Part Two - The Final Curtain (as opposed to the Iron one)

And so, the end is near. To pick up from the last posting, arriving in Ulan Ude (UU), it struck us as being very foreign. Yes, I know we are in a foreign country anyway, but UU was different again to what we'd so far experienced with Russian cities. I'm not sure I can explain why, but at the very least we noticed a melting pot of people here; suddenly we were surrounded by very Siberian / Mongolian / Buryat faces rather than the previously predominant white Russians (also, the terrain was hilly, dry and dusty and the temperature around 35 degrees C, unlike most of our experience of Western Russia. UU is a small city, maybe only the size of Shrewsbury, set beautifully, with a good feel about it - Russell). Getting this far was also a bit emotional for both of us; it should have been here that we turned south into Mongolia and then China. However, I can say now, having done what we've done since, what has been in our small world an “epic” drive across pretty much the width of Russia, and realising what we would have missed out on seeing and experiencing, we have the point of view that everything happens for a reason. (In some ways I regret not driving Elmo in Mongolia. Not going to the trouble and expense of a longer, multiple-entry visa was the biggest mistake I have made in respect of this trip so far. It would have allowed us far more flexibility and the opportunity of driving into Mongolia and back into Russia. Mongolia would have been a bigger challenge of navigation than Russia and I would have liked to say that I had crossed the Gobi Desert. However, driving close to the border, we have had a flavour of what the Mongolian terrain is like; driving the Siberian highway, we have driven roads as rough as we would experience in Mongolia; and I think that the right way to see Mongolia is on horse-back. Whenever we stopped the car whilst driving through (hours of) grasslands in this region, we became conscious of the bird-song that we had not heard, and the breeze that we had not felt, because of the car, and I felt we had missed out a little - Russell).
Unfortunately, because of the timescale we have now been working to since our amended travel itinerary, we could only allow ourselves one night in UU; it would have been good to stay longer and experience more of the Buryat culture. However, as it stands, how many of you out there can claim to have seen what UU is proud home to – the biggest Lenin head in the world? ...Quite. We realise now that perhaps we should have had a sub-feature to our blog, with a photo of Darwin next to every Lenin statue we've come across; maybe for our next year-off's blog...

On from UU and a 2-day drive to Chita meant a night “car-camping” again. We stopped early to cook ourselves a meal, before driving on for another couple of hours and then parking up for bedtime. It was while Russ was trying to get either of our 2 stoves to actually stay alight (Western-made stoves made to run on Western-standard fuel, not Russki petrol - Russell), that I noticed a fella on a bicycle, coming from the direction we were headed. I didn't think too much of it, until he shouted “Hello!”. It turned out that Niomi (my apologies for almost certainly misspelling his name), a Japanese gentleman, had set off from Vladivostok on his bicycle on 13 May (it was now 19 June) and was going to continue cycling across Russia, through the Baltic States, make a bit of a weave through Europe, and end up in Portugal, where, 20 countries cycled later, he would then fly home. So, thank you to those of you who have e-mailed to commend us for what we are doing, but, compared to this chap, it's sod-all! And, to rub it in, he has already motorbiked Australia and cycled across America.
The next day we made it to Chita, having awoke early in what turned out to be (we think) the entrance to a logging site! The now expert Prado mechanic performed another fuel-filter clearance before we set off from what was a beautiful spot in the hills (we reached over 1100 metres, higher than Snowdon apparently, but I didn't notice any small train running up the side of this particular mountain).

We did wonder momentarily if we were on some other kind of “trip” when we arrived in Chita, as all around the main square and shopping streets teenage girls appeared to be floating about in ball gowns, and yet it was only 4pm in the afternoon. However, we established that it must have been “Prom” day, and soon got used to the experience of walking past yet another “Princess Barbie” lookalike (well, I did at least; Russ was rather quiet that afternoon....)

While experiencing this fantastical reprieve we were girding our loins; we'd been warned we'd got anywhere between 900 – 1500 km of bad road ahead (i.e. previously unexisting road). We were going to give ourselves 6 days and 5 nights out in the “wilderness”, assuming we might manage 240 km a day max (about 6 hours driving), given what we'd already experienced. So you can imagine our delight, when leaving Chita the next day, to find a good road, and by late afternoon we'd already got 460 km under our belts. The main obstacles in our path were more animal than mineral in fact: as a follow-on from Russ' “Might is Right” rule, apparently, here 4 legs consider themselves far superior on the road to 4 wheels. However, eventually we once more saw plumes of dust in the distance and realised there was some hard driving to come yet again

That'll be a dusty road, then...

Our second day in the wild was pretty much a whole day of unmade, dusty road, but we were both in the swing of it, and when we set up camp that night to find our stoves had now completely called it a day, Russ set to and built us a proper fire, using only a match, with no fire-lighters, or petrol cans thrown in disgust, in sight. So pleased were we to see proper flame, that we ended up making excuses for how to make use of it; not only did we cook our meal, but we then heated water for washing up, followed by more hot water for Russ to have a manly shave in a wing mirror of Elmo, followed by yet more hot water for me to wash my face, which at that point was one of the most glorious experiences I could remember. It was only when we discovered that we'd whittled our 5-day supply of water down to about 2 litres that we realised we might have been getting a bit carried away.

The end of our third bumpy, dusty day was our wonderful experience of the hospitality of Sasha, Svyeta and Roma, as I mentioned in our previous blog update. Sasha told us we were now about 200km away from Blagoveshchensk, which would mean we'd made it to the Russian Far East, an area which is actually larger than Europe. By the time we reached Blago (and good road!) by late lunchtime the next day, Elmo's temperature gauge was showing 36°C. We checked into the Hotel Druzhba (with me using only Russian – smug moment) to find they'd only got a deluxe room available with a king-size bed. Given our past few days of “hardship” we said, well, we'd put up with such luxury if we really had to...

Blago's claim to fame is that it sits one side of the Amur River and the other side is China. Again we had the momentary frustration of knowing we were so close, and yet couldn't get in! Lots of Chinese tourists come across to Blago for the “Soviet” experience (and the nearest vodka factory, if the happy, bottle-clutching group in our hotel were anything to go by). A big plus of this was that the hotel therefore had Chinese food in its restaurant, which was delicious (and made up for the Cold-War style breakfasts we had there). (The Chinese we came across were a very noisy, lively bunch and quite a contrast to the reserved manner of Russians. Now, I would like to go to China just to experience the bustle, never mind the sights - Russell).

(Oh look, another 'phot of me with no top on - Russell) Two hot days later and were were on the move again, another 2-day stint, this time to Khabarovsk. We'd hoped the road would now be okay, but no, another 60 km stretch lay ahead of us almost immediately. By lunchtime it was 34°C and yet more bad road lay in front, prompting us to have a lunch-stop. With horse flies the size of my thumb taking an interest and with no desire to sit in a closed Elmo with our air-conditioning not working, brainwave! We rigged up our 2 mosquito bed-nets so one draped over each side of the car, and that way we could have the windows open without having chunks of flesh removed.

Due to the heat of the day, we had a bad night's sleep in the car that night, so when we arrived in Khabarovsk for 10.30am the next day, we parked up in a quiet street and napped for an hour! We then found our way to the Hotel Zarya where we checked in (we stayed 7 nights here in total) went and had a look at our room and napped for another hour! Our hotel room was very comfortable apart from the consistent and mysterious daily arrival of mosquitoes; it became a ritual every morning and evening to kill as many as we could find, but their numbers never seemed to decrease. After two nights of being entertained by their various high-pitched whines past our ears, and laying bets on which bit of us they'd try next, we fetched our now ever-useful mosquito nets and commenced the nightly routine of rigging the nets up between the over-bed lights and the curtain pole on the opposite wall. To give the mozzies their due, they were very persistent even then; following the first night of “netting” Russ found 2 very poorly critters at the end of his bed, who had managed to crawl up the inside of his net from the floor. (I believe their illness was due to the Permethrin-soaked nets, rather than from having imbibed on Russ' juicy red cells).

Khabarovsk is lovely; a more un-Russian city I've never seen, with wide tree-lined streets and lots of red brick buildings (built around the end of the 19th century). For the first time in a while we were able to be proper tourists. We ate in an authentic “blini” cafe (Russian pancakes, sweet and savoury, delicious); we dined on sushi (shipped in from “nearby” Japan – over 80% of Khabarovsk's tourists are Japanese); and gorged ourselves on ice-creams (Russians have a very sweet tooth and there are ice-cream stands on virtually every street corner). We strolled round the Park, visited the Regional History Museum and spent time at the Military Museum (where Russ was in raptures over the courtyard display of Russian army trucks, cannons and tanks, and where I wondered how much longer until I could have my next chocolate ice-cream). We took a long look round their huge WWII Memorial; a massive black marble crescent and about 30 enormous black marble monoliths, all covered with the names of those that Khabarovsk had lost; there were thousands of names. It was very moving and slightly eerie, because as we looked around, the bells of the church behind the emorial started to toll slowly, and they kept ringing until we walked away, when they came to a stop again.

Just a small part of the WWII memorial

Left - Spot Darwin

It was in Khabarovsk that we were finally able to give Elmo a proper clean at an “Auto-Moika”, basically a lad wielding his pressure-washer wand (ahem). It cost us a lot of money, but Elmo was VERY dirty, (so it made us pig-sick to hit yet more unmade road on our last leg to Vladivostok.)
And so now we are here, in Vladivostok, (a city closed not only to foreigners but also most Russians until 1992), having spent 7 days in a very small hotel room and not at all getting on each other's nerves, at the end of the line. We've not had time to sort out 'photos of 'Vlad'. It is a port city, set in a bay and built on a number of hills, so it feels a little like San Francisco, and has a similar climate (some hot days, some foggy days). It's also a cosmopolitan city and a very nice place to while away time.
Elmo has cleared customs and is waiting for a container ship to start his journey to Brisbane, thanks to Davos Express, shipping agents, who have been a pleasure to deal with. We catch the ferry to Japan this evening. We can't really believe we've done it; back when we were debating the idea in Moscow we didn't really think it possible, but you can surpass your own expectations and give it just that little bit more than you think you've got. Yeah, yeah, enough of the marketing.
Big thanks to Ken (Pops) for giving us the encouragement and mental push into going ahead, rather than turning back, and enormous thanks to Murray (Step-Pops) for his invaluable patience, time and internet searches in finding the best way to get myself, Russ, Darwin and Elmo the heck out of here.
We hope you have enjoyed our Russian journey, and hope you'll “tune in” again to catch up on our Japanese and Australian exploits. Thank you for being there with us.

Just more beautiful Eastern Siberian scenery

Different Strokes – Part one

Yep, it certainly does take different strokes to make a world. When I typed the last blog 2½ weeks ago, I never thought I'd be drafting the next one sitting in 35°C heat in an open-air cafe above a man-made lake with fountains, in a park, surrounded by beautiful brick buildings from the turn of the century, with tree-lined avenues and SUNSHINE.
We're now in Khabarovsk, only 2 days (albeit long ones) drive away from Vladivostok (yes, we decided to do the daft thing and challenge ourselves to drive across Russia). It's such a weird feeling to be so close to the end of our Russian journey, although the fat lady hasn't sung yet (no quips about my vocal talents on the video clip please). We aim to get to Vladivostok for the evening of 5th July and then we've 5 days to try and ensure that Elmo has successfully been put into a crate and on a ship bound for Brisbane, Australia (the shipping agents in Vlad think that is enough), and 9 days to sort ourselves (and Darwin) out with ferry passage to Japan, where we've decided we'd like to spend 3 weeks sight-seeing (by public transport – what a quaint concept...) Thanks to Dave and Helen for their suggested “must-sees”.
And I don't mind admitting that we are flippin' proud of the fact that we've now driven across Siberia, along approx 1300km of unmade road – again if you've seen the videos, you'll hopefully understand our patting our own backs.

Russ will readily admit that he wasn't that struck by Western Russia, either the landscape or the people, but we have both fallen in love with Siberia and the Far East of Russia, and the folk that inhabit it. The Siberian landscape, especially, is more than can possibly be described, with glorious grassy prairies full of bird life that you can't see, but are deafened by when you stop the car and step outside, while around the edges of your view are magnificent mountains, in so many hues of pinks, purples and greys. We've taken more photographs than we can probably count, but none of them will do justice to what you have to see with your own eyes.

We are glad that we have driven the Trans-Siberian Highway rather than take the train. The hardship of driving such a distance, on such challenging terrain, and sleeping out in it for nights at a time when we were between cities and any chance of a hotel-stop, I think made us feel we'd earned the beauty that we were experiencing.

(left - a view from our lakeside overnight stop)
We've had Lilia and Sisik, two local girls in Ulan-Ude, come up to us and just start chatting, curious to know where we were from and where we were going; the first people in Russia who'd really taken an interest in two dusty foreigners. We had a taxi driver applaud us and give us the thumbs up when he saw the GB sticker on Elmo. At a fuel station in a small village in the middle of nowhere we've had a local chap come up and shake our hands and wish us “Good Morning” (it was actually afternoon, but hey, who's fussy in the face of such obvious friendship). And most special of all, as we were preparing to sleep in the car for the third night in a row (we gave up on camping – more about that later) as we crossed the most remote section of the highway, and having parked up by a beautiful lake, we had Sasha (a Russia/China border guard), his partner Svieta and her son Roma invite us (in Russian – no English spoken by them and rightly so) to their evening picnic of shashlik (BBQ'd chicken or pork), where they proceeded to virtually force-feed us most of their meal, going without themselves, and they were so patient and full of good humour as we bumblingly tried to answer their questions about where we were from, what we were doing here etc. For both Russell and I, I believe that it will be our best remembered night in Russia, such was their honest generosity and friendliness. (Dull diatribe from me: generally, Russians seem to be very matter-of-fact. We have dispensed with the smiley foreigner stuff when we try to communicate, as that seems to confuse, but, on the whole, the folks on the receiving end allow us, patiently, to struggle through with our phrases of (bad) Russian and gesturing, without any sign of a belittling smile. So, we have got used to having an armoury of words, props, gestures and play-acting that will get us what we want. That said, the further East we have come, the more helpful, friendly and animated the people seem to be, and a little more inquisitive, too, although it is hard to quantify within that how much more positive I am towards people now we are in warm, dry weather in stimulating scenery - Russell)

So, enough of the eulogising, and on to a proper breakdown of our journey from Tomsk onwards. Did I talk about Tomsk much before? We liked it very much; it was fairly untouched by Soviet hands, apparently because the city fathers decided not to have the Trans-Siberian railway stop there – a wise move if you ask me, given how lovely it is. It was here that we drove to a quiet spot (that we thought was rough ground, but actually turned out to be a local beauty spot for picnics – oops) and Russ successfully managed an oil change on Elmo, a wash of the air filter, and emptied the fuel filter of quite a lot of yucky water (the cause of that mystery dashboard light, Russ discovered after a good internet search), while I was able to give Elmo a good wash with water from the river we were parked up at.

It was a 2-day drive to Krasnoyarsk from Irkutsk, so we camped out for the night in between; our last night in the tent as it turned out. It had been a gloriously hot, clear, blue-sky day, which meant a gloriously clear, therefore numbingly cold night. But once I'd got my hot water bottle, thermals, pyjamas, 2 pairs of socks, scarf, one of Russ' fleecy tops, plus 2 fleece blankets over my sleeping bag, I was absolutely fine. Bizarrely the next morning pretty much for the first time we were able to put the tent away dry. Russ would have appreciated this much more had he not woken up suffering with a nasty tummy-bug and therefore having to commune with nature slightly more closely than he would have liked.
Because we'd done good mileage the day before,we arrived in Krasnoyarsk for early lunchtime, to find we'd turned up on 12 June, which is celebrated across Russia as the day (in 1991) the USSR ceased to be, and the Russian Federation began. Therefore we found ourselves battling down one block of the main street for about ½ an hour, through massive crowds gathered for the parade. Eventually we got down to Ploschad Lenina (the main square; every city should have one, I shall campaign for Shrewsbury's on my return) and managed to check into the Krasnoyarsk Hotel, a big Soviet concrete block of a building, but comfortable rooms. We thought this might be a mistake initially, as we found ourselves looking directly over the Ploschad, where a big stage was hosting all manner of singers, dancers and other entertainers, performing, VERY LOUDLY. However, when we returned to our room about 11.30pm that night, we were first captivated by the sight of the huge crowds who had gathered in the square to enjoy the late-night festivities, and then we were completely enraptured by the entertainment finale of a non-stop, 15 minute firework display to music.

It was here that I got to experience another “exciting moment”. So we'd wondered off to find our Krasnoyarsk hotel (left - the Krasnoyarsk Hotel), which was down the other end of the main drag from where we'd had to leave Elmo. We'd lunched, and made our way back to the car. As we were getting sorted, I felt an irritation on my left hip, slightly itchy, slightly prickly, slightly sore. I thought something, maybe a label, was rubbing, so touched my hip to find something had fixed to me. I glanced down, to see ... A TICK. Instantly hundreds of horrible thoughts about tick-borne encephalitis (rampant in Russia, delightful effects of brain-swelling and pretty much death – I now feel that the £600 we spent on inoculations before we set out really was worth the money) poured into my mind and I spent a good few minutes either feeling very nauseous, or about to pass out (unusually, perhaps, Alex isn't exaggerating; mortality rates from tick-borne encephalitis in this part of Russia are about 20% and 40% of survivors have permanent central nervous system damage - Russell). Russ was calm, found our sharp-nosed tweezers and pulled the little blighter out. Well, in two goes he pulled the tick out. First time round apparently the body snapped off, leaving it's head still embedded (it made me feel so much better to hear that), but second time round he got it, assuring me he could see the antennae and jaws, and that therefore yes, he'd got all of it out now... For some reason after that point our desire to camp waned quite a lot, so since then, any time we've had to sleep out, we've just put our sleeping bags in Elmo and put the two front seats back. That and the fact that all manner of critters seem to like to feast on me – mosquitoes, horse flies (that draw blood – did you know they did that?) and kitten-sized ants have all “had a go”.

After just one night in Krasnoyarsk it was time to move on again, so a night in the car, then a day later we reached Irkutsk ...I made that sound so simple, didn't I? Actually, the road between Krasnoyarsk is what you can see in our Dancing Queen and Driving on the Moon clips (previous posting), and it wasn't the first bit of bad road we've driven, but it was the worst. If you could also imagine driving that terrain until 11.30 at night, up and down a couple of darkly forested hills, fighting for space with oncoming, headlight-toting vehicles as well.


(Often, there is one good 'line' of least potholes, bomb-holes, berms, banks, etc, which vehicles in both directions try to take (left - oncoming traffic trying to find the best line). To some extent the 'Might is Right' rule is in force, such that we can 'persuade' smaller cars to pull over and get off the good line for us and oncoming trucks persuade us of the same. To go off on another diatribe, the reason for the poor condition of the road in the Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk section seems to be that it is built straight onto marsh which, presumably, freezes and swells in winter to force the road surface up and open. In the new sections of, as yet, unfinished highway that we drove further East, the road has been built many metres above the land, on (millions of tonnes?) of hardcore, gravel, earth and/or sand. It is a hell of an engineering project. What also becomes apparent is the effect of traffic on the road surface when it has been impaired or is unfinished. The suspension action, of trucks in particular, can create a corrugated road surface that is grim at low and high speeds, but there is a speed at which Elmo's suspension can cope with it well, typically about 60 – 70 kph (40mph, ish). However, if the corrugations have become badly potholed, then above 25kmh is bloody awful and it is best to slow right down and pick your way around them as best as possible.

Also, Alex hasn't mentioned the road-dust (which gets EVERYWHERE). Whilst I enjoy driving along seeing a cloud of dust behind me, driving into the dust from other cars is less entertaining. Visibility can drop to around 10 metres and it is best to assume that there will be a car on your chosen line coming the other way, so on with main beam (it's best to dry with headlights on in the daytime, anyway) and slow right down (we had a few near-misses, but Russian drivers, whilst risk-takers, are switched-on). To be fair, with the few slow vehicles going in our direction that we wanted to pass, it was a case of judging whether it was clear from the odd glimpse of road past their dust cloud, then main beam on and drive into blindness as fast as the road surface would allow. Oh, and Russian risk-taking on the roads: population of Russian about 2.5 times that of the UK, road deaths over 10 times that. Families (I assume) erect small shrines at crash sites in the same way that some people leave flowers in Britain. You don't travel far without seeing a shrine. I'm not sure what point I want to make with this, since I am comfortable with a bit of risk-taking, but 35,000 road deaths each year seems rather a lot - Russell).

(These trucks weren't going for it. We would get overtaken by tipper trucks and then not be able to see for what is far too long when driving).

(A picturesque village on the road to Irkutsk)

Russ likens Irkutsk to Stoke-on Trent, and Lonely Planet calls it “slightly seedy”, but as Louis Walsh would say “I liked it” (so did I. It had everything we needed, the people we dealt with were friendly and helpful, the lady who cut my hair told me I was 'beautiful' (I suspect it was the only word of English she knew) and it was the best signposted city we have tried to get into and out of. We just didn't see anything that encouraged us to take any photographs - Russell). We set ourselves up in the Hotel Delta for a few nights, a comfy, Westernised business-type hotel, only slightly marred by our last night there, when we had to move rooms, and had a quibble over the price we'd been quoted, which resulted in us being “allowed” to stay if we checked out by 10am the next morning (the receptionist quoted us their rate for Russians, rather than visitors, which I double-checked with her as it sounded cheap, so I held her to it when she tried to back-track the next day - Russell. However, the folks in the Epitsentr Internet place were friendly, as were the folks in the Fiesta cafe we regularly frequented (great pizza slices), and we bumped into a few Australians and British students who had stopped off along the Trans-Siberian Railway; it was very strange to be able to use complete sentences in English with someone other than each other.

For our last day in Irkutsk we headed off to Listvyanka, a small village sitting on the edge of famous Lake Baikal and our nearest access point to it. On the way we called in at the Taltsy Museum of Wooden Architecture, which might sound a bit dry, but it's an outdoor collection of very old Siberian buildings that were actually moved piece by piece from other villages so that they could be restored and maintained. We spent a fab couple of hours there, and in fact it's given Russ some great inspiration for our “Good Life” style new home project when we return to the UK.

(Oh yes, I'm going to build a wooden chapel...)

Listvyanka, when we got there, well, it's a bit like Borth I suppose, with less cafes and shops open. So instead of a nice shore-side cafe lunch, we made do with a bottle of Coke and a Kit Kat from the nearest magazin (shop). For those of you who don't know, Lake Baikal is the world's deepest lake, containing almost a 1/5 of the planet's unfrozen fresh water (thank you Lonely Planet). The water is apparently pure enough to drink straight off (we didn't try) but blimey, it's SO cold. In fact the lake is so big that it impacts on the surrounding weather; we left the Taltsy Museum, only 10 kms away , in 28°C warmth, to arrive at the lakeside with a temperature of 11°C...

Darwin freezing his fluffy bits off at Lake Baikal

Following our four nights in Irkutsk, we drove towards Ulan-Ude, and fame! To explain, we had promised ourselves that we would pick up any “decent-looking” hitch-hikers (no, I don't mean Angelina Jolie / Daniel Craig look-alikes), but had only earlier that morning given our first lift to someone since arriving in Russia (a really nice young chap, Andrei, a National-Service officer in the army, who when Russ asked if it was a good life in the forces gave quite a vehement “nyet”) (above - the town where Andrei is stationed, on Lake Baikal). Then only about an hour later, as we drove through yet another small village, we noticed 2 people frantically waving at each passing car. We drove on, then following a squabble where I insisted we couldn't fit 2 people in the back, and then Russ made me sit there with him to prove to me that it could be done, we drove back to offer them a lift. Two people yes, but two people who are actually part of a Spanish TV competition called “Pekin Express” (where 10 couples are fighting it out to be the first to get to Beijing, on NO money, therefore everything has to be begged for – food, accommodation, lifts off idiot English travellers), and who also have a camera woman with them, plus her big camera... Well, we tried. A frantic shuffle of our things off the back seat and rear foot-well, jamming them into the back of the car and hanging bits off spare bungees. It would have been fine, had not the lass suggest that their rucksacks could go on the roof rack, which meant Russ clambering up to do a shuffle of fuel cans etc and free up some ratchet-strap space. He was just tightening up the last ratchet when a beeper went off on the lad's belt, and suddenly we're told that actually one of the points of the competition is that they have to achieve certain things to certain times, and they'd just run out of time for moving anywhere that day ... Russ kept smiling, I'm very impressed with him for that. Anyway, we might be on telly (albeit Spanish and maybe South American) sometime in September / October, as we were being followed round by a camera the whole time we were going through the above palaver. If anyone is interested we can email you the website of the TV company (why would you be? - Russell). So I'll finish our blog for now, even though I haven't brought you right up to date yet, to go and dream of being “discovered”, although I expect Dancing Queen has pretty much put the lid on that one. If things go to plan, the next instalment will come from Vladivostok, and should be our last from this “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” (Que?- Russell)

More Eastern Siberian landscape. Mongolia is on the other side of the mountain range.

A village on the way to Ulan Ude in Eastern Siberia

Dancing Queen

Guess who was wearing their I-Pod whilst driving? A section of the main road between Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, which are major Siberian cities. These sections can last for around 60 kms (yes, I mean kilometres) at a time. (Sorry about picture quality, but it I used the camera on my 'phone) - Russell.

Two English Twits and a Stuffed Toy Dog

Well, we've certainly adhered to the phrase “Keep on Truckin'”, cos for the past 2 weeks we've hardly seemed to stop moving. It's been a mixed bag of journeys; on days where we've been leaving a city it's invariably taken an hour just to drive out to the city limit, so progress is slow, followed by constant slowing to 60km/h in all the villages we drive through (and there are many West of Siberia); when we crossed the Ural Mountains we spent half the trip crawling up the hills behind Kamaz trucks that belch out goodness knows what from their exhausts. Lots of old lorries.
In some places, we come across large truck stop
areas – cafes, workshops, prostitutes probably ('old'-style truck stop left and below (there are new ones about, with modern buildings, although they are just as muddy - Russell)). The pollution here can be so bad that visibility is reduced and you want to stop breathing. Then suddenly in Siberia, they seem to have different rules about where you build a road, and have decided to bypass most villages and towns – such an intriguing concept...

So, other driving issues (aside from our current one which involves a mystery light on the dashboard having come on in Elmo (our Toyota). The downside of a grey import vehicle is that it doesn't come (or certainly Elmo didn't) with a car manual which might show you what exactly that particular light means.
Firstly – two motoring fines, both surprisingly clocked up by Russell. I'll let him tell you in his own words:
(21st May – speeding. Radar clocked at 80Kmh (allegedly) in a 60 zone. Sternly ushered into the police car, where a colleague, charming, wrote down a figure of 600 rubles; I had no change, so he directed that I place the 1,000 ruble note I was holding into the car's centre console and pointed for me to go. The fears I had had about not knowing how to bribe my way out of situations were completely allayed; with years of experience on their side, the traffic police make giving bribes a simple process.
22nd May overtaking in a no overtake zone. I was adamant that I hadn't. DPS (traffic police) guy did a drawing to demonstrate what I had done. Wrote down a figure of 5,000 rubles. After much arguing (through gestures), he put a question mark against it and handed me a pen. I crossed out the last zero. He shrugged and said yes. This time I found the right change. I have since read that my speeding fine should have been only 100 rubles).

Secondly, what was supposed to be a paragraph or two about the number of accidents we see on the roads every day, is now slightly more poignant since we became one of these statistics too (albeit not on the same dramatic scale, by any stretch of the imagination). Read Russ' bit first, then I'll tell you more: (We see a lot of Russian-made cars and trucks at the road side with their bonnets up. Lots of new and second-hand trucks have been bought from the US and cars are being directly imported from Japan, still in right-hand drive form. Also, we witness the aftermath of more accidents in a day here than we do in about 6 months at home. Usually trucks that have driven off the road into the drainage ditch. Most just slide the cab in. some topple all the way over. In the absence of a ditch, one drove into the front of a house. Usually, there is another truck parked up with them, offloading the contents of the trailer - Russell).
Where was I? Oh yes, our “Big Adventure Day” as we've fondly come to think of Tuesday 3 June 2008. We'd wild-camped the night before and true to form with the Russian weather every time we camp, it rains by morning, so this time Russ decided to be canny and put his wellies on whilst we dismantled our tent and packed stuff away in Elmo. It was still raining all the while I did the first driving shift (we take it in turns of about an hour each), then we pulled over into a junction and swapped over (where we sat for a while waiting for a hail storm to pass, and got slightly worried because we weren't sure if the windscreen would get damaged - seriously). Less than 5 minutes down the road Russ realised he'd still got his wellies on and would prefer to change into his trainers. It's still raining, as Russ slows down and pulls over to the dirt verge ...
At this point I'll digress slightly to explain about Russian roads (I don't think we have gone into this already?) Russian roads, particularly rural ones, tend to be built up much higher (between 1 and 3 metres usually) than the surrounding land, which is very wet or marshy in most places. I think the water run-off from the roads also collects in the created ditches, as there is no drainage system as we would have in place. The roads are mainly single carriageway, but there's always a dirt verge that runs along the side of the metalled roads on both sides, which is popularly used by many Russian drivers to undertake, or to pull over onto when they need a pee.

... so Russ slows down and pulls over onto the dirt verge, and as the wheels hit the dirt we realise that the dirt, mixed with over 12 hours of rain, has become the muddy equivalent of a skating rink. Russ is braking, but Elmo's not stopping. Russ is turning the wheels left to get us back on the road, but Elmo is continuing to slide right. As we glide over the edge of the verge and begin our sideways descent down the 3 metre slope Russ is still desperately trying to get Elmo to go back up, but it gets to a point when Elmo thinks it might be easier to do a sideways roll down the rest of the bank, so with brilliant quick thinking (bless my wife - I just did what you're supposed to do and I really didn't fancy the idea of rolling the car - Russell) Russ turns the wheels to get Elmo facing down the slope and finally we come to a 45 degree angle (well it felt like it - Russell) rest at the bottom. There follow a couple of minutes of deep breathing and expletives that I can't put in here because I know at least my Mum would be horrified to know I can use such words.
At this point we would like to say a very big thank you to Stuart Walker, whose off-road driving course we'd done earlier in the year, and who had suggested the type of kit we might need to get us out of a fix (and to Eddie Priscott at Frog Island 4x4 for the same reason), including the bungee tow-rope that Russ now got out of Elmo and waved in front of passing vehicles. For about 5 minutes we thought that nobody would bother to stop (if nothing else, it's STILL raining), but then a very nice BMW saloon pulls over and 3 Russian guys get out. We can't speak Russian, they can't speak English, but we get the gist that they'd like to help but obviously there's no way their lovely car is going to be able to pull 2 tonnes of Elmo up a muddy slope. These guys do however stand in the middle of the road and flag down an oncoming Kamaz truck with trailer, and get the driver to agree to try and pull us out. We never got the names of these 3 guys, but we are touched by their generosity of spirit for helping us out.
As for the truck driver, again, we are very sorry that we didn't get at least a name, because his patience and persistence for the next hour was a sight to behold. For a while, every time he tried to pull Elmo up the bank, he only succeeded in pulling him along it instead (the result of Emo's ditch-dive, above). Eventually he managed to communicate to Russell that he would pull the back end of Elmo round so that the vehicle would be facing directly down the slope. That done, the driver then patiently waited until there was a lull in the traffic, then he gently manoeuvred his truck and trailer over the the other side of the road, and at last Elmo started to move up, rather than across. (I have to say at this point all I had been doing for this hour was standing around, making ineffectual flappy hand signals as I watched unsuccessful attempts to free Elmo. Russ on the other hand was a complete star, and was either in Elmo, trying to steer, or was running around between Elmo and the truck with the tow-rope, trying to get a different leverage point that would work.) (Again bless my wife for the compliment, but the reality is that the average Russian spends a lot of time resolving practical problems, like repairs and vehicle recovery, and has more common-sense in a little finger than I will ever have. There was at least one moment when the truck driver was bemused by my efforts - Russell). There was such a huge sense of relief to see Elmo up on the road again, and I think we wrung the poor truck driver's hand off, our handshakes of thanks were so enthusiastic. We also did ensure there was monetary benefit for him; I would think we've successfully fed his vodka habit for the next month.
That, pretty much, was our Big Adventure Day. We were lucky to get out of it completely unscathed, but it's going to be a while until I forget that sensation of being in a 2 tonne vehicle that isn't sure it wants to be upright any more.
As for the rest of our travelling, we've motored on through a number of cities, and from Northern European Russia, touching on the Volga Region, across the Ural Mountains (which are more like big hills to be honest) and now into the vast land that is Siberia (which seems to vary between looking like British parkland, with many small stands of Silver Birch amongst a landscape of pasture, and just endless prairie).

We left Moscow and got to Vladimir first, with a really quiet, but quaint town centre, where we stayed at the Hotel Vladimir (left and below) in their cheap rate room, which turned out to be the most bizarre apartment-like room (we've now established that in old-style Soviet hotels, you very often get a “suite” of a bedroom, bathroom and sitting room). In Vladimir we felt like we'd walked straight into the 1950's, or a Pleasantville film set, and because there were 2 other beds, spent a while trying to work out if we'd have to share the room with others (we didn't).

The plumbing in the Hotel Vladimir particularly impressed us.

Nizhny Novgorod looked nice when we got there and we would have enjoyed it, had we been able to find a hotel to stay in, but everywhere was full, apart from one hotel which had an apartment available for the equivalent of GBP300. We ended up risking a motel on the road to Kazan at 8pm that night, but got a comfortable room with shower and toilet for GBP30.

Kazan, in Tartarstan, and the Volga Hotel, where we stayed for 3 nights. There was also the marvellous plus that they were “testing” their new WIFI system, so we got to have loads of free internet access. A very clean city centre, with evidence of money from their oil in all the new, Western-style build that's going on. (Kazan, like a number of other cities, has 'benefited' from Central Planning and has a city-wide hot water supply. However, in the Summer, it rarely works. In fact, it is normal for district heating supplies to be turned off for maintenance during the summer months - Russell). A few buildings places have their own hot water heating, but not our hotel (it did have two showers with their own boiler, though). Of note was our lunch on the 2nd day at El Macho, a Mexican-themed bar/ restaurant, where one of the young owners was very helpful in trying to translate their menu for us, and where we had really tasty shashlik and salad. Our first evidence of Muslim influence in Kazan too, with a beautiful mosque set right inside their kremlin.

Ufa next and the Agidel Hotel, after a night of wild camping again, this time in a beautiful silver birch copse (there's a lot of Silver Birch in Russia - Russell), where we were spotted by 2 cops, but they were happy enough for us to be there (without a bribe, too. From what we have read, it is legal to camp in the wild in Siberia, apart from a few places that are (supposedly) signposted accordingly - Russell). We had hoped to get as far as Chelybinsk, but a day of driving the Ural Mountains behind crawling lorries meant Ufa was a nearer and more sensible option. Ufa again struck us as a town that's benefiting from oil, with new build, and expensive clothes shops (Prada, Yves Saint Laurent and Dolce & Gabbana seem to be the norm). A lovely receptionist at the Hotel booked us into an old-fashioned “apartment” again, at a “special price” which meant that we paid cash, for no receipt...(i.e. we paid the same rate as Russians, rather than the official tourist rate, and the hotel did not register us with the immigration department - Russell).

Yekaterinberg was next on our list, after yet another (wet) night camping, where we had a toss-up between a nice, new Western-style hotel, and the huge Soviet Bolshoy Ural hotel. We were brave and risked the latter, and once again ended up in a 1950's style bedroom, bathroom and sitting room combo. We stopped another 3 nights here, to catch our breath, do some admin bits and some sight-seeing. Yekaterinberg piqued our interest cos until 1990 it was closed to foreigners because of all it's defence plants... You can sort of tell, as only now are there some modern buildings going up (i.e. like a lot of Russian cities, it looks like the less salubrious parts of Birmingham - Russell). I was also very keen to come here, as this was where the Romanovs, the last Tsar family of Russia, were executed, so we went (I know, somewhat macabrely), to visit the site. (Also, Yekateringburg meant that we had arrived in Asia and Western Siberia. The Ural Mountains were formed when the European and Asian continents collided hundreds of millions of years ago. About 18km west of Yekateringburg, the 'collision' point has been marked (above) - Russell).
From there we moved onto Tyumen, and again initially struggled to get into a hotel. It would appear that their district (or oblast) have very strict rules about registering foreigners and so the cheaper hotels that we tried just wouldn't take us in. However, when we tried the Hotel Tyumen, the most expensive business hotel in the city, they had no problem once we were able to produce a receipt from our Yekaterinberg hotel to prove where we'd been last. It turned out to be a very ridiculous GBP170 per night, but blimey it was lovely! And it wasn't hard to persuade ourselves that we really needed to stay in Tyumen for 2 nights. For the first time since we've been in Russia we had proper pillow-shaped pillows, and proper duvets (rather than a blanket put in a duvet cover), although the first night we were there I slept really badly, cos it was too comfy! I think we pushed our luck a bit here, and I got very embarrassed, (although Russ will disagree with my sentiments I know), because on the 2nd day when the sun was shining, we got our very wet tent off the back seat of the car and laid it out in their (secure) car park to dry for an hour, whilst we had a reshuffle of the car contents.
Another night's camping followed, which got the tent nicely wet again, then we drove on to Omsk, (and in the middle of all this we had our Big Adventure). Omsk is another big, sprawling city, and we spent yet another hour trying to find our chosen hotel. We don't know what it is about Russian cities, but you very rarely get signs that either a) tell you how to get to the centre from the outskirts, or b) tell you how to get out of the centre onto the road you want for the next city. I don't know how rare we are at the moment, driving across Russia, but we've found it a flaw in Lonely Planet too, in that they have maps of city centres, but they are geared towards folk who've flown in or have arrived by train, not people who've got their own vehicles, and so we don't very often know, when looking at a Lonely Planet (LP) city centre map, which way is “out”. Our stealth hotel in Omsk (it just said hotel, no name on the outside!) was cheap and cheerful, with lovely reception staff who didn't speak a word of English, but listened patiently to my atrociously pronounced Russian request for a double room. Our “apartment” this time had a kitchen instead of a sitting room, so we were able to raid the nearby supermarket and actually cook ourselves dinner for a couple of nights (and get our own breakfast, since this hotel didn't have catering). The downside to Omsk is that we couldn't find an internet cafe, and so important admin stuff couldn't be done / looked into.
Originally we'd planned to get to Novosibirk next, but were increasingly put off by LP's assurances that unless you pre-booked, foreigners wouldn't find a hotel room for love nor money. In the end we beat our furthest travel distance so far and managed to do 510k to a spot about an hour outside Novosibirsk, where we then once again camped (in our worst spot by far; I am absolutely not kidding when I tell you that there were so many mosquitoes in the main compartment of our tent by morning, that after Russ had “Raid”ed them, when I got out of our sleeping compartment, I could not step anywhere without treading on bug bodies).

And so we get to today, Monday 9 June, and we've been in Tomsk for 3 nights so far (one more night booked, maybe another night be to confirmed). Tomsk is by far the prettiest Russian city we've been in, so much greenery, and it's a university city, off the beaten track a bit, so it's mostly very unspoilt by Soviet concrete slab buildings. There is lots of money here though, and I have mixed feelings that it would appear that as one of their beautiful wooden houses falls down in disrepair, up goes a lovely new modern brick and glass complex in its place (although I know it's progress, and after all, how many beautiful buildings did we tear down in the 60's?).
Again, we have reached decision time; from here we have to either carry on east now across to Vladivostok, in the hopes that we can get Elmo on a ship down to Australia; or we turn back west and retrace some of our steps through Russia, then down through the Volga region and into Ukraine and Europe (the cost of China is beyond our budget - in effect, about $9,000 just to get the permits, etc, necessary to get the car over the border, plus the (mandatory) guide's food and lodging to pay for. Our other alternative, the 'Stans, involves driving back to Moscow and waiting there a week to get a visa for Kazakhstan - Russell). We are trying to get enough internet time here to do research, as well as Russ now needing to do an oil change on Elmo, and we think (hope) that the mystery dashboard light is the fuel filter which just needs emptying (Between the amount of water about and the decrepid nature of some of the petrol stations (there are as many brand new ones), it doesn't suprise me that the diesel is contaminated with water - Russell).
Russia is certainly proving to be a challenge, and a tiring one at that, for many reasons:
the roads: sometimes smooth, sometimes terribly potholed, sometimes seeming to go through 60kmh limit villages and towns every 10 minutes, other times endless driving through little-changing scenery, because the country is so vast;
the weather: for the last 19 days, since we left Moscow, there's been rain at some point every day. If it's only a shower, that's fine, but when you're driving for 6 hours and the rain just doesn't stop, or when you set up camp on a dry evening, and wake up to find the tent's main compartment has pools of water, in one of which your rucksack (and its contents) has been sitting in nicely for most of the night, or when the verges get so wet your vehicle just slides off them (and in this country, where there's water, there's mud);
the language: (For me, the most difficult part of all this is not being able to understand or be understood. I find this a little humiliating, despite the fact that we seem to be getting, just about, what we need whenever we try to buy or obtain something. I do find it really hard. I think each exchange would be easier if they were a people who tended to have a sense of humour (that said, after economic hardship, Stalinist brutality, the reality of 1990s reform being that you realise that most countries in the world make better goods than you do, the mud and the weather, I would have lost my sense of humour, too) - Russell). We bought a Russian / English dictionary back in the early days of St Petersburg, but so many words change their endings depending on what case you are talking in and whether they are feminine, or masculine, or neutral, or singular, or plural, that it's difficult to work out the unchanged original so that you can look up its meaning in the dictionary. Increasingly the further east we go the fewer people speak English; we are starting to become a “novelty” in some places we go into now, whereby you can see people e.g. supermarket staff turning round to look at you as word gets round that you're a foreigner. Not that I'm slighting Russian people; serious yes they are, but (with a few ignorant exceptions) they invariably have tried to be helpful to us.
If this blog entry seems a little dispirited, please accept our apologies. I think that we're feeling a little worn down now; we've been 7 weeks away from home and our families and friends, with another 4 weeks to get across Russia (whichever way it ends up being), and technology hasn't been as convenient as we'd hoped, with sporadic access to the internet, and phone connections somewhat dodgy, and Elmo (our only constant here) isn't quite right, so it all adds up to feeling a bit alienated and alone. I'm sure by next blog check-in though we'll be much more upbeat.
Below: one of Tomsks old wooden houses.

Below: off the main roads, this is what the roads to villages look like. After a lot of rain, the trucks give up using them and queue up on the main roads to wait.

Below: just an example of some village houses. We keep talking about villages, but not showing any pictures.