With a population of 1.8 million people, Latvia has one of the lowest population densities in the world; for example, area wise it is one and half times the size of The Netherlands, whose population in over 17 million – and growing.

Most of Latvia’s people live in the capital, Riga, which means that travelling in Latvia involves vast spaces dominated by fields, forests and lakes. The towns and cities are fairly non descript, most of them having been obliterated during The Second World War.

From Riga, Anya and I head to south-east.

The further east one goes, the more enthic Russians compromise a significant part of the population. They find themselves marooned and in more ways than one; the Russian border has been closed and ethnic Latvians are overwhelmingly pro-Ukraine – and anti-Russia.

Not that we ever noticed any tensions between the two ethnic groups. The difference between Latvians and Russians cannot be discerned from the appearances; only the spoken language is a reliable indication. For the Latvians, who are more prosperous than the Russians, the latter ethnic group are simply irrelevant to their lives. No doubt there are also many Russians who do not sympathise with the brutal Putin regime, realising that he has brought only troube for Russians living outside Russia. 

Riga has a charming historic centre, but go there either before or after the main tourist season ….when it is considerably less charming!

Riga’s famous pavilons just outside the city centre and where amongst other things, a large market is held.

There’s plenty of walking to be done in Riga, the outskirts stretching a long way out and where there’s also far fewer tourists – and none the further out one goes. 

Once one leaves Riga and heads to the east, one enters a whole new world….we took local buses and stayed in various towns for two or three nights. We stayed in apartments which were very different but uniformly of a good standard with exellent facilities. We shopped at local supermarkets, mostly quite good – and whilst in general people are pretty helpful, don’t expect the regulation friendly staff in a typical western supermarket.