And then on to Bukhara. MOst chilled out and cheap place so far ... Bukhara, again a key location on the Silk Road and in the Great Game. The town centres around the Labbi Hauz, the Hauz's where artificial ponds set up around the town to supply water to the residents. After everyone started dying of plague and various other diseases, they decided to drain them and a few have been now been renevated as place of interest for tourists. Labbi Hauz is surrounded by restaurants and tables where we sat and watched the world go by with a pot of tea, a beer ot two and the best Sashlick in Asia. The rest of the town is a maze of little streets suddenly opening out on minarets, madrassahs, market stalls and bazaars. Kellie has started ... read more

The guide on the boat trip in St. Petersberg said that the train journey from Moscow to Tashkent should certainly be an eventfull one as all the Uzbek workers were leaving their Summer jobs in Moscow to head back home. Eventfull it was. We were in second class which consists of a number of four berth compartments in one of 16 carriages. 3 days and 3 nights of noone speaking English and a horrific toilet. Weren't sure about the train guards to start with, clearly the first chap decided westerners were easy pickings and that we would be the right couple to chose to say to the Russian border guards that his two random cardboard boxes that he had left in our compartment were actually ours. Jesus - good start. Then he followed up with trying ... read more

After a very late night madly packing up the house and quick run across Heathrow Terminal 5 as they called our names for the last call, we started our Round the World in St. Petersburg. It was a pretty cold start and took us a while to work out what was going on with the language but we managed to survive the 3 days here by finding the two restaurants that had an English menu (that weren't McDonalds). Some very impressive buildings intermingled with some beautiful 60s tower blocks. Beer of the week : Baltika 3 - cheapest beer they had ... read more