R: If you haven't been following us for a while, that's probably because we stopped writing about our travels. However, several people have asked us if we are going to continue with our blog, and we initially dismissed it. But it's actually quite nice to have as a record of our travels, and hopefully interesting to some of you as well. So from our current location in Bentota, Sri Lanka, we are going to start writing about our travels again. So if you are interested, stick with us. Otherwise, feel free to unsubscribe now. In time, I am also going to back fill some of our other travels, like the trans Siberian railway trip, from notes I took at the time.... read more

R: By the time we crossed the border it was about 1am (Chinese time). I set an alarm on my phone as the train passed along the route of the great wall of China at around 7am just after stopping at Datong. Now, having got used to the slow pace of life on the train, and being fairly tired from the previous weeks activities - I didn't make the alarm. By the time I had woken up, got up and out, and escaped the compartment, the wall was in the distance and could only just be seen through the dirty train windows. (This was a Chinese train remember, and I don't think it gets cleaned in Moscow so it has been nearly 2 weeks since its last wash!). I did manage to see glimpses of it ... read more

R: The next day was our trip out into the Mongolian countryside. The best way to do this is hire a 4x4 and guide so we did just that. First we headed out to the Genghis Khan statue which is about 55km out of town. Its a strange site - really in the middle of nowhere - the intention being that the statue looks over the land of the Mongols. It has a large car park and then a flight of stairs up. The statue was completed in 2008 but the noticeable thing was the decaying steps as you headed up to the building. You go in through a building at the bottom which has a shop and museum filled with slightly unusual exhibits in the basement, before taking the lift up to just below the ... read more

R: Once onboard we got a good nights sleep. We were in a very similar cabin to the one before, with the same configuration of beds and once again no compartment buddies. This train is a daily shuttle service across the border and into Mongolia. As such, the train is more of a locals train than the first long distance one and it stops more often. That being said they have grouped the foreigners into one place. Our new Provodnitzas did not allow the foreigners off the train at these stops as they clearly weren't for us and they didn't want to lose track of us - the train only stopped for a minute or two at each station. In fact there were no good stops today. The scenery is now totally different to the vast ... read more

R: So by now it was Tuesday and we had one more day across Siberia before our first stop in Irkutsk. We had a lie in in the morning, mainly because the cabin was now so hot that it was difficult to move! The scenery had changed by now and there were more scattered villages, small holdings and animals roaming around. It certainly felt more rural. Between us, we had tonnes of information about the route. Richard had brought the Trans-Siberian Handbook, which has incredibly detailed information about the things you would pass. There are little white markers along the track that show your distance from Moscow which help you work out what you are passing. (We were now 4098 km from Moscow). This was quite entertaining, especially when there was nothing else to look at, ... read more