Troika (sleigh)

A troika is a traditional Russian vehicle, most often a sleigh but also built as a wheeled carriage, drawn by three horses harnessed abreast, with the center horse trotting in shafts under a distinctive raised wooden yoke called a duga while the two outer horses gallop freely to either side. Developed in Russia by the eighteenth century for fast long-distance travel across the country's vast distances and often snow-covered terrain, the troika became closely associated with Russian rural and postal transport and, in cultural memory, with images of winter travel across the Russian countryside. Though displaced from practical transport by railways and later motor vehicles, the troika survives today mainly in festivals, tourism and traditional winter celebrations.