The book from the museum’s collection, “The Third Journey in Central Asia from Zaisan through Hami to Tibet and the Upper Reaches of the Yellow River, ” was written by the traveler, geographer, and naturalist Nikolai Mikhailovich Przhevalsky.

Shortly after being hired by the newspaper “Zvezda” in 1926, Arkady Petrovich Gaidar set off on a journey. He decided to visit Central Asia and the Caucasus. At that time, Arkady Petrovich read “From Zaisan through Hami to Tibet and to the Upper Reaches of the Yellow River.” The book belonged to his roommate, gamekeeper Aleksei Alekseevich Vasilyev.

Gaidar embarked on the journey with a friend from the Arzamas Real School and the Arzamas Komsomol organization, Nikolai Kondratyev, a colleague at the Perm newspaper “Zvezda.” Especially for the trip, they ordered and made white travel suits and found suitcases.

They were not granted leave, so both friends quit the editorial office. The money the travelers took with them did not last long. Along the way, the Perm journalists had to take up odd jobs. In Samarkand, earnings were scarce.

Arkady Petrovich later recalled,

On April 22, 1926, Gaidar wrote from Ashgabat to Boris Nazarovsky, another employee of the Perm’s “Zvezda”,

To return, Gaidar had to work as a loader in Astrakhan and spend the nights in the garden under the stage. In the summer of 1926, Arkady Petrovich Gaidar was rehired by the newspaper.