an intercity bus timetable, we lied to our parents about some sort of dacha and rode to Elista on our own. Three hundred kilometres of steppe to Elista. In winter the steppe works by subtraction: it subtracts everything from the horizon and leaves only the horizon itself — and the bus driving across whatever remains.
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