The Olympic flame has traveled across Russia for 61 days and by now completed half of its journey. The relay began on October 7 in Moscow, and the torch has since traveled to the North Pole, to space, to the depths of the world’s largest freshwater lake and to the bottom of the Mir open-pit diamond mine.
The 123-day relay, the biggest of all national torch relays in history, is to visit 2,900 cities and towns and cover more than 65,000 kilometers (40,000 miles). It will end on February 7, 2014, in the Olympic host city, Sochi.