Travel Writer Jeffrey Tayler Writes from Russia

Jeffrey Tayler (Morocco 1988-90; PC/Staff Poland 1992; Uzbekistan 1992-93) is a PCV writer who never came home but has kept writing. He is the author of such travel books as Siberian Dawn and Facing the Congo, and has published numerous articles in The Atlantic, Spin, Harper’s, and Conde´ Nast Traveler, plus being a regular commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” 

Tayler lives in Russia and in the current issue of The Atlantic has a piece on a remote archipelago of Russia, one of county’s holiest places, the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral. It is located on the largest of the Solovetsky Islands and “amid the gale-lashed White Sea, just outside the Arctic Circle,” Jeff writes.

Tayler lives in Moscow and Solovki is 650 miles away by plane. (And you thought it was a long way to your site!)

The Soviets opened the Solovetsky Monastery back in 1967 as a museum and the monks returned there in 1990.

It has taken this RPCV a little longer to reach the archipelago, but Jeff made it and like all RPCVs he wrote home about his pilgrimage to this holy place at end of the world.