It was here that we decided there were two types of cold. Slow cold is when if you fail to keep warm you will gradually reduce in temperature and at some point, it will become unbearable. Quick cold is when after leaving the sunshine for just a minute you have an urge to run inside otherwise you fear some extremity might drop off. This was our experience here with temperatures of -26C, with the sunshine being the only thing allowing us to be outside for more than...

Manzhouli was another contingency stop, that we put in for the border crossing, but we're quite glad we stayed here. The city is a wonderful combination of Russia and China, with both languages being catered for. That meant that almost nobody spoke English and we relied on Google Translate's offline mode to communicate via text far more than ever before. The city itself looks a bit more like Las Vegas, with lots of bright lights at night and far more skyscrapers...