Our 1 day train journey to Mongolia - Mongolia!!! - starts with the discovery that we are sharing with Europeans for the first time. Kim, the English bloke and his very lovely girlfriend Karen are spending 5 months travelling around Asia while the other guy is on his way to Tibet. Lucky Tibet. We spend a good few easy hours chatting and watching the other guy eat our food while the view from the window changes from a solid line of trees to pleasant lakes surrounded by knotty, wind-twisted bushes and spiky little hills in the distance. Bit worried about crossing [View Full Entry]

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The sleeper train to Ulan-Ude, despite its promising name, unfortunately doesn’t involve any sleep at all. Thanks to a non-closing window allowing passing trains to blow their cheery 1000 decibel whistles directly into my ears and the fact that our enthusiastic train driver slams the brakes on hard every, oh, 15 seconds, allowing me to execute graceful somersaults backwards and forwards across the cabin, I don’t get an ounce of kip and tumble off the train at 06:30 at something slightly less than my most radiant. Still, excited to be in Ulan Ude we dash/stagger to the closest accom [View Full Entry]

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A couple of days roaming round Irkutsk eating cabbage and chasing marshrutky (russian minibuses) pass by pleasantly enough. The town is nice and fairly relaxed, has some nice tree-lined streets with wooden lace architecture, a couple of mad-looking Russian Orthodox churches, a lively market and a lot of kamikaze maniac drivers. That last also includes our bus driver from Listvyanka to Irkutsk - a master of multitasking: if he wasn't counting wads of notes from one hand to the other while steering with his elbows and talking into his mobile he was smoking, turned right round in his seat the bet [View Full Entry]

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Walking in taiga, full of Siberian spring flowers and blooming azaleas. View through trees to sparkling lake. Picnic at the top of the hill. Blissfull, apart from slightly fear of being torn apart by unseen bears. Back to hotel - disaster! Covered in ticks! (well, 1 anyway). Read the guidebook, no worries, only japanese-encephalitis-carrying ticks in these forests. Aaaarghghgh! Wake up next morning, still alive. Thank goodness for that. Go paddling in lake - narrowly avoiding frostbite. Apparently a dip in Baikal (meaning 'sacred sea' in language of buryat people) adds 5 years to your lif [View Full Entry]

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Arrive back in Novosibirsk around 5pm. Get some travellers cheques changed no thanks to evil lady in bank no 1 who is as helpful and friendly as a cobra, only without the charm. Head into downtown Novosibirsk and are a bit surprised to see what seems to be the entire Russian army marching into the main square from all sides to stand under the watchful gaze of the omnipresent flapping coat Lenin statue. Realise that the soliders are fairly relaxed - chatting and laughing - and that passersby are taking photos so nothing sinister is going on (note to self - [View Full Entry]

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After elaborate early morning birthday celebrations for Nico (doughnut with candle in Novosibirsk train station) we take the bus to Tomsk where we are spending a few days with Grigory (couchsurfing again) and his family. We entertain ourselves on the 4 hour journey by singing crap '80s songs and eating. Nico's incredible effect on the average Russian girl is again in evidence as while I am buying ice-creams at the half-way stop he is charming free mobile phone calls to Grigory from our fellow lady passengers. I return to find one poor girl giggling and literally swooning. Unbelievable. Nico, o [View Full Entry]

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Being just the 2 of us lasts, oh, about a minute. We find the platform, watch as our filthy dirty wagon is attached to the otherwise pristine train and pile into our 4 berth cabin to meet our travelling companions for the 24 hour journey to Novosibirsk. Rodzal is a tartarski soldier in his early twenties from Kazan, travelling alone back to work in Ulan Ude after holidays back home. He is blonde, tanned, shaven-headed, speaks a very few words of English and has undertaken the 4 day train journey without anything to read, any music, games, cards, drink or any [View Full Entry]

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Evgeny's friend Vitaly, a retired airforce colonel and former MIG pilot, now working as a nightwatch man in Evgeny's research institute (such is the state of the Russian pension system), drives us to our home for the next 2 days. Vitaly started learning English at the age of 70 and tries out a few phrases on us. V impressive. We say goodbye and climb up 4 flights of stairs in the soviet style apartment block to Evgeny's snug aparment. Fabulous Russian welcome, feel immediately at home. Try some Georgian red wine and some Russian beer,spicy sausage for Nico then to sleep [View Full Entry]

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Yaroslavsky station is crazy - seems like millions of people streaming on trains, off trains, across platforms with every type of baggage and boxes piled everywhere. Children running around under drunk mens feet, much singing, shouting, fighting, running. Chaos. I love it. We sit ourselves down opposite the departure timetable and in an attempt to blend in (allegedly) Nico buys some bottles of beer and cracks them open while we wait. Time flies and a general scrambling and baggage-heaving around us announces the arrival of the Rossiya, aka Train 2, aka the 20:25 to Vladivostock. We have tre [View Full Entry]

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Arrive in Moscow after 18 hour train journey, exactly on time. Shocked at the lack of delays - would just not be acceptable in England. Again, the weather is fantastic. We successful negotiate the metro, with me speaking Russian like a native (paddy), drop off the bags in Sweet Arbat hostel (v nice, great welcome, fab location on Moscows main street), and dash across the city to complete my world tour of stuffed former communist leaders. Lenin is on display in his mausoleum on Red Sq until 1pm on Thursdays and having just made it in time to see him, I [View Full Entry]

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