Dead on time (0747) the great train pulled out of Beijing Railway Station, the movement at first barely perceptible, then gradually gathering momentum. (I'm sorry, I haven't the heart of carry on with this. For the second time recently, 2 hours of writing has disappeared and I've had to start all over again. Well, here goes....). We were bound for Moscow and almost the entire width of Asia stretched out before us. My world for the next 5 and a half days was my ow...

So, I've reached Irkutsk - the 'Paris of Siberia', actually less Paris than the usual dreary, industrial blot on the landscape that the Russians seem to turn any potentially attractive place into. (I'll have to be brief - this is costing an eye-watering 9 pounds an hour!). The TRAIN!! Guess what, yes, I was sharing with initially 2 non English speaking Russian men. We were then joined by a 3rd (who was very nice and spoke good English). He was only with us for o...

This could be the last blog for a while and the picture is a taste of things to come! I visited the Kremlin this morning as the snow began to fall so took refunge in the Armoury - the treasure house of Russia. The jewels and regalia on display were beyond description! I had expected the Faberge Eggs to be the highlight - not a bit of it! They were beautiful and amazingly clever but relatively insignigicant alongside the incredible works of art alll around...

Moscow is cold, cold, cold! A biting wind comes straight out of Siberia and cuts straight through one. I queued in vain for three quarters of an hour for the Pushkin Museum this afternoon but a Picasso exhibition had just opened and the queue went right around the block. By the time I left I was frlozen solid and was probably only half way there, so that was a pity. But I spent the morning looking at the wonderful Russian icons in another museum and had ...

Well, the midnight train to Moscow wasn't quite as romantic as it sounded! I was delivered tothe station 2 hours before the train was due to go (erring on the side of caution, perhaps, but better than not being delivered at all, I suppose) and had to wait on a freezing platform - no waiting room, benches, etc until the train arrived. I fondly imagined that the train would miraculously be half empty and I'd have a compartment to myself, instead I found that I ...