At first it felt like a logistics nightmare attempting to work out when and where is best to get visas, before we left or on the go? After researching the requirements for every country we thought we might visit, we […]
Lessons Learnt: Russia
We’ve only been in China, or rather out of Russia, for 11 days and it seems a world away. I guess it is really, Russia felt European and even towards the far East in Buryatia there’s still a large Slavic […]
Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained
“It’s funny” beamed Ivan, twisting round in the front passenger seat to address the four tourists squeezed into the back seat of the taxi “he tells me that this isn’t actually his taxi, he is borrowing it from a friend […]
The Iron Road (the Trans-Manchurian)
So, here comes a long post. Instead of writing about each of the train journeys separately, I thought it might be more interesting to compare them in one. And not too many train-based posts for those less passionate about them […]
First 24 hours in China
Last night on Thursday 4th May at 18:21 we crossed the Russian-Chinese border into the province of Inner Mongolia. From the freezing, windy, dusty town of Zabaikalsk to the freezing, windy town of Manzhouli. There’s a huge gate-like building going […]
Ulan-Ude
“Ude is river, that runs through town. Ulan is Buryat word for red, like blood. Ulan-Ude, it means blood river.” These are the words of the local man who shared our train compartment for the journey into Ulan-Ude. He had […]
The beautiful Lake Baikal
Baikalsk is a town of about 12,000 people. Mainly young and old we were told. Until 3 years ago the pulp and paper mill which covered 2 square kilometres employed around 3000 workers. Good for the people as they had […]
The most popular stop on the trans-siberian
We pretty much had just over 24 hours in Irkutsk. Originally we had planned to stay several nights so we could visit Lake Baikal and use Irkutsk as a base. However, the joy of using couchsurfing in Russia (it’s super […]
Living that Ново life
As our train approached Novosibirsk, capital city of Siberia, several cargo trucks passed stamped with the label ‘Hово’. I excitedly wondered aloud if this was potentially the source of the term ‘Hobo’ which refers to travelling workers who are often […]
“Neither Europe, nor Asia”
It was a rocky start to our stay in Yekaterinburg. After feeling uncomfortable staying, we decided to leave our couch surfer after 11pm and head into the city centre to find a hostel. We got the last metro on […]
