(James) Hello everyone, sorry we have not kept more up to date, two main reasons, firstly we have been in the middle of nowhere and secondly trying to find an internet cafe has been a mare... anyway, we are now in Beijing, China, so I am going to finish off Irkutsk in Russia. At the last update we had only just arrived Irkutsk, which we thought was a bit grey and stern along with its inhabitants. That evening we had a meal at the hotel and both ate a Horse steak...

Hi all, At last we have chance to write up our blog. We arrived in Moscow on Saturday night and was met by our transfer in the arrivals hall. The name on his card was completley wrong but it resembled my name, so we took a chance. He spoke no english at all - which we would later discover that almost nobody does. After an hour or so in the taxi he dumped us at the side of a road outside a night club where the bouncers had machine guns.We did not know where our...