User:Daytona2/Alexandra Tolstoy

Alexandra Tolstoy (married name Alexandra Galimzyanov) is a Moscow based equine adventurer, broadcaster and businesswoman. The grand-niece of author Leo Tolstoy she is a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and has made numerous long distance treks on horseback which have provided the basis for television documentories, books and talks.

Tolstoy studied for an MA (Hons) in Russian at Edinburgh University which enabled her to spend a year in Russia. She moved to London joining Credit Suisse First Boston's graduate scheme as a Eastern European Equities broker. She resigned after a year and spent the next two years working and traveling abroad during which time she spent six weeks walking the old Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route through Spain.

In 1999 she was part of a team who spent 8 months travelling by horse and camel along one 5,000 mile part of the Silk Road. One of the support team members, an Uzbek show jumper, Shamil Galimzyanov, was to become her future husband. Upon completing the expedition, she moved to Moscow to complete her account of the expedition, The Last Secrets of the Silk Road, and to continue travelling in central Asia.

In 2000 Tolstoy and a friend rode 3,000 miles on horseback through Mongolia and Siberia.

In September 2003 Tolstoy and Galimzyanov were married in the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in London.

In 2004, along with her husband, she embarked upon the 2,700 mile journey from Turkmenistan to Moscow, retracing an expedition undertaken by 28 Turkmen riders in 1935, who took 84 days to cover the distance. Riding Akhal Teke horses, they were stopped from completing the journey by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, resuming it in 2006 arriving in Moscow in November.

When not travelling on her own expeditions, Tolstoy continues to write, organise riding holidays in Central Asia with her husband, work as an interior designer and for BDI, a brand development company assisting Europen companies to develop their business in the former Soviet Union.

Filmography

 * Horse People with Alexandra Tolstoy