Our final blog: From Russia with love...

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Making our way as far as, and then through, the Moscow metro system was not as easy as you would think. After the ease of taking metros in post-Olympics, English friendly, Beijing and Expo crazy Shanghai, coming face to face with a wall full of Cyrillic characters, gave us quite a headache. Eventually Philippe located a Metro sign in the latin alphabet. Once there we managed to buy two tickets to the stop near our hostel and were pointed in the direction of our train by the kind ticket lady. As we descended into the depths of Moscow's underworld we gasped at our beautiful surroundings. The Moscow Metro Stations are works of art, being as they are, snapshots of another era. As we stepped off the escalator we were struck by the madness of there being a chandelier in a metro station! Odd though it sounds, it totally fitted in with the rest of the grandiose surroundings. Taking it all in reminded me of the scene in the Titanic movie when they flash back to how magnificent the boat was.

Having such grand surroundings in a simple old metro station seemed out of place, but also sowed the seed for a bundle of excitement that was growing in my stomach for this city. We managed to compare like for like Cyrillic words, without actually knowing how to pronounce them, and then we hopped onto the appropriate train. We then went through the same process at an equally beautiful swapover station. Finally we emerged at the correct station and walked the long way round until we found our last bed of the trip. Both for financial and sentimental reasons, we had booked a dorm room. We were hanging up our backpacks soon, it felt appropriate to have to listen to random people snoring on our last night!

After check-in we stayed true to our earlier decision, and managed to stay away from the free computers in the corner. We got some general directions to the centre of town from the receptionist, picked up a map and set out into the beautiful sunshine for our last day of exploration. In many ways getting to explore Moscow was like a bonus to us - like finding money in a coat you haven't worn in a while. We hadn't allowed ourselves to imagine getting time to do this, because we were assuming that the train couldn't possibly arrive on schedule after a six day run. Thankfully we were wrong, and the Trans-Mongolian arrived in Moscow right on schedule - to the minute, and so we had the afternoon to ourselves.

The hostel was about a twenty minute walk from the centre of town. When we reached there, I took a casual glance at the price of food on the restaurant menus and realised with a jolt that we really were back in Europe: Є25 for a plate of simple pasta! We could both live and sleep for a day on that in China!! We wandered on towards the Red Square and knew we were there when we saw the splendid St. Basil's Cathedral in the distance through the gateway. In the afternoon sunlight the pointed golden domes on the top of the Kremlin building glistened. We walked the length of the Kremlin wall that skirted the Red Square, passed by Lenin's mausoleum and then paused to marvel at the intricacy of the wacky St. Basil's Cathedral. It was fantastic, from every angle. We walked onto a bridge to get a better view of inside the Kremlin's walls and were also rewarded with some great panorama views of the city - even seeing two of Stalin's “seven sister” skyscrapers in the distance.

When we had had our fill of our bonus city, we began to meander our way back through back streets towards our hostel. The contrast of the architecture of this old but rich city centre with that of taller, modern Beijing was striking, but each are beautiful in a different way. As we were admiring yet another beautiful old building there was a clap of thunder and the heavens opened. Locals took it in their stride, most produced umbrellas from handbags or ran under a plastic bag. We were caught short, with nothing to protect us. We took refuge from the deluge in a shop well, and watched as the Muscovites went about daily life. When the rain didn't appear to being going anywhere, we made a run for it back to the hostel.

In the hostel we learned that there is some value in positive thinking. The ash cloud previously forecasted to close Heathrow Airport on us had moved away and the strike that BA workers were threatening was postponed by a high-court injunction. The only real obstacle to us getting to Dublin was a flight delay on our Moscow-London flight, or our somehow not managing to get across Heathrow in time for the Dublin flight.

Everything was looking up. We chatted amicably with our room mates about our travels, sharing stories with the 70 year old granny that was on her third round-the-world trip, as we went about lightening our bags to carry the bare essentials. We would carry only hand luggage to facilitate a quicker run across Heathrow. It was with mixed emotions that I threw away some of the clothes that I had lived in for the past 12 months.

The next morning after a quick post-office stop to send our final postcards, we caught the metro as far as the train to Domodedovo Airport. Despite not understanding much of what we were told, a woman at an information counter at the metro station managed to convey the direction that we must walk in to get as far as the Domodedovo Express train station. We got there just after 1pm, and had to wait an hour for the next train. It was a great opportunity for people watching. Aside from the obvious physical skin and facial differences, I was struck by how much larger people here were in comparison with the Chinese. The fashion sense was also noticeably different.

The train to Domodedovo Airport took just under an hour. At the airport we were happy to learn that our flight would leave on schedule, we just had to get as far as the boarding gate. In a year of travelling, Moscow was the first place that we had encountered full body scanners. I giggled at the weirdness of it as I raised my arms while the computer did its thing. With time to kill we tried to spend our last few rubles, and realised that we didn't have enough of them left to buy much in this wildly expensive place. The bottle of water alone that we had with our sandwiches cost Є6!

The plane was close to empty on our last long haul flight. With the strike called off, they fed us a snack and kept the drinks coming. I was pensive as we flew back to London, where we had flown out of 341 days previous. Our round the world circuit would be complete once the wheels touched down.

As it happened, the captain obliged and we touched down early. We had plenty of time to make the connecting flight to Dublin, and were happily reunited with our family there. The next day we took a flight to Holland, only to emerge from arrivals to a welcoming committee with balloons and the whole shebang. We made it to our friends wedding, wearing the clothes that had turned up (and still fitted) from Vietnam. It was in the midst of their cracking party that we finally allowed ourselves to exhale and let our hair down. We were finally home.

In those 342 days we have visited 132 places. Excluding local transport, we reckon we have taken 24 planes, 44 buses, 14 trains and 15 boats. Roughly speaking we travelled 91,000 kilometres, according to Google Maps.

We have seen parts of nature I never imagined I would see. Whales have frolicked metres away from us. We have witnessed the Great Barrier Reef, up close and personal. We had a close encounter with a wild dingo. We've seen pandas in the wild, held koalas, fed emus and kangaroos. We rode a camel and an elephant. We swam with stingrays. We've seen crocodiles, alligators, tigers, elephant seals, penguins, monkeys, flamingos, kiwis, sharks and a tarantula. Glow worms lit up a room for us. We even held the eggs of an endangered species. Not to mention the gob smacking natural wonders that we have seen. We have walked on a glacier, been sprayed by giant waterfalls, boated in silent bays, slept under the moon in the Aussie outback, seen the blue skies of the Tibetan plateau and the barren beauty of the Gobi Desert. We have learned about the varied histories of mankind through the years - in the Incas in Machu Picchu, at the ruins in Angkor Wat, about the Terracotta Warriors and the Great Wall in China. We've watched sunset at Uluru in Australia and wondered over the debating Tibetan Monks in Lhasa. We've grown to appreciate most of the cultures we've found ourselves in. We've sampled the cuisine of over 18 nations and done way too many currency conversions! And after all that, are we the same people?

Before I set out I assumed that a trip this big would dramatically change a person. While it is definitely true that it broadens your horizons, allows you to try new things, taste new food, encounter new cultures and maybe even makes you a bit braver, it hasn't made me want to take up Buddhism or live under the stars in the Australian Bush. We've whizzed around in tuk-tuks and beaten our fears riding in cable cars or jumping from them. We've climbed aboard the back of random pick-up trucks, taken some questionably overloaded motor canoes and seen our lives flash by our eyes in so many risqué traffic situations that we stopped noticing. We've slept in sleeper trains, sleeper buses, tiny campervans, on airport floors, in ten person dorms, in grotty private rooms, even in a brothel! And we laughed mostly throughout. This trip hasn't dramatically changed us, but it has made us appreciate normality, each others company, being near to family and friends, and having the same bed for more than a week!

In time I hope to be able to answer that favourite question: what was the best thing you did/saw? I can't do it yet. It's all still brilliant in my minds eye. It was an amazing year, a once in a lifetime achievement, a dream fulfilled.

This is the final entry in our travel blog. At its inception this wasn't meant to be a diary, it was meant to share our experiences with family and friends back home so that we wouldn't seem so far away. However looking back through it now I realise that it means more to me than any academic accomplishment ever could, and is certainly something I will treasure for the rest of my life.

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Comments

[Philomena Daly]

So Green!
Wow! Wow! Wow! This is the first entry I've read, and is typical of me, as I always read a newspaper from back to front anyway. Well Done to you both! So well written and expressed. I can't wait to read more, especially about Machu Pichu as it has always fascinated me. So I feel so green - from jealousy - and from my ignorance of such far flung places, having never been to them. Good for you both!!