Day 53 - Ulan Bataar, Mongolia

We're back in the capital of Mongolia now, Ulan Bataar and it's so different from being in the national park. For a start, there's so much traffic you can barely slide a credit card between the cars on the road. We've not seen too much of it other than the main square and a big Buddhist temple which was fascinating. It's a lot more Western here than I imagined, but it's so weird being one of the very few European looking people walking the streets.

It's now about 4.50pm so I doubt that we'll have much more time to see anything but to be honest it's pretty much like any other city in that it's crowded, noisy, hot, dusty and makes me want to find a bar for a nice beer.

Will post some pictures as as soon as I can.

Day 51 - Ger Camp, Terelj National Park, Mongolia

Irkutsk was a fascinating place and it's a shame that we didn't have another day there to look around. We spent some time wandering the main shopping street and then took a walk around the banks of the Angara River (which, incidentally, is the only river that flows out of Lake Baikal; there are over 330 rivers flowing into it!). Some of the old wooden Decemberist houses were really good to see but it would have been nice to see in the museums too.

We got back to our homestay at about 5pm and Tamara had cooked us a wonderful big pot of beefy borsch. To be honest, that would have been enough but then she bought out a big tomato and cucumber salad (which appears at all the meals we've had in Russia), some chicken (fried in lard), some spaghetti (fried in lard) as well as bread, cakes, biscuits and enough tea to refill Lake Baikal! We were stuffed and couldn't manage to eat it all but this, as we've found, is typical Russian hospitality. She almost seemed a little put out that we didn't manage to eat all the food and I was a little worried that we'd offended her. She didn't speak any English and the only words that I've managed to pick up so far are please, thank you, goodbye, yes and no. I had a stab at 'good afternoon' as well, but must've got it a bit wrong because the reply to that was a bemused stare.

In the evening we had another walk around the city and ended up in a couple of bars. It was inevitible. The first one was a cellar bar that brewed its own beer on the premises; very much my sort of place but we had one in there and then moved on to another one dubiously called 'Liverpool'. It turned out to be a tribute 'pub' to The Beatles - what on earth was that doing in a far corner of Russia? We didn't stay as they wanted to charge us entry due to their live music. It was a blessing in disguise, I couldn't have faced a Russian Beatles tribute band blasting out 'Hey Jude' while I'm trying to drink my beer. The next bar sounded more promising, it was called The London Pub and was in a big hotel on the main drag (Lenin Street). It turned out to be awful. I had a pint of Young's London Stout which was definitely off, Rich has some sort of lager and they charged us the equivalent of over £10 for those two drinks! We didn't stop long. The walls and table staff were all decked out in tartan and there was a set of bagpipes attached to the wall - they've a funny idea about where London is supposed to be!

That all seems like a long time ago now though as we are currently in Mongolia. The journey here seemed to last for ever, partly because the train was an hour and a half late and partly because clearing customs between leaving Russia and entering Mongolia took over 8 hours! The process is so inefficient and the customs staff really take their job seriously. They were the most stoney-faced mob I've ever seen and quite intimidating. The train journey itself was over 24 hours long so it really was a drag but the views that we saw following the track around Lake Baikal and across the plains of Siberia made it all worthwhile.

After arriving in Ulan Bataar at 7.30 this morning, we were met by our guide Oyunbold. He's Mongolian but speaks with a really strong American accent and great English so I feel quite reassured. We haven't seen much of U.B. yet but will get to see that in a couple of days. We are currently in Terelj National Park which is beautiful. Much of the scenery looks like Yorkshire, more so because it's absolutely lashing down with rain. This isn't typical for August Oyunbold assures us. One of the first things we did was to see a local herding family and we were taken in their Ger (a sort of round tent made of wood and felt). Here, they served us some milk tea which was, not surprisingly, rather milky tea. Then we had some sweets made of cheese, some biscuits and some other sort of cheese which tasted like clotted cream. All very nice. I then asked Oyunbold about this drink that I'd heard about that is made from fermented horse's milk at which point his eyes lit up and he babbled away in Mongolian to our hosts. The old man scurried off and came back with an old jug full of the stuff which he served to us in teacups. It tasted quite nice, though the first sip is a bit of a shock. It's a bit like slightly fizzy, thin milk that has a whiff of old beer and is quite sour. It's a bit of an acquired taste, and Oyunbold later informed us that it causes terrible diarrhoea. It did... Nice !

We were then driven to turtle rock, which is a big rock that looks like a turtle. The name sort of gives away the surprise, then following that we were bought to our Ger camp where we'll be staying for a couple of nights. It's incredibly cosy now that we've got a fire going and the sound of the rain on the tented ceiling reminds me of being a kid in a tent on a miserable British summer holiday. I can't wait for tonight when the atmosphere will be even cosier!

Postscript Day 52 - The tent is only cosy all the time the fire is burning. I had a pretty much sleepless night on the hard, thin matress and shivered all night after the fire had gone out. It's freezing and miserable without the stove burning. A young girl came in at about 6am the following morning and re-lit it but she wasn't as good as the girl yesterday. It went out within five minutes of her leaving. You just can't get the staff...

Day 49 - Irkutsk

We've left Lake Baikal behind us now and we're back in Irkutsk to spend the day. Lake Baikal was an amazing place; absolutely massive (i.e. contains more water that the five great lakes on North America put together!!). Our first full day there was a little disorientating because we were both suffering from train-lag. We're only about 8 hours ahead of UK time, but having lost about an hour a day on the train plus the 3 hours on the flight to Moscow, it all seemed to catch up with us. We're just about aclimatised now though. After an early lunch on the first morning we took a walk around Listvyanka which is a little town just 70Km away from Irkutsk and we took the chair lift up to the top of one of the mountains surrounding the lake. Great views.

The second day we took a ferry to Port Baikal across the the mouth of the Angara River which joins Lake Baikal. The town itself wasn't much to write home about, but the walk along the old railway track was lovely. Valera, our host from the homestay made us a nice picnic lunch by roasting some sausages over a fire and boiling up a big pot of mint tea for us. The three of us just sat there in silence watching the clouds float over the lake and mountains. I've decided I want to come back in the winter now to see the place covered in snow and ice. It would be a real novelty to take the ice road across the lake to Port Baikal by car which is the same route that the ferry would usually take!

We've got an early start tomorrow to catch the train from Irkutsk to Mongolia; I mean 04:30 in the morning! We're staying at another homestay tonight and it seems to be run by Edna 'E' Mode from the Incredibles although she's aged a bit. Her flat is much nicer than the one we were in at Listkyanka though; for a start the bedspread is not made of nylon tiger-print material and the wallpaper is not trying to prise itself off the damp walls. We've also found a bar to go to tonight called "The English Pub". How quaint...

Day 46 - Trans-Siberian Train.

It's been two days and three nights on this train now and it's the longest single journey that I've ever been on. We're nowhere near our final destination yet and the last distance marker that I saw yesterday indicated that we'd travelled almost 3500Km; that was almost 12 hours ago. We've just about settled into a routine in our little carriage, though it's a little disorientating because we're going through so many time-zones. The whole train system runs on Moscow time which is three hours ahead of London but every few stops the local time is Moscow time plus an hour. We're are currently on Moscow time + 4 hours and I think it'll stay like that up to Irkutsk. Rich has been keeping his watch on local time and mine is on Moscow time so between us we should be OK.

The train is pretty much as I expected. By the general decór and colour scheme (a sickly shade of beige) I'm guessing that it was built in the 1960's. It's comfortable though the toilets really could do with an occasional scrubbing down with some industrial disinfectant to get rid of the smell. It's quite a novelty seeing the tracks whizz by beneath the loo as you flush it and I can understand why the toilets are locked while we're at the station now.

There's a restaurant car that's more like a builder's cafe, though with far less a cheery welcome. The woman that works in there looks like she's on a knife-edge at most times and her expression flits between panic-stricken bewilderment to surly indifference. I can't blame her, the only people that seem to eat in there are the other tourists on the train and she barely understands a word of English. Almost all of the Russians just buy stuff when we stop at the stations, ranging from dried, smoked sturgeon to caviar stuffed blinis. On the walk down to get our dinner yesterday, we passed a carriage that stank of a combination of this dried fish and stale vodka - somewhat of a staple diet it seems. The menu is actually better than it sounds. We have a choice of things like 'Chop with garnish', 'Steak with egg', 'Sliced fried meat with garnish' amongst other things. I went for the safe option and had pork with chips yesterday, though one of the Finnish tourists on the train ordered something that when the waitress bought it over, I thought she'd mistakenly brought out her cat's dinner. It was a small bowl of silvery looking sprats floating in a pool of oil. He ate most of them.

We had quite a result with the carriage. Usually, these sleeping cars get quite booked up and because they sleep four people we were expecting to be shacked up with two drunken Russian blokes. Instead we've got a cute little old lady who firstly introduced herself in the full Patronimic form, but this confused us so she just calls herself Liliana. We've been trying to communicate with each other but she only has a little English that she remembers from school so much of our conversation has involved weird facial expressions and frantic arm waving. What little Russian we can speak is from the back on The Lonely Planet guide book so is limited to the numbers 1 to 100, asking what time the train leaves and saying hello and goodbye - these phrases will only go so far in four days with the same person! During one of our difficult conversations, the subject go on to snoring and up until that point Liliana had been an amiable little soul but her expression changed in an instant. She looked at Richard and said 'Nyet' (No), then pointed to herself and said 'Nyet' (No) then, through an armour-piercing stare, she gave me a look over the top of her specs that would have made the beard curl on Lenin's statue and simply said 'Da' (Yes). I'm now really self-concious every time it's time for bed.

We had a little excitement yesterday when another person joined our cell, erm... I mean carriage. I did a double take at first as she was the image of my Aunty Rosemary (mother's side) but then I clocked the white, fish-net pop-sox, silver slingbacks and the most hideous piece of knitware since Pauline Fowler's cardigan and realised that it couldn't possibly be her. The last straw was when she gave us both a big smile revealing that most of her teeth had been replaced by dodgy looking gold ones. Luckily, she didn't stay for the night. She got off about four hours later after talking non-stop (and it seemed without breathing) to Liliana.

Only one more day and night on the train now until Irkutsk. I'm sure that the day will pass quickly, especially now I've put my watch forward by four hours to 'local' time. Now shall I have the 'Soup with pickle garnish' or the 'Caviar and blini'for tonight's dinner...

Day 45 - Somewhere between Perm and Irkutsk

We've been on the train for a day and two nights now and it's a bit like being stuck in a lift. We've got no idea where we are most of the time because the stations don't seem to have any names, the carriage is tiny, there's awful piped muzak and hardly anyone talks. The talking thing is obviously due to the language barrier, but because we're tourists we seem to be treated with suspicion at worst and indifference at best.
It's a shame we can't really see what's outside the train because the windows are all steamed up between the double glazed panes of glass.
Only two more days and nights before we reach Irkutsk - I hope the providnitsa keeps the samovar nice and fully stoked!

Day 42 - Moscow

Moscow is so not what I imagined. For a start, it feels hotter here than it did in any part of Africa we were in. I know it's summer here and it was winter in Africa, but it just feels weird. All the pictures of Moscow that I've ever seen showed it covered in a thick blanket of snow with people walking around decked out in huge fur coats and hats. Now they're walking around in Gucci heels and Prada shades. The women here really go to town on their appearance and it seems that appearance is everything to most of the better-off Russians, although some of the men really should lose their beer-bloated bellies before prising themselves into the latest, skintight Versace combo. It's just not flattering...


When I read the guidbook before coming here, it said things like 'leave the rucksack at home and use a carrier bag and you'll fit in just like a local' as well as giving advice on not carrying cameras and gadgets in crowded areas unless you want to be relieved of them. It's not like that at all now. In fact, if you haven't got the right 'designer' gear on or there isn't an iPhone placed proudly next to your capuccino then you're bound to stand out like a sore thumb. I guess this blatant display of wealth is a big hangover from the 'old days' when very few people had anything.



Maria, our local guide this morning, was telling us that it's mainly the young that think Russia is a much better place now and that there are very many of the older-generation that think things were better in 'the goold old days'. As if to prove a point, shortly after she left us as Red Square, out shuffled a large group of elderly folk carrying red flags and playing old Soviet propaganda songs on an ancient cassette machine. The Stalin and Lenin look-a-likes, that will proudly pose for photos with the tourists for a few Rubles, looked on nonchalantly.





Moscow is, however, a really beautiful place. Some of the architecture is just stunning, especially around Red Square. In fact, Red Square got it's name not from the colour of the buildings, nor the colour of communism, but because Red is a similar sounding word to the Russian word for beautiful - apparently. Maria told me this, too. St Basil's is gawdy, but in the same way as Blackpool Illuminations or Brighton Pier are and I wouldn't change a thing. We saw Lenin, lying in state in his mausoleum earlier today and he was looking quite well - surprisingly! Then again, if I had a weekly brush down and was dipped in wax every couple of months, I would probably look more well preserved than I currently do too! Off to The Kremlin tomorrow before taking our place on the Trans-Siberian Express in the evening.

We've stocked up on cuppa-soups and biscuits; I wonder who we'll be sharing with...

Day 27 - Orpington, UK.

We've been back for a few days now and it's been bliss sleeping in a proper bed again. We've got a couple of weeks before heading off to Moscow for the start of the next leg of the journey and it gives us the chance to refine the packing. At least we won't need to be lugging the sleeping bags around with us any more as, thankfully, we'll not be doing any more camping.

On our last day in Maun we all decided it would be a great idea to take a flight over the delta to try and see some of the animals that were supposed to be living there. Very exciting it was too. There were five of us to a plane, one of the small Cessnas and although it was cramped, it was a great flight. We soared over the delta and managed to see groups of elephants, hippos, wildebeest, impalas and a few giraffes. They looked incredible, but tiny in comparison to the vastness of the delta. Back on land one of the other groups was telling us about their pilot doing some acrobatics in the sky and swooping down to about 50ft to they could get a better look at the wildlife. I'm glad ours was a bit more sensible.

The next day was an early start (again!). We left the campsite about 6am and headed towards South Africa on our marathon 12 hour drive for that day. The reason for such a long drive was that Mike, our driver, wanted to reach the border so we could bush-camp and make Jo'burg by lunchtime the next day. We never made the bush-camp. Instead, we passed what looked like a pleasant motel and after Mike negotiated the rates with them, we had to rustle up the money between us to each pay for a room. Well, I don't think the owner of the motel was used to renting the rooms out for the whole night - I think it was one of those that were usually rented by the hour. Let's just say, it wasn't only the pipes to the hot-water tank that were banging all night! Despite the promise of a comfy bed with real blankets, we still decided to use the sleeping bags on top of the bed to sleep in. Heaven knows what was lurking on that sleazy, sequinned bedspread. Yuck...

Another early morning the next day and, as usual, Pete cooked us breakfast from the truck. He seemed embarrased that it wouldn't be up to his usual standard, but he still managed to cook eggs for us as well as cereals, bread and tea and coffee. Bless him. What was left of the mountain of boiled eggs ended up on the truck for us to snack on during the journey.

The border crossing into South Africa was all relatively straight forward and surprisingly quick. Only two of the girls in the group received marriage proposals from the immigration officers, and I think one of them might have been interested until she was told by her suitor that he wanted 10 kids. We made Johannesburg by late afternoon, and after a magical mystery tour around the perimeter roads we made it to our hotel. Jo'burg has a reputation of being a little unsafe but I've seen nothing like it. All of the buildings had massive security gates, alarm systems, spikey fences and vicious dogs and the place we were staying was like a cross between the Big Brother house and Colditz. We could only leave the hotel en-masse, sticking together in a herd and taking it in turns to be on the outside of the herd in case of attack. I now know how those impala feel...

Now I'm home, I'll be posting some pictures and not taking anything for granted any more.