The Boy's Word: Blood on the Asphalt is set in Kazan but was filmed in Yaroslavl; its story comes from the real Kazan phenomenon of teenage gangs in Sukonnaya Sloboda, Privolzhsky District, Novo-Tatarskaya Sloboda and Sotsgorod.
The route follows the real history behind the 2023 series, from street fights in the 1940s to the 1978 motorcycle run, then to Naberezhnye Chelny and Yaroslavl, where the series was cast and shot. The series invents its gang territories, so all pins are approximate.
Japan's Kumano Kodō runs from Takijiri-oji through Chikatsuyu to Kumano Hongū Taisha, then by boat to Shingū and on to Nachi's stone steps and falls. For over a thousand years emperors, samurai and commoners walked these trails to the three grand shrines; Go-Shirakawa made the trip 34 times.
This route follows the Nakahechi from Takijiri-oji through Chikatsuyu and Hongū, by river to Shingū, then to Nachi's stone steps and waterfall. Some stops are pinned to the area rather than a surveyed spot.
Pushkin's only completed novel follows Pyotr Grinev, a young officer sent to a log-fenced fortress on the Orenburg steppe, where he falls in love with the captain's daughter Masha and crosses paths with Pugachev, the rebel who claims to be Emperor Peter III. The book is a romanticized account of Pugachev's Rebellion of 1773-1774, not a record of it.
The route follows the novel from besieged Orenburg through the Belogorsk fortress, Berda, Kazan, Tsarskoye Selo and Moscow. Each stop separates what Pushkin invented from what history records; Belogorsk exists only on the page, with the real fortress of Tatishchevo as its stand-in.
In Gogol's Petersburg nothing is what it seems: the grandest street is a liar, a nose walks about in a state councillor's uniform, and a dead clerk tears coats off passers-by. Three of his stories share one city, and most of their stops can still be walked.
The route runs along Nevsky Prospekt and its neighbouring streets, from the painter's and the lieutenant's chases in Nevsky Prospekt, through The Nose's barber, cathedral, bridge, garden and shop, to the Kalinkin Bridge where the ghost of The Overcoat is said to prowl. A few stops are approximate, since Gogol seldom gives house numbers.
The Twelve Chairs crosses the Soviet Union: Moscow's Prague restaurant, the Proval cave in Pyatigorsk, the Darial Gorge and Yalta. A former nobleman and a con man chase twelve dining chairs; Syzran and Kozmodemyansk are candidate models for the invented Stargorod and Vasyuki.
The route marks six stops; Stargorod and Vasyuki are invented, so their pins are only candidate stand-ins.
