I love China! It's a great country and Beijing is a wonderful city, I'm really enjoying it so far. I got a "good vibe" as soon as I got off the train and everyone is really friendly. Beijing is meant to be polluted but after Ulan Bator the air seems really clean. It's also a very clean and tidy city. I have two Chinese men reading over my shoulder - it's a good job I said I like China! They must like me as they're trying to give me cigarettes. Everyone...

It's been a long time since I updated my blog - mainly because I've been living in tents in the middle of the countryside for the past few days and whilst all the gers have satellite television the internet doesn't seem to have caught on yet. I last updated just before I got on the train from Irkutsk to Ulan Bator I think. Just after that we went to try and find food and could only find expensive restaurants with no free tables. Luckily we were rescued by a Russ...

Hello! I don't really have time to update fully, will do that tomorrow. I have have an exciting few days, highlights of which include: being invaded by the American Peace Corps using an increasingly bizarre array of toilets, the best being a two sided shack on top of a mountain in a field full of sheep, goats, cows, camels and horses subsisting mainly on mutton fat almost contracting hypothermia almost falling off a very angry camel the car breaking dow...

So as you can see I have succeeded in grappling with technology enough to upload some photographs. Unfortunately I have not succeeded enough to have something more symbolic of my time in Russia as the album cover than a blurry photo of a budgie. I am currently in Irkustk (it's minus 22C) waiting for the train to take us to Mongolia at 5am. I'm quite looking forward to going on the train again as it'll be an opportunity to sleep lots. My body is somewhere betwee...

Arrived in Irkutsk tonight after the longest and most surreal train journey ever. It was lots of fun, but really weird. It feels as though you're in a little bubble with some other people, and you're in this train world which isn't quite real life. I think I've finally caught up on my sleep! As I expected, once you get away from the main cities Russian people as a whole are really friendly. Well, some of them. There's less random chatting amongst strangers than ...