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 apartment was - James quickly tried to rectify this by drawing a square in the air with his fingers and saying "building, which building", he drove off leaving us to work it out ourselves. We found the entrance to what seemed a council block but once inside realised that on the 19th floor it beat any hotel view in Moscow and was superbly located.

Moscow has its positives and its negatives. It is terribly expensive (James bought a kebab for 12 pounds) and dare I say it a little bit dreary and depressing. On the positive side we have never seen so many beautiful women in one place anywhere in the world. It quite literally was everywhere. I managed a few sneaky photos but the thought of getting arrested in Russia stopped me taking too many. The other attactions were Red square, St Basils Cathedral and the Kremlin.

We made our way to the train station to start our long journey on the trans mongolian railway (from Moscow to Beijing via mongolia) via the Metro which James tried to enter without a ticket and nearly got castrated by the solid metal poles that stop non payers. The train station was another world - everyone seemed homeless so we paid the extra to get into the VIP lounge.

Once on the train we had a pot noodle and went to bed. We woke up in the morning to see snow covered landscapes dotted with small villages. For 75 hours the scenery continued to be spectacular.

The train cabins were pleasant and we shared a shower with an English couple next door, once we had worked out the protocol for 'engaged'. They turned out to be a Mother and Daughter travelling to Hong Kong, they had done this route before (but the other way). They were horrified when James announced on day 2 that he had not realised the shower did not double up as the toilet... they soon realised he was not being serious.

The food in the buffet car was nothing to write home about (but we will anyway), the choice was bread, chicken and chips, pork and chips or fish and chips. The waitress looked like 'Anette' off the Italian Job and the cook like Vin Diesel. Once it came it was nice but cost a fortune, so again we resorted to buying pot noodles from locals gathered on the numerous station platforms we stopped at.

On the platforms, as well as stocking up on noodles etc, James had an urge to buy some tea, clearly the Russian for Tea is quite different, however this did not detract James from proceeding to make a 'T' with his fingers and motion a tea-bag and drinking... He is going to struggle in China...

Sleeping was entertaining, I had the top bunk and James had the bottom bunk and said it was like sleeping in a washing machine, he looked rough after the first night. Once we got our rail legs we were fine, even during the early hours when we were woken by a string of russian announcements in over the staion PA.

The scenery was amazing and was pretty much snowy all the way, looking at the various shanty towns and villages, made us realise how vast this country really is, and indeed how much we take for granted. Many of what looked like homes, we later found out were 'holiday homes' during the Summer months when the greenhouses may come in handy.

On one platform James crossed the track to take a photo of an old Russian Locomotive, whilst he was asking a fellow passenger to take the shot, our train guards boarded the train and set to leave - he ran over the line and jumped on the train several cars down - luckily he and a couple of others made it.

At 5am this morning we woke and finally disembarked Train 4 to Beijing for a 2 day stop in Irkutsk. It was -2, dark and no one spoke English. James and I managed to communicate with a Taxi driver who was trying to tell us the taxi fare to our hotel would be 300 Russian Rubles - we thought he meant 3000, so James tried to bargain down to 2000. Finally some visual management helped as we got some notes out.

Our hotel is a little bit out the centre, but new and nice. Breakfast was great. We have just come back from exploring the town and concluded that it too is a little depressing, grey and run down in many places. We are currently trying to sort a one day tour to lake Baikal tomorrow (the deepest and oldest fresh water lake in the world) - James had one of its indigenous fish for breakfast. When we were asking about 'Huskies' James again resorted to acting out dogs and sleys in an attempt to get the concept across - the receptionist made a call - possible to the local hospital...

We will keep you all posted as and when we can - so far even finding an Internet Cafe has been an expedition in itself, taking 2 hours to upload all our pics.

J & A.