When I reached Irkutsk I’d travelled 9000 km, using approximately 650 litres of fuel for the cost of 18000 rubles (about 350 pounds). After 6 weeks of travelling just about everything in my bag was dirty, damaged or simply worn out. I spent a couple of days enjoying the friendly atmosphere of Irkutsk, with its ornately carved wooden buildings, before leaving on a plane back to St. Petersburg. The flight back to St. Petersburg was, of course, a disarmingly easy journey. It took just 7 hours to return to where I’d started from. Although, that said, Irkutsk is further from St. Petersburg than India, and on the same longitude as Indonesia. Appropriately perhaps, one of the books I read on my trip was Edward Said’s Orientalism, which explores the ways in which Western scholars and travellers
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