The wine/port/vodka-fest on the train to Ulaanbaatar didn't seem like such a good idea the next day when I had a 300km drive into the countryside, most of it off-road... I was staying with a nomad family for three days - Shiidere and Oydau. Shiidere's brother and his wife lived in the tent next door and there were lots of children running around the place. I lived in one of their 'ger' tents - a round wooden structure with a stove in the centre, covered in felt ...

On the train to Ulaanbaatar I was sharing a cabin with a girl named Irene from Holland who's going to teach English to children in Mongolia for a month before travelling on to Nepal, India and then South America. Also in our carriage were 16 German pensioners on a group tour. I was trying to sleep after having been up most of the night watching the football, meanwhile the Germans were all singing and one of them was playing an accordion... I couldn't be mad at th...

Ulan-Ude ("OOH-lan ooh-DAY") is the capital of the Buryatia Republic region in Eastern Siberia. There is not much to see in Ulan-Ude city centre - the highlight is the world's largest statue of the head of Lenin. However, there are lots of interesting places to visit nearby. I was staying with a lovely couple, Andrey and Svetlana, and their two children Yasha (20) and Masha (18). They were so welcoming and Svetlana made great food. Andrey and Svetlana were also...

Listvyanka is a small village, about an hour from from the city of Irkutsk in Eastern Siberia. It's on the shore of Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world. It's great to be out in the countryside for a while I'm in a 'home stay' with a Russian lady named Olga who's feeding us well (though she did give us dumplings stuffed with mashed potato one day, which was strange). She's been taking in tourists for ten years and has lots of trinkets from prev...

It was two full days on the train from Yekaterinburg to my next stop, Irkutsk. I met some weird and wonderful (well, more weird than wonderful) Russians along the way... In my carriage there was an old fat windbag who complained and argued loudly and inexhaustibly. I think she was disappointed when she realised that her moaning was wasted on me because I couldn't understand it. There was also a guy that spoke a little English and was delighted at the chance to ...